Mass shootings – Page 2 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

February 21, 2020February 23, 2020

Sadly, Remembering Parkland, 2/14/2018

People distant from an event have a tendency to nationalize it. The occurrence is shoe-horned into some broader issue, or, better yet for activists, a politically opportune crisis. The shooting at Marjorie Stoneman High School would descend into the gutter of national gun-control politics. The most impactful circumstances surrounding the shooter are glazed over in the pursuit of a hot-button issue. Useful lessons are avoided as the coffers fill with contributions from any number of frightened citizens and well-heeled political exploiters (Michael Bloomberg, et al).

The most relevant facts, though, are those that directly relate to the cultprit. Right there, we find a convoluted and perplexing school discipline policy – the Promise program – in the school district, all meant to dilute the reality of bad behavior in the classroom, no matter the violator’s background. The result is a discipline system that few can understand, including the miscreant. The old rule of investing applies: if you don’t understand it, don’t do it.

The second factor to come out of the horrid affair is the insipid reactions of our public employees up and down the federal system. Take district superintendent Runcie and his use of gross and misleading numbers to defend his discipline system that in reality can’t and won’t remove real threats. Disgusting. Or the behavior of local law enforcement to refuse to enter the building to stop the shooter. Or the school’s security personnel who saw the guy coming and did nothing to stop him. Appalling. Or the warnings coming from citizens over a number of years to authorities about the shooter’s disturbing behavior. Warnings were plenty, and unheeded.

This only proves that real public safety begins with personal responsibility of the individual citizen. That’s the reason for the Second Amendment. Gun-free zones are in practice safe zones for killers.

Crass language would refer to the Parkland incident as one huge government “cluster #$&?@”. Either way you cut it, it was an entirely avoidable disaster … if government worked as designed in its flow chart. Fact is, it seldom does.

Instead, we get the parade of demagogues who promise a more centralized and bureaucratized version of the same. A good place to find them was on the stage Feb. 19, 2020, in Las Vegas.

The lineup of demagogues in Las Vegas, Feb. 19, 2020.

A “Woke” Walmart, Part III

I got a reply from “cushelp.com” at Walmart regarding my comment on the company’s new gun policies. The company’s online respondent indicated that the comment will go up the chain of command, and included a link of the newsletter/memo from President and CEO, John McMillon, to the employees (see the first edition of “A ‘Woke’ Walmart” for the link). This only further drew my ire. After reading McMillon’s missive to employees, I pounded a reply. Here is my rebuttal:

Thanks so much for your timely reply to my email which contained a link to a company circular from Doug McMillon, President and CEO, to associates about the new policy. Apparently somebody read my detailed response to your new policy on guns and ammunition. Again, thanks for taking the time to read it. However, rather than allay my concerns, they have been heightened.

McMIllon’s announcement to associates reads like a heated reaction to an issue-of-the-moment. Indeed, it goes further. It adopts wholesale the line of argument of partisan gun control activists such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, etc., etc. All in all, Walmart is gradually aligning itself with the center/left. McMillon is confirming John O’Sullivan’s famous aphorism: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

Let me count the ways. Surprisingly, I am not bothered so much by the company’s decision not to allow open carry in the stores. The problem lies with joining well-publicized nationwide gun-control crusades, emblematic in the demand that “the status quo is unacceptable”. It’s part of the usual rhetoric coming from the usual hive of gun-control groups and the Democratic Party. Parts of the memorandum could just as easily come out of Chuck Schumer’s office (D, NY).

I’d like to remind Walmart that the Second Amendment is part of the “status quo”. The Supreme Court defined the ownership of firearms to be an individual right, not a collective one. It’s presence in the Constitution is not for hunting or protection from MS-13. The Amendment is an avatar for citizen control of their government. A lesson in the English Civil War would work wonders in the corporate boardroom at Walmart.

So, what parts of the “status quo” is to be subjected to change? Well, it’s inanimate things like guns and ammo that are to be targeted (no pun intended) for punishment. The unstated premise is that the availability of these things constitutes a danger to the public. You tout the the company’s previous decision not to sell “military-style rifles”. The policy is nonsense as is the call to join a debate on resurrecting the Assault Weapon Ban. Calling for a debate are weasel words for establishing one (Ban). The debate on the Ban has been over for quite some time: the thing didn’t work, was allowed to lapse, and the Democrats refused to bring it back when they had the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.

