Over at the Washington Post’s blog The Fix, Amber Phillips writes what should be the final word on the current state of civilian disarmament in America. “Gun control is still going nowhere in Congress,” Phillips asserts. “And in fact, with every major mass shooting in America, gun-rights supporters seem to be digging in even further — and bringing the rest of America along with them.” Note the words “in fact” . . .
‘Cause Ms. Phillips brings a bunch of them (facts, that is) to her editorial Gun control? Americans increasingly see more guns as the solution, not the problem; including the eye-opening poll results above.
Eye-opening if you keep your eyes open. Which fellow WaPo editorialist, rapper and gun owner Paris refuses to do in his racially-charged, righteously rambling anti-pistol polemic Guns are killing my community. It’s time to end the stale gun debate and act.
Yada yada racism yada yada NRA yada yada yada [paraphrasing] . . .
And as an artist, I don’t want to let my industry off the hook for corporate hip-hop that promotes an almost cartoonish savagery with lyrics like “Mask on, fully loaded, when I pull on street; Rifle butcher knife, zip ties for hands and feet” — taken from an upcoming major-label release — that do their part to glorify the very real gun violence prevalent in too many communities . . .
I’ve seen the enemy and it doesn’t look like me. It looks like the political machinery that makes guns readily available in my community. It also looks like media outlets that fuel the fires of racism, and the business interests that profit from the exploitation of warped messages designed to influence those susceptible to its influence.
Hopefully the tragedy of mass shootings, born of too-easy access to guns, will be the catalyst for us to meaningfully deal with gun violence.
The right to keep and bears arms is a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right. As such, it’s not subject to the democratic process. Nor does it depend on arguments of social utility. It exists independent of rap artists’ use of free speech to glorify gang-banging (if, indeed, that’s what they’re doing). It exists aside from the political machinery and business interests that oppose or promote gun ownership. Linking it to these social trends misses the entire point: the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right.
That said, gun rights HAVE popular support. They WIN the argument on social utility. So why is the Washington Post and the rest of the establishment media so obstinately pro-gun control, even when they know they’re going against public support and common sense? What’s in it for them? Is it a cultural problem; all those Ivy league J-school grads bringing their liberal bias to bear in the good old boy network? Or does the mainstream media operate on the principle that statism – for that is what gun control represents – is good for business? Something else?