In the wake of the Tucson shootings, President Obama implores us to do as our parents taught
President Obama’s speech in Tucson a week ago was welcome salve to a nation torn up by the bullets fired in that supermarket parking lot and the ensuing food fights that commenced in the media before the ambulance jellybeans had even stopped spinning.
By his appearance in Arizona, the president acknowledged that this was not a local event but a national tragedy. Our own mayor, Stephanie Miner, who had befriended Gabrielle Giffords long before Giffords was a congresswoman and Miner a mayor, feels the pain of her friend’s wounds. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a frequent visitor to Syracuse, was in the room when Giffords opened her eyes for the first time after the shooting. This assassination attempt strikes at our hearts because, unlike the shootings of King and the Kennedys, the gunman took the life of a child. Anyone who has ever watched a 9-year-old smile cannot help but take it personally.
So in every president’s role as comforterin-chief, Obama rose to the occasion and called on us to honor the deceased and the survivors by treating one another better. That such a simple request is necessary and newsworthy tells us all we need to know about how loud and nasty things have gotten.
“At a time when our discourse,” said President Obama, “has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do—it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
We shouldn’t mistake the call to change the tone and lower the volume with a suggestion that we shy away from substance. There are many genuinely divisive issues that need to be addressed, issues that were here before the Tucson assault.
One such issue is the dramatic divide in America with regard to the possession of weapons like the one used to wound Gaby Giffords and kill the six others the president honored so eloquently. Listen to what another president had to say on gun violence in the wake of another national tragedy perpetrated by a deranged loner with a gun.
“What in the name of conscience will it take,” said Lyndon Johnson in an address to the nation just after Sen. Robert Kennedy was shot, “to pass effective gun control legislation?” That was in 1968, 12 years before the Glock semiautomatic pistol was invented. Those words were not spoken by a liberal northeastern urbanite politician, but by the man who had represented Texas in the U.S. Senate.
People can differ over the effectiveness of various forms of gun control while we examine and discard some of the pretexts used by defenders of unbridled gun possession rights. One of their arguments is that guns make us safer because we can use them in self-defense.
Ask a cop whether having a semiautomatic in your pocket or in your home makes you safer, and they will laugh at you. I once asked our police chief flat out if he could tell me of a case in which someone with a gun defended himself successfully in our town, and he could not name one time. But we can name any number of times when semiautomatic handguns have been used to kill and maim.
The Glock, in its various permutations, and the other brands of semiautomatic pistols, are the preferred service revolvers for many police departments. New York City’s finest uses them. The New Jersey state troopers use them. The biggest single consumer of the Glock 19, it turns out, is the Iraqi Security Forces, those we have trained and armed to keep the peace in that turbulent country.
Cops like them because they like to have the advantage over the bad guys. If Glocks are so easily imported and distributed, and find their way on to the street, they raise the stakes when criminals turn to crime. You don’t have to challenge a hunter’s right to bear arms to agree that these nasty weapons, like the cars we drive, need to be regulated.
In our city, after we watched a slow-motion bloodbath of our own this fall, the response was to do everything from billboards to buybacks to get those guns off the street. As an example to the nation, it can’t hurt.
Read Ed Griffin-Nolan’s award-winning commentary every week in The New Times. Contact him at edgriffin@twcny.rr.com.
It's funny how Mr. Griffin-Nolan's anti-gun passion seems to alter both his and Chief Fowler's memory. The police chief couldn't remember one instance of someone defending themselves successfully with a gun? Wrong. There have been many and one in particular from Syracuse that made international news through the Associated Press and was also reported in the Syracuse New Times and other local media. The Covert's on Midland Ave. Legally blind and confined to a wheelchair, this elderly homeowner put a .22 slug into the criminal breaking into his home.The man in Arizona was unbalanced. And if abusing a legally purchased item is reason to suspend or eliminate that right for others, then we should confiscate millions of computers of various writers and bloggers. Mr. Griffin-Nolan, don't tread on our 2nd Amendment rights as you engage in your 1st Amendment ones. And do a little homework next time.
It is January - time for another vacuous anti-2nd amendment (i.e. - anti-liberty) rant by Mr. Ed Griffin-Nolan.
Apparently Mr. Ed and Chief Fowler don't read the papers much; nor do they ever read real research relating to their supposed topic of interest.
On January 14th 2009 Mr. Ed wrote a piece called "Bite the Bullet" which was a rambling screed to start a new "culture war" against gun ownership since, according to him, guns are bad. http://www.syracusenewtimes.com/newyork/article-2746-bite-the-bullet.html
He, and Chief Fowler, must have missed the incident that same week, reported in the Post-Standard on January 13th 2009, where an armed man protected himself from being mugged by three assailants, at a Burger King parking lot in the city. Matt House is a Probation Officer who happened to be armed. An average citizen who is denied his 2nd amendment by the State of New York, or even Ed Grifin-Nolan himself who apparently chooses to not defend himself, would have been robbed and possibly beaten. here is the article:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/syracuse_ny_three_thugs.html
Note that both in the case I cite here, and in the case referenced by Michael Okoniews, the intended victim was weaker or outnumbered by the attackers. That is why a gun is called an "equalizer" and why it is a boon to the weak and defenseless against stronger predators.
Ed Griffin-Nolan's inability to perform basic research, or to assemble logical cause-effect relationships in his brain, makes his writings be nothing more than ill-informed rants, rather that a contribution to civic dialog.
Finally, I would suggest that Mr. Griffin-Nolan read the solid research by people such as Dr. John Lott or Gary Kleck. They have analysed over 4 decades of national and state crime statitistics and have shown conclusively that guns in the hands of citizens prevent as many as 2.5 million personal injury or property crimes each year. Statistics always beat anecdote - which is why Dr. Lotts research carries weight, while a passing (and incorrect) comment by a police chief doesn't. I don't really expect Ed to understand that point.
Without any factual credibility Mr. Ed's articles are nothing more than irritating puff pieces. If the New Times were wise they would show Ed the door.
Just a final follow up -
Here is a great article by Ann Coulter (see link) which lists several diffrent shootings and the effects of armed citizens in ending the shootings and saving lives.
Ed Griffin-Nolan is unable to present any such facts from his side of 'opinion'.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41571