Further, the “military-style” nomenclature is silliness on stilts. It’s all about a gun’s cosmetic qualities. These guns are no more dangerous than any semi-automatic gun. By the way, guns are by their nature “dangerous” … as are crossbows. If they weren’t, they’d be no good for hunting. The AR platform and its knock-offs are associated with the miscreants of mass shootings because they are broadly popular with the gun-buying consumer base in the general public. They are the most highly demanded product in a gun manufacturer’s inventory. Hopefully, you’re not suggesting that all these buyers are crazed lunatics. If semi-auto shotguns with more compact barrels were to be all the rage in the murderous-loser class, would a call for a ban on semi-auto shotguns be next? Strange legal principle: find out what’s popular with lunatics and prohibit it.

The ludicrous nature of the Ban can be seen in the bumbling attempts to codify the concept into law. Is it the pistol grip? Is it the semi-auto nature of the thing? Is it the magazine capacity of over 4 rounds? Is it because it looks like something in a John Wick movie? Going from state to state examining their bans is an exercise in chaos theory. Usually the laws are written by people with the least knowledge about firearms. Watching them at a press conference is a real hoot. The big problem with the ban stems from the quixotic desire to proscribe a product for its cosmetic qualities. That’s it!

Then Walmart stacks its current silliness with more silliness on the ammo front. No handgun and .223 ammo. What’s the logic behind that? Clearly, the company associates those cartridges with mayhem. Why else put them on the no-go list? What’s next, a ban on 12 gauge? Any cartridge’s survival on Walmart’s shelves hangs by the thread of a killer’s choices.

Astoundingly, McMillon applauds the likely decline in the company’s market share in ammo. Now that’s a first: a company defining success as a decline in market share. Sears and JCPenney should be popping champagne corks instead of wringing their hands. It seems like the national Walmart is taking its cues from California Walmart. California is a mess and hardly an example to be imitated. I fled the state as a third generation native Californian to Montana. The state is no place to raise kids. Are the Walmarts in Montana soon to be looking like the ones in that lefty loony bin?

As always in these kinds of circulars, there are some palatable suggestions. Shoring up FixNICS and competently-written red flag laws are things to consider. But the gun and ammo ideas are just warmed over goofiness in Democratic Party bullet points. None of the ideas have a scintilla of relevance to curbing these mass shootings. Ditto for the much-vaunted “universal background checks”. Try to enforce that idea when family heirlooms are passed down from parent to child. The dribble is trotted out each time for the sole purpose of hammering more traditional and conservative circles in our population.

I suspect a general leftward orientation in corporate boardrooms. Others have noticed it as well. Walmart has not been inoculated. I attribute the phenomena to an increasing isolation in corporate governance from the common people, particularly in flyover country. Socio-economically, the “suits” identify with each other and the urban values of their location. Much has been written about this. Now these collectivist values appear to be seeping into Walmart. O’Sullivan might be proven right once again.

For your information, I shifted my recent tire purchase from Walmart to Discount Tire. In fact, I used your cheaper price to get a price match from them. You are to be thanked for providing the price leverage. But to be honest, I would have agreed to a higher price to avoid doing business with a company who appears to be lurching left. I will be doing the same with our other consumer purchases. Don’t look for my car in your parking lot.

……………………………………

Once again, the online receptionist indicated that my response will go up the chain of command. I suspect the reply is boilerplate.

Roger Graf

September 14, 2019

A “Woke” Walmart, Part II

After learning of Walmart’s new gun policy after the murderous rampage in an El Paso Walmart, I spirited off a reply on Walmart’s website comment link. Here is my initial comment to the company’s new policy:

I am commenting on your recent policy regarding guns and ammunition. I hope somebody reads it.

Right at the start: I am no gun enthusiast but am a strong believer in the Second Amendment and its pure and historical purpose. Also, I have come to notice the left-leaning tendencies in corporate boardrooms across the country. More and more, corporate policies are reflecting the left-wing zeitgeist of our urban and academic centers. I could provide more detail about this orientation if a history and philosophy lesson is required. Still, the trend is increasingly becoming apparent at Walmart.

Certain ideologically-laden code words keep recurring in many corporate policies, including Walmart’s. These are partisan leitmotifs that are littered throughout in more than just bland pronouncements on the company website, but also in company actions. Take for instance “corporate responsibility”. In the past, I have come to associate the phrase with Walmart’s attentiveness to community needs such as assistance to homeless shelters and schools. Well, it’s gone way beyond that. “Sustainability” has glommed onto the phrase. “Sustainability” has morphed into much more than roadside trash pickups. The word is corrupted with lefty crusades such as the massively politicized “climate change”, the wars on fossil fuels and plastics, and the never-ending campaigns to force “equality” in all its intersectional and “marginalized” guises, in the name of “equity” – whatever that means.

