TERRORISM IN AMERICA

THE REAL TERRORISTS
Tyranny Already in America

This is an observation I’ve heard from a number of people, both from friends and perfect strangers. We keep hearing the incessant drumbeat from the present Administration talking heads that we have to “…go after the terrorists,” and “…hunt down and kill the terrorists where we find them,” etc. ad nauseam. Notice the phrases “go after” and hunt down,” and others of similar construction, all indicate that the terrorists are OUT THERE somewhere. Where? It doesn’t matter, they are not in America, but they want to be, they want to kill us. So we have to go after them, we are told.

Those great disciples of truth, names like Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz, tell us the terrorists are in Iraq, and maybe a smattering in Afghanistan, and more and more, lately, in Indonesia. Regardless of the geography, “they” are out there waiting to hurt us. So we need to be afraid, they tell us. Their admirers in the news media dutifully repeat this over and over and over.

I submit that we have terrorism in America already. I submit we have many more terrorists already here than there are threatening us in the al Qaeda community! That’s a valid position because at over 30,000 deaths by gunfire in America every year, (and growing!) it makes the death by Alqaeda numbers pale into insignificance. It seems like EVERY SINGLE WEEK there is another multiple shooting of persons at a University or School. Or a courtroom. Or a Post Office. My God, what is going on here? We have the deadly conjunction of mental instability/cruelty/uncontrollable anger coupled with an endless supply of handguns in America. Endless is used here not as a dramatic adjective – it is on the level. A piece recently in USA Today stated, with no apparent outrage, that there are currently in America two handguns for every living soul in the country. Does this make any sense at all to decent people?

This leading cause of death by a single source – gunfire - should alarm all of us. In fact, it should scare hell out of us. Your sister, your Mother, your precious child of 4 – any of them could be part of the grim statistics that accompany this carnage, any time of day or night. And anywhere. And all of this pain doesn’t even start to address the more than 100,000 every year who are shot and then suffer for years, without dying !!!

I have no comment on the founders’ meaning when they carefully drafted the second amendment to the Constitution. Nor do I have any appraisal or focus on its present-day application. Whether the right of keeping guns is for individual persons or military groups is debatable, and indeed has been the subject of billions of words of debate. I’m not the least bit interested in joining that debate. What I AM concerned about is the increasing number of guns in America. And, actually, of more concern is the increasing number of gun deaths in America. Something this enormous can’t continue to be ignored by the body politic, or the American people as a whole. Why is there no concentration of outrage at this subject? A blogger, like me, that’s one person. God, it occurs to me there should a torrent of outrage over this, and demands for a change. Am I missing something? I know a lot of people, and they are good, honest, decent human beings. I can’t believe they are so blasé over this subject matter. (But they are, alas.)

In other countries, like Sweden, for example, there are 12 deaths by gun per year. But in America, for the year 2003, there were 30,136 deaths by gunfire. Arguably, 99% or more were by handguns. (You don’t see very many murders by rifle fire.) That breaks down to 41.85 dead people by gunfire every HOUR in the United States.

AMERICANS ARE KILLING ALMOST 42 PEOPLE BY HANDGUNS EVERY HOUR?

A revealing note about Americans on this subject is that, in America there exists presently TWO GUNS FOR EVERY PERSON in the nation. (Can’t you just visualize an infant with two handguns!) Or, better, an 89-year-old Grandmother and Grandfather with their canes, and 4 handguns!

Somehow, some way, during its 200+ years of existence, the United States has become a gun society. I don’t believe there is evidence of a study on this subject as to why, and I rather doubt a study could reveal all the reasons behind it. Could some of it be because in 1814 those in position to do so chose a poem set to the music of an English Air as our national ID song? The words of the song dwelled on lethal cannon fire over Ft McHenry – “Rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air?”

Or is it all traceable to the Second Amendment? I doubt it. Celebrating your right to own a gun - if that’s what the 2nd gives you - doesn’t translate into shooting a dozen people in a Post Office.

No – it has to be the curious combination, doesn’t it? The deadly combination. The lethal combination of a lot of stressed out, worn out, hurt, mentally aberrated, defeated people who have a ready supply of handguns, no questions asked. It hasn’t been very many years since CBS made a test. They coached a staff member in acting, and then had him go into a Gun Store that was situated, believe it or not, three blocks from a mental institution. The buyer asked to see some handguns, and casually mentioned that he had just been released from the mental institution. No problem. The gun store owner gladly sold a handgun to a person who admitted he had just been released from a mental institution.

SO – what in the world can we try to do to arrest this outrage, and change America for the better? We can’t do anything about the gun makers. In this fiercely capitalist society they have every right to pursue a profit, regardless of who is killed. We can’t convince the gun sellers – they have the same right. The gun buyers are likewise a waste of time, for obvious reasons. There are no laws that could help us. Lawmakers are known to be helpless before their greed. So …..

It appears we have enough TERRORISTS in America already - that we should be paying more attention to than those “out there” we are told about.

What does that leave us? I admit I don’t know. Can anyone help? Can anyone offer any solution at all, to the ongoing societal habit, if you can call it that, of killing almost 42 human beings in America every hour with a handgun?

ONE THING is certain. Is unarguable. The boys at Columbine could only have attacked one person with a knife. Once that attack started, the others would have scattered. He might have even stabbed TWO to death, but the odds are huge that’s all he’d do. Or at the recent Virginia Tech University, or Northern Illinois University, the sick perpetrator of either event could only have stabbed one, maybe two persons to death.

Use that same reasoning on all the multiple gun deaths, and the number of actual fatalities comes way down. You’d never see a drive-by stabbing. Carjacking with a knife would be near impossible to do, as would holding large groups of people hostage, or a bank robbery.

Lacking a solution to this outrage, which we didn’t expect to accomplish anyway, at the very least we’ve hit on a method of greatly reducing the numbers. Any comments?

Faithfully, in the interest of the American people.
Bob