Trying to Make Sense of the Absurd

I felt compelled today to send New York Times columnist Bob Herbert an email in response to his column, "Helplessness in the Face of Madness." www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212 Here's what I wrote:

"Below is a letter to my local newspaper in response to your colleague Paul Krugman's Jan. 9 'Climate of Hate' column. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html?scp=1&sq=Paul%20Krugman&st=Search

Guess it was too politically incorrect, as it was not published. But it certainly does highlight points in your column today, 'Helplessness in the Face of Madness.' Here's my letter:

'No, I wasn’t surprised by Saturday’s massacre in Arizona. (Violence is inevitable in this climate of hate. Jan. 11, 2011) Shocked, but not surprised. I won’t be surprised by the next one, either. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. That’s because they will continue to occur just as surely as nothing ever being done to prevent them will. Just look at this partial record of U.S. shooting sprees in the past decade:

8 dead, 2 wounded—Manchester CN, Aug. 3, 2010
14 dead, 4 wounded—Binghamton NY, April 3, 2009
8 dead—Carthage NC, March 29, 2009
10 dead—rural Alabama, March 10, 2009
5 dead, 18 wounded—DeKalb IL, Feb. 14, 2008
8 dead, 7 wounded—Omaha NE, Dec. 5, 2007
32 dead, 20 wounded—Virginia Tech VA, April 16, 2007
5 dead—Amish school PA, Oct. 2, 2006
9 dead, 7 wounded—Red Lake MN, March 21, 2005
7 dead, 4 wounded—Brookfield WI, March 12, 2005
7 dead—Honolulu HI, Nov. 2, 1999
12 dead—Atlanta GA, July 29, 1999
12 dead, 24 injured—Littleton CO, April 20, 1999
But maybe I’ve blown this all out of proportion. That’s only 137 dead people out of about 120,000—just over one-tenth of 1 percent—of gun-related homicides in the past 10 years. So in the grand scheme of things, Arizona’s death toll really isn’t much of a problem. Is it?'

"What astounds me, Mr. Herbert, is that the lives of 120,000 people murdered by guns in this country every year are worth so much less than the 2,973 killed on 9/11, on which our goverment--with the tacit, if not, overt approval of a huge number of Americans--has spent billions of dollars to avenge and passed laws that restrict our civil liberties far more than any gun-safety laws that would not ban guns, but would provide some sanity to how they are used."

That's the end of my email to Bob Herbert. What I didn't say to him is that I'm still trying to understand is the liberal attitude people who are called conservative have about the legal proliferation of firearms and accessories that are designed for the sole purpose of shooting as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time, and the generosity of people with that liberal attitude who condone and even promote allowing that kind of weaponry to be carried, both openly and under cover, any and everywhere in public settings populated by innocents, children and babies--those very members of society that Americans say are the most precious, that we hold most dear and deserve the greatest protection.

We shield their names and faces from public scrutiny in court and other official documents and even in news reports. But not from assassins', criminals' and indescriminant shooters' bullets.

Insanity

Eighteen shot. Six dead, including a 9-year-old child.

Today's tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, reinforces how very, very truly conservative I am about guns. I hear so many reasons why people in the United States should be allowed to carry guns in public. Self protection, to protect our loved ones, to deter criminals (they won't know who has a gun who might shoot them), 2nd Amendment, it's our God-given right. Those are very liberal ideas about guns and when and where they can be taken.

Arizona law allows people to carry guns openly. Yet:

• Not one person protected him- or herself today against a 22-year-old, reportedly with a criminal history, who reportedly bought a semi-automatic handgun legally, who opened fire on them during a public forum outside of a shopping center. 
• Not one person protected the 9-year-old girl, who was surely someone's loved one. 
• Not one person protected a U.S. Congresswoman, who, during her recent very tough re-election campaign, got death threats, yet was shot in the head at near point-blank range and now lies in hospitalized in critical condition.
• Not one person kept a federal judge from being shot and killed by the extremist's gunsanity today.
• The gunman was not deterred one whit from drawing his gun and shooting totally unsuspecting members of the public who were just going about their business, without a thought of whether or not they should have been carrying a gun  

I heard a woman lament a few years ago that her boyfriend would be alive if only her state had more liberal laws allowing people to carry guns. Because she couldn't legally have her gun with her,she had left it in her car when she and her boyfriend went to a bar where he got shot during an argument.

Such thinking is ludicrous. Just how in the midst of a bar row does she think she could have gotten her gun out from where ever she would have been carrying it in time to do anything to help her boyfriend. My guess is that instead of just her boyfriend ending up dead, others -- perhaps including even her -- would have gotton shot, too.

Just why Rambo wanna-be's think hauling a gun around with them is going to get the drop on someone else who's packing heat is beyond me. What, our town squares should be OK Corrals?

Just how falacious that kind of thinking is highlighted by an incident near Seattle a little over a year ago in which a single gunman walked into a coffee shop and shot dead four police officers in full uniform, including bullet-proof vests. If a lone gunman can get the drop on four well-trained police officers, and kill them all, what chance is someone hitting a bar for a drink going to have?
  
Arizona is one of 11 states that have unrestricted open-carry laws. A website promoting open-carry laws in the U.S., http://www.opencarry.org/, says of Arizona:

"Arizona is one of our "Gold Star" open carry states. There is complete state preemption of all firearms laws, open carry is common and law enforcement is well educated as to its legality."

Thanks to liberal court interpretations of and rulings on the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, upwards of 10,000 people in the United States are murdered by guns anually. (That doesn't include accidents or suicides.) That's two thirds of all murders in this country, and most likely a prime reason why our murder rate is more than four times higher than the rates in Canada and the United Kingdom.

I keep looking for the sanity in all of this.