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But I will try.
War is wrong. It is wrong to slaughter millions of innocent people because they can't control their government, or because our rich people want their resources. And what does war do to the society that wages it? It establishes an attitude of "might makes right," and an attitude by which citizens become cannon fodder for powerful leaders. Further, the society is inflicted with the permanent curse of war profiteers and eventual poverty. No economy can be permanently run on a war footing. If it is, war profiteers will MANUFACTURE wars to keep the boodle coming. Militarism, rather than creative manufacture and trade, will become the chief means of putting food on the table, and, when that happens, the society is near death.
Capital punishment is wrong. We are not God. We can NEVER know for sure about guilt. Period. And what does the threat of hanging, lethal injection or electrocution do to the attitude of the police, prison and justice system personnel toward accused persons and the citizenry in general? I have personally witnessed a police officer threatening a young offender with prison rape. Would prison rape, and the threat of prison rape, be acceptable if the police did not wield the death power of the state over its citizens? Capital punishment, like war, gravely affects our attitude toward all human life. It cheapens human life, and brutalizes society--from prisons to universities, from private homes to public courtrooms and legislatures. It creates abusive attitudes.
Torture is wrong. Whether the torture of prison rape and other brutality, crowded prisons, disgusting, non-nourishing food, and the constant threat of beatings, isolation, and death, or deliberate infliction of pain, threat of death, and death, for the purpose of extracting information, for punishment, or for sadistic pleasure of the torturers. Societies that tolerate torture for any reason are close to being irredeemably nazified, and are characterized by extreme callousness toward the pain, suffering, deprivation and deaths of others, violence toward women or anyone perceived to be "weak," that is, incapable of torturing and killing others, contempt for the intellect and for creative endeavors, and extremely irrational justifications for violence (for instance, that Jews pollute the superior Nordic race). A society that tolerates torture is only a few steps away from mass concentrations camps for "undesirables."
Guns and all the machinery of easy, instant death, is wrong. Nuclear weapons--which threaten the extinction of all life on earth, and the end of the human race forevermore--are merely an extension of guns. They are the ultimate gun. 'We don't like you'?--'We nuke you.' 'You present any threat to us, real or imagined, by your hostility or by denying us the resources our rich people need to make them richer, we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.' Guns, bombs, nukes MAGNIFY human aggression and greed to the point that leaders and societies that foster their use SERIOUSLY CONTEMPLATE KILLING EVERYTHING ON EARTH, to satisfy their lust for power or money. Put guns in the hands of African tribesmen, and they change, from a society in which murder and tribal warfare occasionally occurs, into genocidal maniacs. Put nukes in the hands of Dick Cheney and George Bush and they plan to nuke a Middle Eastern country, no matter the consequences to its innocent people, neighboring countries, or the earth itself! Greed and power unbounded! The weapons themselves unhinge human beings with the power of easy, instant death. That sane men and women can possess and use guns only for defense speaks to the immense restraints against murder and ethical and empathetic self-control that characterize the modern human psyche. But that such men and women would promote gun possession, and government possession of guns, bombs and nukes, at the risk of social chaos, as to guns, and mass murder and the end of all life on earth, as to bombs and nukes--that they would risk these things, at the hands of 10% of the human race that lacks those restraints--strikes me as mind-bogglingly suicidal, selfish, egocentric and myopic. Can't you gun lovers SEE what is going on, with the prevalence of weapons of instant, easy death in the world, and in our society in particular?
In 1966, I lost someone very dear to me to a crazy young man in Texas, who had easy access to any weapon he desired, and who--for reasons unknown, but which likely included the dehumanization of military training--took them up into a tower over a university campus and just started shooting people, at random. My loved one was shot through the heart, and died instantly, while he was having lunch with other Peace Corps trainees.
That was the first. There have been many since then. Senseless killers. People gone crazy. People who somehow lose their ethical and empathetic restraints against murder. People like George Bush. People whose craziness is fostered by, and exacerbated by, and made far, far, far more lethal by access to weapons of instant, easy death.
I do understand the fear of living in society in which people are murdered every day for nothing--for their purses or their sound equipment, or for no reason. I understand fear of the government--and the government having all the weapons, and the citizens having no defense against fascist government. But the answer to this dilemma is NOT to promote **MORE** weapons in our society, but to begin the process of disarming the GOVERNMENT and nazified police forces, AND society in general, of weapons of instant, easy death. What the hell is all this weaponry for, except to slaughter 1.2 million innocent people to get their oil, and to prevent the citizens of this democracy from stopping that atrocity? What good did your guns do you when George Bush was slaughtering 1.2 million innocent people to get their oil? If ever we had occasion to rebel, that was it. The truth is your guns are USELESS against a rogue government armed with the monstrous arsenal that you and I have paid for. What the hell is your gun for, except to shoot somebody who may OR MAY NOT be guilty of planning to harm you? Rid the government of weapons of instant, easy death. Simultaneously rid society of such weapons. And let us all be human again, with our inherent ethical and empathetic restraint BACK IN CHARGE OF SOCIETY.
War, capital punishment, torture, high rates of imprisonment, dreadful prison conditions, vast economic injustice, and masses of weapons of instant, easy death are all related. We cannot afford a self-righteous, egocentric viewpoint on gun ownership. We must look at the whole society. We must look at where we have gone wrong to produce something like George Bush. And, goddammit, he was most at home in Texas--this genocidal maniac--where gun ownership is a religion, and where my loved one was shot to death because of it. Fuck this worship of guns! Fuck it! END IT! Is your ownership of a gun worth my fiance's life? No, all you care about is stroking your weapons and feeling powerful, and feeling like nobody can get you. It is an illusion. We've been "gotten," big time. Our society and our democracy and our planet are DYING because all our money and energy is going into killing other people for their resources. It starts and ends with weapons of instant, easy death. Guns, bombs, nukes--all intimately related--in a culture of death.
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