To begin with a
footnote, “hoplophobia” is a political neologism coined in 1936 by military
officer Jeff Cooper to indicate “an irrational aversion to weapons" and
also “the fear of firearms and armed citizens.” Mr. Cooper was a far-sighted
prophet of the our century. The anti-gun careers of Connecticut
U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy did not hove into view until the
21st century was well underway.
“This state” –
meaning Connecticut – wrote the editors of the Hartford Courant the day following Barack Obama’s utterly
ineffective Presidential edict on gun control, “is the cradle of heartache
caused by the gun, the site of the dreadful slaughter of 26 innocents at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in
Newtown four years ago.”
Pause over that
formulation: The heartache, following the slaughter of school staff and
children at Sandy Hook Elementary school, was “caused by the gun…” Surely, the primary rifle used by Adam Lanza
as he mowed down innocent students and staff, the AR15, later proscribed on a
list of weapons banned in Connecticut by the General Assembly, was neither the
efficient or proximate cause of the heartache or the slaughter. Were that the
case, guns rather than people would be put on trial every time a murder had
been committed in Connecticut. In the entire history of "The Provision State," there is
not one record of a murder weapon having been convicted in a crime.
One has to reach
back to pre-literate days to find such a case. In his monumental study of
homeopathic magic, Sir James George Frazier in “The Golden Bough” mentions a relevant
instance in which an accused murderer is put on trial. Cross examined by the
elders of a primitive village tribe, the man admits to the murder. The assault weapon he had used to commit the crime, a knife, is
then called to testify, pronounced guilty and tossed into a nearby river. Mr.
Frazier does not mention whether the knife was sufficiently represented by
council.
Even today, more
than two years after this heartrending crime had occurred, we are still
disputing the triggering cause of the slaughter. We know who the murderer was,
but what moved him to commit the crime? Was Mr. Lanza mentally disturbed? Was
he on or off his meds? Could there have been a successful intervention? These
tormenting questions aside, no one in the state of Connecticut has a shred of
doubt who committed the crime – and it was not the AR15, which appears to have
been suitably punished, along with every innocent owner or prospective owner of
the proscribed weapon.
So many questions,
so few definitive answers; but not all the questions are imponderables. One
question presently before us is: Are the most recent measures taken by
President Barack Obama to reduce gun crimes in the United States sufficient to
reduce gun crimes in the United States? Even Mr. Obama believes his Presidential edict is insufficient. And U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, perhaps the
loudest and most persistent voice in favor of gun control in the nation, has
said Mr. Obama’s measures are insufficient. The Courant itself points to the
single major failing of the Presidential executive order on gun control: The
executive orders of Mr. Obama can easily be undone by countervailing executive
orders issued by succeeding Presidents.
The co-operation of
Congress is essential in making laws. The American Republic much battered by
the imperial edict driven Presidency of Mr. Obama, never-the-less retains its
stature as the most successful and powerful representative body in the 21st
century.
Way back in August, Mr. Murphy asserted in an interview with CNN’s Poppy
Harlow that the Congress was not likely to pass laws that would stop
shootings.
He also asserted, and continues to assert, that a Congress that will not
consider such bills as have been passed in Connecticut is complicit in mass
murders, because Congressional inaction enables a culture of violence. Even
small changes enacted by Congress, Mr. Murphy said, would have a salubrious
effect on the culture of violence in the United States.
Truly, we live in
dangerous times. It may be important to point out that Governor Dannel Malloy –
who took the trouble of submitting his
gun control measures to Connecticut’s legislature -- has given his unqualified support
to Mr. Obama’s Presidential edict. Mr. Malloy signed a law in 2012 passed by Connecticut’s
Democratic dominated General Assembly that abolished the state’s death penalty –
even in cases of mass murder such as occurred in Sandy Hook. Democrats in the
General Assembly and Mr. Malloy argued that the death penalty for heinous crimes
was not a deterrent, causing one commentator to propose that all punishments
perhaps should be abolished. Others argued persuasively but unavailingly that
the death penalty should be mended, not ended.
Is it not possible that
stupidity on the part of governors, presidents and legislators, rather than the
presence of guns among our law abiding citizenry, may be the principal culprit
advancing the culture of violence in the United States?
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