rebuttal to: a plea for the second

by Shane Nicholson

Published: February 18, 2008

Jared Field’s original article: “a plea for the second“

–

February 14th was such a good news day that it really is a horrible tragedy that I have to write about this.

As none of you know I’m from DeKalb County, Illinois. I always assumed that I would attend NIU one day, just like so many other graduates of my high school. If I climbed into my treehouse on a Saturday night, I could see the lights of Huskie Stadium. I spent countless hours of my childhood in that stadium watching some kind of excuse for Division I college football. I was there in 1998 when the losing streak was broken, the goal posts came down, and were carried to the lagoon on a cold and wet Northern Illinois fall day. That, my friends, was a good day.

Last Thursday was not.

Isolated tragedy has now become regular occurrence, so commonplace that CNN would rather talk to John McCain for another hour instead of informing people across the country of the events that occurred in Cole Hall on Valentine’s Day afternoon. Congrats on the Mitt endorsement by the way, Senator.

As we were.

I never did attend a class at NIU, but it is the alma mater of many friends and a handful of family members. It’s certainly been part of my life in many ways, which is why when I received a text message from a friend that said, “school shooting at NIU,” I promptly excused myself from the meeting I was in and went straight to my computer, hoping for even a glimmer of information. It wasn’t until over four hours later that I learned if anyone besides the gunman had died. In the interim I sat glued to a television, clicking between tabs on my browser, hoping for anything new. I’ll admit, it’s easier to ignore these stories when they don’t hit close to home. But five years ago there would have been round-the-clock coverage of this shooting on every news channel down the dial. Now it’s an update at the top and bottom of every hour. Thank you, it’s very reassuring to know that the media in my country considers a shooting on the campus of a major university in which five people plus the gunman are dead and over a dozen more injured as just part of the daily fabric of our lives. Of course, this is the fourth school shooting this week, so maybe they’re not all that far from the truth.

In spite of the lack of information being available, within an hour of the first on scene reports, there was a post on a message board touting the brilliant far-right strategy of allowing anyone to carry a firearm at anytime because that, of course, will keep us safe at all times. Who’s going to know who’s carrying and who’s not? That’ll keep those madmen on their toes.

Wrap yourself in your second amendment rights all you want; nearly forty percent of homicides in this country are committed with firearms and our homicide rate is one of the highest in the industrialized world. Yes, we are a gun happy culture. No, that’s not an excuse for the continued act of bending and bowing before the gun lobby that follows nearly every single one of these horrible events.

Before you even get the chance to start, I grew up in an armed household. We had a gun rack hanging on the wall of our living room with an array of shotguns and rifles, some that have been in my family for a few generations. Members of my family have hunted for food and sport for just as long, and as far as I know, none of them have ever assailed another person with a firearm outside of their respective participation in a declared state of war. I understand the concept of responsible firearm ownership very well; it’s been ingrained in me since I was young boy playing with a slingshot in the front yard.

But the lessons of responsible gun ownership are only so effective and can only be taught to so many people. Gun lobbyists are quick to point out the accountability of the one pulling the trigger; when are they held accountable for their continuous interference and obstruction in the advancement of responsible and reasonable gun control laws, laws designed to respect and protect the will and livelihood of the masses? How many of them have to lose someone in a similar shooting before they recognize the need for real change, not a continued adherence to law laid down over two centuries ago under completely different pretenses with, more importantly, completely different intentions?

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” The bumper sticker of absolute idiocy in this country. Also the common response from an ill-informed second amendment “defender.” Don’t these people know that it’s the twelve gage shells and hollow tip bullets readily available at a Wal-Mart near you that kill people?

Sure, it’s the gun in the hands of a person that is used to commit the crime, but the firearm is the mechanism of the murder.

Our country, specifically my hometown, learned that the hard away again today. So when do we stop pretending that the answer is to change nothing at all?

–

Jared Field’s original article: “a plea for the second“

—

(email this article or post to social network)

—