Unringing the bell.
Putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
Taking back hurtful words.
Some things just can’t be undone. That’s the natural trajectory of mankind that leads to cultural battles between one generation that seeks permissiveness and an older generation that clings tightly to attitudes and practices that have served them (or at least the majority of them) well.
The former seeks to break new ground while the latter sees each step as a slippery slope leading to a potentially undesirable outcome.
But once a cultural taboo, for example, is dashed on the rocks of progress, there is almost no turning back.
A freedom revealed is a freedom cherished.
Racial prejudice ruled until Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and others broke its grip on the nation. It was painful and took decades, but they liberated not just an enslaved people but a nation’s capacity to see humanity behind skin of a difterent color. Today, in a much dift erent evolution, it’s same-sex marriage. New generations have quickly embraced the concept of two people committing to one another regardless ofgender. It wasn’t that long ago homosexuality was viewed as a mental illness or perversion. Today, 13 states permit same-sex couples to marry.
Once people get a taste of new freedom, there’s no turning back.
More than 200 years ago, the men who established this nation set out in the U.S.
Constitution a collection of limitations on government designed to protect cherished freedoms held by the individual. For better or worse - and most folks have determined where they stand on that - they decided to limit government’s authority to keep guns out of the hands of Americans. As with other rights, court decisions determined this right existed independent of whether the Constitution recognized it, but founders nonetheless articulated the protections of the Second Amendment.
The bell rang, and it keepsringing today. Guns are here to stay.
Deadly violence is heartbreaking. Even the staunchest advocate for Second Amendment rights mourns for those lost when someone commits murder with a gun. Likewise, they’re saddened when a horrifi c train collision or car wreck claims lives.
Yet so much time is wasted blaming guns, as though they have minds of their own. No gun has ever been charged with a crime. It’s the person behind the gun who is responsible for murder.
Blaming guns, however, can provide cover. Faced with 12 deaths at the hands of a federally contracted employee at the Washington Navy Yard, President Obama and other federal off cials get to slip past serious questions about lax security at federal facilities.
How in the world did a Aaron Alexis simply walk into that building with a shotgun?
Rhode Island police warned the Navy about Alexis in the month before the shooting, revealing his claims of “hearing voices.” He told police he feared someone was following him and “sending vibrations into his body,” the police said.
For a man who neededa security clearance for a federal facility, shouldn’t those warning signs have triggered action on the part of those in charge of protecting federal facilities and employees?
But for many, that won’t be the bottom line. The story has to be about guns, how evil they are and how the nation needs to get control of them. An obsession with guns will obscure the real societal problems that lead to violence, sometimes with guns and sometimes not.
Some will say the common element to the nation’s violent episodes is guns, but violence originates right between the ears before it ever manifests itself in a physical way.
Aaron Alexis communicated clearly that he was suft ering a mental episode that needed someone’s attention, but no one listened or knew what steps to take. Most of us wouldn’t know what to do, either. But that’s what we need to work on to protect our nation from incidents of violence.
Freedom from mental illness will save us long before elimination of guns will.
GREG HARTON IS OPINION PAGE EDITOR OF NWA MEDIA.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 09/30/2013