The last one is a war on tradition. Established notions of public morality, institutions like marriage and family, and values such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and economic freedom are assaulted in the pursuit of making the “new man/woman”. Call it social engineering; something reminiscent of more sordid episodes of the 20th century.

I am sad to see that Walmart has succumbed to the zeitgeist. Now, it’s guns. The new policy about open carry and ammunition may have something to do with liability issues. Nonetheless, the corporate course on these matters is still troubling. A mob is afoot emanating from our megalopolises, the worst in academia, and the media that is tied to the two. It takes courage to stand athwart the mob. Yours appears to be waning.

I’m reminded of Simon Schama’s chronicle of the French Revolution, “Citizens”. The mob of Paris and its fire-breathing demagogues were the bane of civil governance for the country for centuries. Threats, intimidation, violence, and blackmail were all-too-common. The lid blew off in 1789 and France plunged into darkness and dictatorship for decades afterwards. At the time, some people made their peace with the Revolution. Have you made yours?

Don’t mistake fashionable trends of thought for wisdom. The Second Amendment is a symbol of citizen control of our polity. As such, I’m exercising my sovereignty in severing any personal commercial association with Walmart.

Roger Graf

September 14, 2019

A “Woke” Walmart

Currently, I’m in a spat with Walmart. No, my complaint isn’t about Walmart as an unabashed exploiter of the working poor, the complaint common among illiterate social justice warriors. Au contraire, I’m referring to Walmart’s gradual alignment with the cultural left. Surprise, surprise.

What drew back the curtain was the company’s new policy on guns and ammunition. An emotive reaction to a horrible incident like the one at the El Paso Walmart is understandable, but don’t mistake “understandable” with “reasonable”. For many reasons, much in Walmart’s new stance on guns is absurd. More about this later.

Walmart’s approach is encapsulated in this memo to employees shortly after the El Paso shooting. It can be found here: https://corporate.walmart.com/…/mcmillon-to-associates-our-….

John McMillon, President and CEO, of Walmart.

A Wikipedia search of the memo’s author, John McMillon, President and CEO, uncovered more. Guns and religion are two of the most salient issues in the culture war. And McMillon weighed into both. In 2015, McMillon proclaimed that a “religious freedom” bill before Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson “threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state of Arkansas and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold”. Cut through the gobbledygook and we see that Walmart has joined the LGBTQ crusade to punish religious dissenters for disagreeing with them. McMillon sounds like Pelosi. Religious freedom laws have become a necessity as government agencies and commissions under the sway of the powerful LGBTQ lobby have targeted private individuals for taking the Bible seriously. Talk to Jack Philips, or take a look at the Houston mayor’s attempt to subpoena pastors’ sermons, or governments’ efforts to force religious organizations to facilitate abortion.

Jack Philips of Masterpiece Cakeshop and the target of legal action by Colorado’s Human Rights Commission. Their actions against Philips were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But now we have the big cheese at Walmart declaring “inclusion” trumps (no pun intended) “religious freedom”.

A scan of the company’s website will find it littered with the eco-lobby’s hobby-horses. I suspect that the “suits” in charge at Walmart chafe at those viral pics of unsightly-dressed shoppers. They want to upscale the company’s image by showing that they too are like the swank Malibu types with fashionable views to go along with a fashionable look.

A page from the “Global Responsibility” link on walmart.com.

McMillon’s personal history, though, presents a conundrum. He’s a born-again Christian. He’s also a lifer Walmart employee. On the religious angle, he’s confused in trying to mesh his haute couture views with Jesus of Nazareth. As an employee, he’s been in management for at least 20 years, and much of that in corporate management. Somewhere along the line he has absorbed many of the values of a university’s Sociology faculty. It’s a familiar development in the backgrounds of many corporate execs.

Wealthy people in today’s world seem to be attracted to wokeness like a moth to light.

RogerG

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019

Solutions Made for … Political Careers

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (D, Ca.) in a CNN Town Hall, April 22, 2019. She pledged that, if elected president, she would take executive action to enact sweeping gun control measures.

America is awash in solutions in search of a problem. Climate change is happening to some extent. But is the problem such an obvious cataclysm to justify sovietizing our entire economy and way of life in the Green New Deal? Differences exist in aggregate, average wages between men and women. So, is massive federal, state, and local intrusions into every business’s labor practices down to the minutest detail reasonable? These examples highlight a light year’s worth of space between proposed solution and hypothetical problem, with emphasis on hypothetical.

