Dan Simpson‘s editorial is an unfortunately typical expression of the excessive and exaggeratedly phobic attitudes of members of our over-domesticated, metrosexual intelligentsia toward firearms.
Guns are regarded as detestable and intrinsically dangerous objects which need to be kept under official control at all times, ideally in bank vaults. Their complete removal from American society is so unquestionably desirable that even house-to-house searches, and the shredding of the Bill of Rights, would be a perfectly acceptable price.
Obviously, this kind of policy proposal represents not a practical response to a real problem, but rather an irrational and emotional outburst, indifferent to benefits and costs, oblivious to process and law, expressive of an overwhelming combination of fear and aversion so profound as to dispense completely with practicality, proportionality, and cause and effect.
This kind of hostility toward firearms, this hoplophobia, needs to be recognized as the kind of irrationalism that it is.
In a sane society, familiarity and skill with arms, possession of the ability to defend oneself and others would be looked upon as essential components of every man’s education.
In dojos offering training in kendo and aikido, the following phrase written in the grass script on a scroll is commonly hung for purposes of admonition and inspiration.
These Japanese radicals are pronounced Katsujin-ken Satsujin-to (sometimes, Katsujinken satsujinken) meaning “The sword which kills is the sword which gives life.”
They are often rendered more explicitly in English as “The sword which cuts down evil is the sword which preserves life.”
This adage is attributed to the masters of YagyÅ« school, the Tokugawa shoguns’ personal instructors in swordsmanship.
And those Yagyū school sword sensei-s were right. The rightful use of weapons is essential in an imperfect world to defend innocent lives against unjust violence.
A wider commitment to skill at arms and a more common readiness to defend the innocent would be infinitely more effective at saving the lives of victims of attacks by madmen and criminals than a totalitarian program attempting to enforce universal disarmament.
Katsu-tempo satsu-tempo.
At Virginia Tech, a gun in the hands of the right bystander could have been the gun which destroyed evil and the gun which preserved life.
David Lipke
That was my thoughts exactly,”Oh my god,if only somebody could have stopped
him after the first shot was fired!”
But once again we rely on this failing system to protect us!
What do “Law Enforcement” do when they get on the scene?Immediate action?
“NO”,they set up a perimeter and wait.
We need to be able to protect ourselves
in todays society!!
rabbit
it’s not tempo it’s teppo.
abayo
Your singularity of ignorance and arrogance
More “right-think” (see, I can use it too) stemming from the latent Team America: World Police thought school of ever-present and completely overbearing guardianship within the typical American conservative.
lolgic
“At Virginia Tech, a gun in the hands of the right bystander could have been the gun which destroyed evil and the gun which preserved life.”
Of course, if he had been prevented from getting a gun, easily, over the internet, in the first place, nobody would have had to die, and then life would have been preserved -even more effectively.-
But nah, let’s just give everyone a gun and see what happens when the paranoia expressed by outlets like this site takes over and everyone thinks they’re acting out of self-defense. I’m sure it will work out well.
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