JANUARY 26, 2015
• Guns and Behavioral Weaponry
Movies inspire me: Especially adventure/action/thriller/spy films, which motivate self-education necessary to discern fact from fiction (not surprisingly since my life is one of writing, rewriting and editing). It then follows that I like action movie stars: Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Harrison Ford, Pierce Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Tom Cruise and Liam Neeson (among others).
When the Duke (that’s John Wayne, for the younger readers out there) or Norris is on screen, I see a character morally similar to the actor. But I often must distinguish my admiration for a movie character from the actor: For when I see Seagal or Cruise on screen, the fiction offers only certain aspects of the actor’s moral reality. Just beyond this are the actors who are a moral dichotomy to their screen presence. For example, Liam Neeson appeared in front of a movie poster depicting gun usage integral to his movie, Taken 3. His didactic message (from which I have removed the expletives) contrasted the matter of guns in France versus America. He said, “There’s too many…guns out there. Especially in America. I think the population is like, 320 million? There’s over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a…disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’”
It is true enough that Neeson is only portraying a character in his movie. He has rightly pointed out that such a thing is, “a fantasy,” and that viewers aren’t necessarily going to, “go out and go, ‘Yeah, let’s get a gun!’”
But that obfuscates the issue. Neeson is associating a moral dilemma (the behaviors that lead to murder) with the ownership of inanimate objects (guns). This association is no more valid than saying that kids have been killed because, “there are too many knives out there.”
What I am writing about might be called, behavioral weaponry. It is the behaviors (terrorism, greed, guilt, envy, mental illness, etc.) that lead to murder and they are no more circumnavigated by the absence of guns than they would be by the absence of knives. In other words, if we could wave a magic wand and eliminate the existence of guns, murder would become the result of perpetrators wielding knives, or ropes, or rocks, or anything else—even bare hands—on which a murderer or terrorist can, and in some cases already do, rely.
Yes there are gun-related accidents, just as there are knife-related accidents. Or vehicle-related accidents. That’s the nature of accidents. They aren’t intended—they’re, well, accidents.
In the real world, where magic wands are not waved, heavy gun regulation—or even banned guns—does not stop murder or terrorism. Check out the high rate of gun-related murder in Chicago: It is one of the most stringently gun-regulated places in the United States. And as we’ve seen in France, the absence of guns is no protection for the unarmed. Do an Internet search on the stoning of people in the Middle East—there’s no guns involved with that.
When our framers set forth the foundations of a government with limited and enumerated powers, they knew that such freedom was possible only when citizens were made equal to the task of insuring it. And that meant voting citizens, citizens able to amend the Constitution through their State Legislatures (see below at, REMINDER) and then, finally, citizens with guns.
It is not the weapon or the number of weapons about which to ever be concerned. It is the behavioral weaponry—the behavior and nature of the person (or the government) that determines life and death. You cannot regulate the behavior: Experience illustrates you may not even know of murderous or terroristic behavior in the case of a person. And you have irrefutable cause to anticipate it in the case of government.
But you can be prepared—by being armed to face it.
REMINDER: Regardless of your political affiliation, you are likely of the opinion that government is beyond your control. And true enough, the record of our political history shows the erosion of the sovereign’s freedoms through the consolidation of power in a strong, ever-expanding central government.
Owing to encroachments on the Constitution of the States that are united as America, we the people are becoming culturally balkanized and politically impotent as individuals—and as groups represented by state governments. Our leaders lie and demonstrate inexcusably stunning bêtise (e.g. “we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it”).
Voting has failed the majority while government financially enslaves the minority by weakening the whole of society through the promotion of envy and levying unjust taxation across the strata of income earners. Our collapse is being secured by judges wresting tyranny from the very jaws of freedom through their oligarchical legal arguments that form a foundation of secular absolutism for a Democracy (as opposed to a Republic).
But there is one hope: One way out. It is provided to us in the Constitution and is implemented entirely by the State Legislatures regardless of what the Federal Government itself my want.
That’s right: The Constitution empowers the States to completely set aright our ailing federal government. And in order to do this, here is all you have to do: Educate yourself and your fellow citizens much in the way you would complain or argue anything else.
That’s it. That is the plan. That is the support the process needs and that in turn will prompt people to solicit their state legislators to get involved.
If you don’t know where to start, here is where I started: My blog postings about that very effort. You can start at the same place, if you like. Just share the information and rally your fellow citizens to this cause of our own preservation…
Http://www.DLTolleson.com/Commentary/PowerOfStates04.php
Includes an update about December meeting of 75 State Legislators from 28 states.
Http://www.DLTolleson.com/Commentary/PowerOfStates03.php
Includes transcription of report regarding a meeting of 97 State Legislators from 32 states.
Http://www.DLTolleson.com/Commentary/PowerOfStates02.php
Links to an interview with former Reagan administration insider (and constitutional lawyer) about his book on the topic.
Http://www.DLTolleson.com/Commentary/PowerOfStates01.php
My first posting of the concept.