Well, we’ve taken the nonsense to a whole new level in the recent barking over gun control. Would any of the proposed “solutions” prevent the mass shootings, mass stabbings, and a career criminal and drug dealer placing cops in his crosshairs in north Philadelphia? Solution and problem have gone beyond the distance to Alpha Centauri (4.37 light years). The two are in separate and parallel universes.

Going back to Sandy Hook, the killer lived in a home with guns, shot his mother to death, and then took a ride past a closer but protected high school to an unarmed elementary school. What background check, gun ban, magazine size limitation, or gun buy-back program would have stopped the guy? What about the murderous loons in El Paso and Dayton? Without a paper trail, there’s nothing to check. Really, do you think any sort of gun ban would have stopped them from getting armed to shoot revelers and Walmart shoppers? Ditto for the Las Vegas murderer.

In Orange County, the savage didn’t even need a gun. He was content with a knife.

The suspect in a stabbing and robbery spree in Garden Grove and Santa Ana, August 7, 2019.

And then we have the Philly shooter. The miscreant had already run afoul of half of the gun laws on the books in the city and state, in addition to huge swaths of the rest of the penal code. I suppose that a career of assaults, prison stays, and meth/crack/heroine dealings would have made him sensitive to a ban on a banana clip in his gun. Nooot!!! This is farce chasing buffoonery.

The surrender of the shooting suspect in north Philadelphia, August 14, 2019.

So they chant, “Ban assault weapons”. What is an “assault weapon”? Put that one into law. Go ahead. Ban “semi-automatic”. In so doing, you just criminalized a good portion of the American public – many of the guns not handled by Sylvester Stalone in one of his flicks are semi-automatic. Ban what the thing looks like, like make the pistol grip taboo. Really? Is that the best that you can do? That fact is, a workable definition is as slippery as a frog lathered in Crisco. What the Dems are really trying to do is ban anything that might look like something in a “John Wick” movie.

The whole herd in the Dem presidential field line up in support of the quackery. Just today I heard an interview of one of the “moderates” in the stable, Seth Moulton (D, Mass.). He tried to peddle his service in Afghanistan and Iraq to rationalize his efforts to steal my rights. Seth, I salute your service but I’m not in a mood to surrender my rights to your conscience. You give up your guns; leave mine alone. They’re legal and I’m clean.

Today’s political circus mangles solutions and problems, and any relationship between the two. It’s a burlesque show; it’s a mess. It’s the political equivalent of speaking in tongues and snake handling. The truth of the matter is that power-hungry politicos, already inclined to make us subservient to mommy and daddy government, want to build a political career on the corpse of our rights – legal, Constitutional, and natural. It’s all about manufactured solutions at the service of political careers. Now that’s the very definition of disgraceful.

RogerG

August 7, 2019

Biased Assumptions

Why are we experiencing mass shootings and a spike in suicides, up 30% since 1999? I can’t help but wonder that a deep dissatisfaction is running like an undertow in our times. Are we quickly approaching a dystopia rather than a utopia? If so, our modern life has undermined a key tenet of progressivism. No longer can it be said that life is getting better, also known as “progress”. In some ways, our times may be beginning to stink up the place.

Why the decline? Well, something called solipsism has taken the place of knowledge of our past and a grounding in our civilization. Solipsism is the philosophical core of radical individualism. All reality is interpreted through the individual. Subjectivism runs rampant, and any notion of moderation and objective standards takes a back seat. We are encouraged to have no historical and social understanding and are free to create our own “truth”, not unusual among the fringe who are intertwined in cloistered social media hubs. All-too-often, it is the alienated tutoring the alienated.

How did we get so atomized? How did solipsism take root? Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of our media and schools. Both spread the secular gospel. Radical individualism is hard to avoid in the movies and tv, but it’s reinforced by the schools. C.S. Lewis saw it happening in British schools in the 1950’s. He wrote about it in his book, The Abolition of Man. In a chapter entitled “Men Without Chests”, he reviewed a British textbook teaching literary interpretation:

“I do not mean, of course, that he [the student] will make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius [pseudonyms for the authors] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.”

The problem lies in the fact that the student will unknowingly possess assumptions that “will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.”

A continuous pounding of the bias will set the stage for a desperate loneliness as we become more unhinged from the roots of family, church, and our cultural inheritance. The social setting is lost, and young people find themselves disconnected in a miasma of their thoughts.

