Read the AmericanRifleman! (an NRA publication)
I’ve
been reading the AmericanRifleman, particularly NRA Excecutive Vice President
Wayne LaPierre’s column. It is
convincing stuff, emotionally and statistically, for those who are against any
further government (any government, Federal, state or local) restriction on gun control, or any more
restrictive interpretation of the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The rest of the editorial content of the
magazine is similarly potent. After
digesting this highly opinionated material, the reader is left with many pages of articles about and
ads for weapons in the AmericanRifleman, all of which are no different from the
specialized articles and ads found in any sportsman’s magazine, be it devoted
to golf, tennis or mountain climbing.
They don’t matter. Or do they?
What
definitely does matter, however, is the tone which the magazine sets, that the ownership
of personal and efficient killing devices (guns) is perfectly normal and usual
since they are useful for self-defense. Tennis rackets, golf clubs, bowling balls, guns .... we have a right to possess them all. Except that the ultimate purpose of guns is to kill ... and they do that to more people than tennis rackets, golf clubs and bowling balls combined do.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA Exec. V.P.
LaPierre’s November column deals with the recent shooting of two TV news people by another employee, who had purchased his weapon legally. He had wanted “to start a race war” and had no mental health record despite some very dangerous anti-social thoughts. LaPierre asks “What has this got to do with us?" (the NRA) and answers “Not a Single Thing.”
The title of his column is “Gun
Control is a Tool to Make Innocents Pay the Price for the Guilty” and goes on
to point out that “you cannot ‘prevent’ evil” and furthermore, that gun control
is “a danger to our freedom and way of life” because it implies that “one-third
of the U.S. population, vastly good people who enjoy the exercise of liberty
guaranteed by a God-given constitutional right should be responsible for one ‘troubled
personality’.” This approach was also
taken by the NRA after other killings (Newtown, Aurora, Columbine) over the
past years. Why blame us?
Reading
on in the magazine, the NRA President’s column deals with the failure of gun control to thwart
crime in El Salvador and its Political Report column talks about the stakes for
the NRA in the 2016 elections. There
also are numerous articles describing how good people averted being the victims
of crimes because of the fact that they were armed, and a detailed article
refuting the claim of gun control supporters that “armed self-defense” is rare.
There
are 300,000,000 guns in the United States, many in the hands of those who
should not have them. The ones in the
hands of the five million NRA members are not the ones we should be worrying
about. What we should be worrying about
is the mindset of the NRA’s leadership, and many of its followers, that having
a gun for self-defense is something we all have a right to have like having a
refrigerator to keep food cold, an automobile to drive around in or a bathroom
in which to take a shower. That right exists, and nobody wants to take it away, but it must be controlled because it’s not the
same as the right of civilized people who live in a world where law and order prevail to take showers, drive cars and eat
refrigerated food with a government in place to protect them from those who would defy law and
order.
I would hope we live in such a
world. The NRA’s leadership does not …
at least so long as the magazine is filled with articles about and ads for
guns, and that mindset enables guns to be readily available to those who should not have them, as well as those "vastly good people" who own guns. That's why more gun control measures are needed.
Get your hands on a copy, old or new, of the AmericanRifleman. It's in most public libraries. Right now you can read some of its articles by clicking on AmericanRifleman. To defeat an enemy, one must know about them. Read the AmericanRifleman and find out what those of us who still believe in a nation where law and order prevail are up against.
Jack Lippman
Advertising Drugs
I
think it is obscene the way pharmaceutical companies are permitted to advertise
their prescription drugs on television, pointing out their curative benefits while
people using the drug, often accompanied by a dog, walk through idyllic
settings in slow motion. Viewers are
urged to speak to their doctor about the drug, as if the 24 billion dollars the
pharmaceutical industry spends each year “educating” physicians about their
products (eight times what they spend “educating” consumers) wasn’t enough to
get their message across. This is
particularly true of drugs aimed at treating malignancies, as if one’s
oncologist were not aware of a drug which the patient saw in a one minute TV
commercial between episodes of a sitcom.
These numbers can be reviewed graphically at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/.
At
the end of these commercials there is sometimes a briefly-displayed warning in
very, very, small print that only a speed-reading expert can decipher (like the
small print at the end of automobile commercials telling you the amount you
have to pay up front) citing all of the hazards the drug presents. The text of this is also provided as a gentle
“voice over” as the commercial proceeds, at the same time the patient and his
dog or grandchild are shown strolling in slow motion through the verdant countryside or on a beach. The narrator often says in dulcet tones
things like “occasional fatal events have occurred when using … “
And while on this subject, shouldn’t there be similar warnings in the recruiting commercials for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Wouldn’t a caveat like “you also run the chance of getting killed“ be appropriate?
JL
The Democrats Debate
Sanders and Sanders
Sanders and Sanders