“It Was Guns, It Was Guns,” Rawk!!
Butler Shaffer
LewRockwell.Com Blog
December 6, 2007
While the blood is still being cleaned up at the Omaha shopping mall, the political establishment parrots have been quick to mount their perches squawking the mantra: “it was all the fault of gun ownership.” One cable news network focused on the fact that this young man apparently got hold of his step-father’s AK-47 and, well, you know the rest of the chorus from there.
A newspaper report informs us that this young man had been treated for “depression and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity,” as well as having been a graduate of the government school system. Shall we expect any perorations on the dangers of prescribing behavior-altering drugs to children, particularly given the fact that most of the teenagers who have engaged in mass shootings have been on the receiving end of such drugs? Or shall any criticism be directed to that institutionalized form of child-abuse known as the government school system? Such questions will never become part of the establishment agenda which, at its core, insists upon mechanisms and systems for channeling human behavior to institution-serving ends. The drugging of children desirous of pursuing their own interests empowers the state; a well-armed public empowers individuals. Guess whose interests the mainstream media will embrace!
The idea of blaming inanimate objects - that have no will - for harms caused by those few persons who fail to exercise their will responsibly, reflects a most immature form of thinking. If a drunk driver runs over and kills some pedestrians in a crosswalk, will politicians and the mainstream media undertake a campaign against the ownership of automobiles? Such a mindset underlies the sense if irresponsibility and victimhood by which so many of us explain our problems.
Two months ago, I tripped on a curb and fell onto a sidewalk, causing serious bruising. Was I the victim of a curb rising up and making a snatch at me, or should my complaint be directed to the contractor who built the curb or, perhaps, to the cement manufacturer whose offending product caused me such pain?