And thus we have Al Qaeda, Nikolas Cruz, the El Paso and Dayton shooters. Are we sowing the seeds of our own destruction?

The Dayton shooter in a bar on the evening of the killings.

RogerG

August 6, 2019

Killings and Diseased Discourse

“Beto” O’Rourke at the scene of the El Paso shooting.

The two murderous rampages over the weekend are more than evil deeds. They have become, like most everything else, fuel to feed the unrelenting push to, in a modification of Eric Voegelin’s immortal phrase, immanentize progressivism’s eschaton – to bring to life the left’s dream of the better world. It’s like all that happens in the world is forever on the event horizon, ready to fall into the left’s interstellar black hole. Evil deeds can’t just exist to be fought against; they must be recruited for a partisan political agenda. The events’ magnitude and sorrow, therefore, is cheapened by a horde of demagogues.

The airwaves are saturated with demagoguery. Fingers are pointing at Trump for super-charged rhetoric. Speaking of super-charged rhetoric, have you attended a Pelosi or Schumer presser, heard the bombast from AOC+3, seen “Beto” before a mike, or been verbally accosted by the rest of the herd running to seize the Democratic Party’s brass ring? If Trump is to blame for El Paso, then Bernie is to blame for the 2017 shooting of Republican congressmen; or the Sierra Club and Paul Ehrlich are responsible for the Unibomber. Anyone can play this game. And it is a game: something far removed from mature thinking.

The Unibomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski, after his arrest, 1996.

The 2017 shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders activist.

A favorite of the mob is, you guessed it, “gun control”. Large numbers – 300 million guns in private ownership for instance – are contorted to serve the desired end, which is to make gun ownership as difficult as it is in Maduro’s Venezuela. Their list of banalities includes “universal background checks”, bans on “military guns”, and various forms of gun confiscation. What any of this has to do with straightening out the crooked timber of humanity escapes me. What any of it has to do with addressing the causes of these incidents also escapes causal reasoning. They do, however, serve a political end while advancing certain political careers. In my book, it’s shameful.

The federal government’s powers could be expanded in the manner of Australia and New Zealand and initiate gun confiscation, but still completely miss the point. And the point is the mental isolation of some of today’s young men, typically in the 20-25 age cohort. Could our modern society be a breeding ground for alienated youth? Parental absenteeism in the pursuit of careerism and material wants, or as a consequence of marital breakup and casual amours, have disturbing developmental effects on children. In addition, the buffer of other civil institutions such as neighborhood associations and church aren’t what they used to be. These factors are the ignored elephants in the room as the media chases the demagogues and their rantings. The fact is, a very few of these young people – and some older adults – would be dangerous whether an AR-15, machete, or spoon is available.

Trump-hatred overwhelms all. Could we just stop the hokum and take an adult look at how we are raising the next generation? It could be that all we have to do is draw back the state in order to allow room for civil society to breathe. Yes, and that’s no doubt a tall order in today’s atmosphere of smothering hyperbole.

RogerG

April 18, 2019April 26, 2019

The Sledge-Hammer Method of Watch Repair

Gun bans and heavy regulation are well-intentioned, but as effective as repairing a watch with a sledge hammer. Another case in point: Kenya’s wildlife has experienced a catastrophic decline despite national gun bans and extensive regulation (see here). A minuscule ownership rate of 1.5 guns per 100 people hasn’t stopped the poisoning and poaching of some of Africa’s signature wild animals into near extinction, as mentioned in a “60 Minutes” story of 2009 and in National Geographic Magazine (Aug. 2018).

Poisoned young male lion in Kenya. (National Geographic Magazine)

Kenyan elephant killed by poison arrows.

People get guns, illicitly or otherwise. And if people can’t get their hands on one due to the expense or regulation, they turn to poison. It’s cheap and effective. The only problem is that the neurotoxins move down the food chain to scavengers like lions, leopards, elephants, birds, and people. At least a bullet is limited to the target.

A Kenyan vulture who died after eating poisoned carrion.

What’s the moral of the story? People who are motivated to kill won’t be dissuaded by a gun law. They’ll still kill, but mostly with other means that are cheaper and with broader ill-effects. So, we attempt to solve one problem by creating bigger ones.

People can be very dangerous without guns. Timothy McVeigh didn’t need an assault rifle to kill 168 and injure hundreds more in the Alfred P. Murrah Bldg. in Oklahoma City. Weaponizing fertilizer in a garage was all that was necessary. Tomorrow is the sad anniversary.

