Jane Smiley on guns etc (in Huffingtonpost today:
>>But that's how it is with the right wing, isn't it? Grievance is
something they do, no matter how much power they have. They are
shocked, shocked, that they don't have all the power, shocked and
victimized and angry. You could tell it in Bush's response to today's
shooting. First he said he was shocked and saddened. Then he said
everyone has the right to bear arms. He wouldn't want to let any of
those NRA-types imagine for a second that any amount of senseless
killing could possibly shake his commitment to a fully-armed populace.
Here's what I think about guns--guns have no other purpose than killing
someone or something. All the other murder weapons Americans use, from
automobiles to blunt objects, exist for another purpose and sometimes
are used to kill. But guns are manufactured and bought to kill. They
invite their owners to think about killing, to practice killing, and,
eventually, to kill, if not other people, then animals. They are
objects of temptation, and every so often, someone comes along who
cannot resist the temptation--someone who would not have murdered, or
murdered so many, if he did not have a gun, if he were reduced to a
knife or a bludgeon or his own strength. I wish that the right wing
would admit that, while people kill people and even an "automatic"
weapon needs a shooter, people with guns kill more people than people
without guns do.<<
Doug
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
lipsynching awe all the way to the grave of the unknown onus:
memory stutter; one smidgen, one scantling of thank.
Dennis Lee
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