U.S.Crusade | RaceandHistory | RastaTimes | HowComYouCom | News Links | Trini Soca | Africa Speaks
Trinicenter.com Trinicenter.com Trinidad and Tobago News
Online Forums
Create an AccountHome | Account | World News  

International Watch
  • Home
  • AvantGo
  • Feedback
  • Search
  • Stories Archive
  • Submit News

  • Categories
  • Africa Focus
  • Arab Spring
  • Audio & Video
  • Book Review
  • Caribbean
  • Inside U.S.A.
  • Invasion of Iraq
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Latin America
  • Medical
  • Pakistan
  • Pandora's Box
  • Racism Watch
  • Satire
  • US War on Iran
  • US War on N Korea
  • War and Terror
  • War on Russia
  • War on Syria
  • World Focus
  • Zimbabwe

  • Old Articles
    Friday, February 08
    ·
    Wednesday, February 06
    ·
    Tuesday, February 05
    · Savage Capitalism or Socialism: A Conversation with Luis Britto Garcia
    Sunday, February 03
    · Canada vs. Venezuela: The Background Gets Even Murkier
    Thursday, January 31
    ·
    Monday, January 28
    · The History - and Hypocrisy - of US Meddling in Venezuela
    · Canada Is Complicit in Venezuela's US-Backed Coup D'état
    Wednesday, September 26
    · Why Israel Demolishes: Khan Al-Ahmar as Representation of Greater Genocide
    Friday, September 21
    · US Disregard for International Law Is a Menace to Latin America
    Saturday, August 25
    · How Long is the Shelf-Life of Damnable Racist Capitalist Lies?
    Thursday, August 09
    · Martial Law By Other Means: Corporate Strangulation of Dissent
    Wednesday, August 08
    · North Korea and The Washington Trap
    · Venezuela Assassination Attempt: Maduro Survives but Journalism Doesn't
    Sunday, May 20
    · The British Royal Wedding, Feelgoodism and the Colonial Jumbie
    Friday, May 04
    ·
    Monday, April 09
    · The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News for the Planet
    Tuesday, March 20
    · Finally, Some Good News
    Thursday, March 15
    · Zimbabwe Open for Business, Code for International Finance Capitalism
    Friday, January 12
    · Shadow Armies: The Unseen, But Real US War In Africa
    Wednesday, December 13
    · The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

    Older Articles

    Features

    Sudan''s Crisis

    Zimbabwe: Land Reform and Mugabe

    U.S Coup in Haiti

    Venezuela and Chavez


      
    Inside U.S.A.: Gun Rights: From the Black Panthers to the NRA
    Posted on Tuesday, July 31 @ 11:27:21 UTC
    Topic: USA
    USAState Violence, Individual Violence

    By Patrick Higgins
    July 30, 2012 - counterpunch.org


    Just as misplaced debates about civilian gun control were emerging in the wake of the massacre in Aurora, a billboard was raised in Idaho by a libertarian organization placing the face of the Aurora shooting suspect beside that of President Obama. The text surrounding James Holmes’s reads: “KILLS 12 IN A MOVIE THEATER WITH AN ASSAULT RIFLE. EVERYONE FREAKS OUT.” The text surrounding Obama’s reads: “KILLS THOUSANDS WITH HIS FOREIGN POLICY. WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.”

    The reaction of the Village Voice—“extremely offensive,” one headline states—to the billboard is exemplary of the chronic softness of liberalism on issues of war. In the media overall, this softness has led to the current emphasis on civilian gun control, which is an emphasis that is now actively removing the spotlight from the violence of the state while increasing fear of the general public. Surely the Village Voice that hosted the late, great Alexander Cockburn would never have so unforgivably favored etiquette over truth.

    Roger Ebert’s New York Times op-ed piece promoting civilian gun control pulls the same trick, expressing nothing short of absolute horror at the idea of firearms “in public hands.” A few lines down from there, Ebert strikes an especially gross note by telling a gun owner it would be better for him to move than to own a gun—as if the transition to safer neighborhoods were an option to which everybody has easy access.

    The comparison to Obama is important to make. If Americans want to ask about violence in their society every time a shooting like the one in Aurora occurs, they must be prepared to take a principled stand regarding violence. And that means actual violence, not violence as it is staged in films. It is useful to consider individual violence in relation to state violence (whether perpetrated by drones in Pakistan or police officers in Anaheim). That is, if one overlooks, or is indifferent towards, or drafts apologia for the latter—the worse offender by leagues and leaps—one might not be in the best position to lament or even meaningfully analyze the latter.

    It is clear that Americans are anti-war. It is not at this stage clear that that stance has anything to do with the violence war wreaks upon foreign civilian populations. Nor is it clear that Americans are at this stage prepared to form a mass movement against war. Billboards such as the one in Idaho certainly make for a start in the kind of awareness-spreading necessary for a mass movement.

    Admittedly, the discussion of civilian gun control is difficult to have, because prominent articles like Ebert’s don’t mention specifics. All we get are loose clichés about how our gun laws are insane. But it’s still safe to say that focusing on this issue misses the point. Mother Jones magazine is now predictably obsessing over civilian gun laws, but it did publish a good article in the aftermath of the weak sentencing of Oscar Grant’s policeman killer, titled “Mehserle’s Sentence in Perspective.” The article specifically posited the harshness of civilian gun control laws as absurd in contrast to the sentence that was handed to Johannes Mehserle, the man in blue who put a bullet in a handcuffed man’s back.

    It is true that the argument made by the NRA about guns being a safeguard against tyranny is mostly rhetorical—but that’s only because that U.S. government has so many weapons, and has expressed such a profound willingness to employ them, that the general public would never fare anything close to favorably in a showdown. Somehow, this reality fails to make me feel more comfortable about the idea of civilian gun control.

    I’ve met many liberals who like to parade their virtue by spending countless minutes condemning (in the same fashion that Hillary Clinton, professional condemner of Syria and Iran, condemns), say, the Ron Paul Newsletters from the 1990?s. Then they will, at a later date, advocate something like gun control, never worrying that the entity to be tasked with the controlling–with kicking off a “War on Guns,” so to speak–is essentially the very entity tasked with the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

    Of course, these kinds of wars tend to go over better for some groups than others. The gun control movement in North America preceded the founding of the United States; its express purpose was to keep guns out of the hands of blacks potentially interested in using firearms to defend themselves. When the movement did develop in the U.S., it followed in exactly that tradition, especially when slaves like Nat Turner decided that slavery just wasn’t going to do anymore and proceeded to lay bloody waste to slave masters. [I]

    The modern day gun rights movement was not pioneered by the NRA—although I admit it wouldn’t matter to me if it had been—but by the Black Panthers, whose co-founder, Huey Newton, found genuine protective value in the Second Amendment at a street-level moment when some cops would likely not have otherwise hesitated to beat him to death. [II]

    The formula for gun control seems pretty obvious to me. Less guns for the people who are most likely to need them, more guns for cops and soldiers and those sympathetic to them. This doesn’t help.

    Notes

    [I] Clayton E. Cramer. “The Racist Roots of Gun Control.” (1995)

    [II] Adam Winkler. “The Secret History of Guns.” (2011)

    Patrick Higgins is a writer and activist. His e-mail is higginspat@hotmail.com.

    Reproduced by consent of the author from:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/30/gun-rights-from-the-black-panthers-to-the-nra/



     
    Related Links
    · More about USA
    · News by admin


    Most read story about USA:
    Racism still exists in the United States?


    Article Rating
    Average Score: 0
    Votes: 0

    Please take a second and vote for this article:

    Excellent
    Very Good
    Good
    Regular
    Bad


    Options

     Printer Friendly Printer Friendly



    Homepage | Trinidad News | Africa Speaks | U.S.Crusade | Fair Use Notice


    Copyright © 2002-2014 Trinicenter.com
    Trinicenter.com is a 100% non-profit Website
    You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php or ultramode.txt
    All logos, trademarks, articles and comments are property of their respective owners.
    PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2004 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL.
    PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.
    Page Generation: 0.19 Seconds