Alfred P. Murrah Bldg., Oklahoma City, after McVeigh’s bomb.

9/11 proved that box cutters and hijacked airliners can be homicidally effective.

Stripping the population of guns won’t settle your problems. It won’t even come close. One solution to assist our overburdened police officers would be to deputize the law-abiding with open-carry and accessible ccw laws. Just a thought.

If it’s the safety of your kids in school that worries you, harden them. Sadly, we live in a time when our society is getting ragged. Civil society’s little platoons of civilization are in decline. Many of those very same kids, if they survive the abortion gauntlet, are born into an increasing array of chaotic home environments. Now that doesn’t bode well, with or without more gun laws.

RogerG

March 18, 2019March 22, 2019

The Fabrication of Narrow Perspectives

Christian persecution: Mourners carry coffins following an attack earlier this year (Image: GETTY)

The recent terror-horror in New Zealand reminds me of the blinkered outlooks that infects our urban centers. Our cities, with very few exceptions, are essentially one-party (Dem) states enthralled by a left-wing zeitgeist. Anything that can feed into the preferred phobia-angles of modern leftism will be disseminated by our urban-centered media. Other news is ignored. The result is a distortion of the mind.

The New Zealand episode fits the story line since Islamophobia has entered the approved list of the causes for chic resistance. Clearly, the Christchurch act is detestable but rare is the word about actions against Christianity in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Scarcely a word passes the lips at CNN/MSNBC/3-network-sisters and the scribblers at the WaPo/NYT/wire services. Recent stories of massacres of Nigerian Christians by Boko Haram and Fulani Islamists gets little ink. The decimation of Christians in the Middle East is a saga with daily incidents of genocide. Christians are entering the same list with the passenger pigeon in large parts of the world. Again, that kind of inhumanity goes down the memory hole.

(Read here from the New York Post of April 14, 2017.)

But when a nut case blasts his way into a mosque, it’s a media circus. I wish that our news-and-info organizations went back to being about news and information, and not furthering the ends of a narrow zeitgeist.

RogerG

April 29, 2018May 1, 2018

Our Failing Schools and the Second Amendment

The wake of the Parkland school shooting brought to mind a little-known incident from my teaching days (retired in 2015). As the Social Science Department chair in my high school, and with the responsibility for making requests for new and updated textbooks, I noticed a subtle change in one commonly available supplemental and historical document: the English Bill of Rights. An older version of the piece included the following clause: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence [sic] suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law”. The newer form of the document had it removed. Why? I was suspicious then and still am.

I have always understood the opposition to the Second Amendment to be part ideological and part cultural – maybe mostly cultural. I suspected that a bias due to the ascendancy of the values and beliefs of a narrow subset of our population was at work, for the most part.

An eatery in NYC’s Greenwich Village neighborhood.

Putting the best face on the item’s exclusion, the abridging of the document caused the publishers (Holt McDougal) to weed out those things considered less important. Still, though, that’s just a roundabout way to knowingly or unknowingly display the same prejudice.

Children will go through life not understanding the full connection of the English experience and our Constitutional legacy, particularly the parts that are embarrassing to our self-anointed cultural potentates. The result is profound ignorance about our most cherished natural rights, and the susceptibility to end up like David Hogg (made famous by the Parkland shooting) and other young and eager enthusiasts for gun control.

David Hogg at the March for Our Lives this past March 2018.

Let’s set the record the straight: (1) the “militia” was all able-bodied men with the expectation that they be privately armed, and correspondingly not an organ of the government but part of civil society; (2) the English Civil War was as much a religious as political affair; (3) Charles I, in an attempt to squash religious and political dissent, called out the militia with their best private weapons and then quickly disarmed them; (4) privately-owned weapons were long held to be an inherent right of Englishmen for defense from threats to personal safety and tyranny; and (5) a great majority of the people who originally settled here carried this legacy with them to the new world. The right to bear arms is clearly an individual right – indeed, a “natural right” – as based on the words’ clear meaning to the amendment’s authors and the history leading up to its inclusion in our Constitution.

Modern reenactor of a 17th century English militiaman.

It’s a lesson increasingly lost on successive generations brought up on the progressives’ love-state fetish. The deficiency is built into the curriculum and nearly everything the teachers were taught. Ignorance begets ignorance … and poorly informed 17-year-old agitators.

RogerG

** Thanks to The Avalon Project of Yale Law School for preserving our cultural inheritance: “English Bill of Rights 1689”,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp .