Monday, December 7, 2015

Who is to blame for terrorism?




When the Cambrian Measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace, They swore if we gave them our weapons the wars of the tribes would cease… –Rudyard Kipling
On June 17, Charleston, South Carolina, Dyllan Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and began the horrific mass shooting that would leave nine dead. Dyllan Roof was, as has been pointed out by a now famous cover of the New York Daily News, a terrorist.
But that same paper, in a monumental breach of professional reporting, dropped all pretense of being fair and balanced, dropped all pretense of following the long history of journalism, where you report the facts, not your own radical opinions. After calling Roof a terrorist, the Daily News, over a picture of Wayne LaPierre, a caption reads “And so is this man.”
What was Mr. LaPierre’s crime that caused him to be dubbed a terrorist on the front page of a so called “newspaper”? He is the executive vice president of the NRA, and he agrees with the founding fathers that guns are a right that shall not be infringed.
In recent weeks, when the Planned Parenthood shooting happened, many people seemed very confused as to the nature of the attacks. Many said that Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and indeed, anybody that is a modern progressive who understands that the way of the future is more guns, less gun free zones, and more liberty for gun owners is to blame because of some crazed maniacs.
When Dyllan Roof shot up a church, we didn’t blame atheism for causing him to be anti-Christian, because of course we realized that it wasn’t Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins fault. When Muslims cut off people’s heads, bomb buildings, shoot people in San Bernardino, we don’t blame Islam. We blame the radical terrorists themselves; because of course it’s their fault and no else’s.
One of the most glaringly idiotic statements about the most recent, horrific mass shootings, came, unsurprisingly, from The Huffington Post, or, as you may know it, that place where they believe in flying pigs. The Post actually called the San Bernardino terrorist massacre “gun inspired.” Of course, it was no more “gun inspired” than Cain’s attack on Abel was “rock inspired.” It was sin inspired. It was hatred inspired. It was radical Islam inspired.
The mantra seems to be, from many of those who are anti-progress and refuse to learn from history, that because there are innocent victims that are being horribly murdered we need to do something, and that is true. But then the mantra becomes that we need to disarm ourselves. Which makes sense-not at all. An unarmed society is much like a sheep herd, vulnerable, helpless, and forcibly led by any shepherd with the will to do so.
Hillary Clinton and her allies shout out that “we do not want to take away all your guns. Just the dangerous ones.” But, as has been pointed out, “If they can ban one, they can ban them all.”
The deaths of innocent victims should be a time grieving and then striking back at the root causes of such mass shootings. Clinical insanity, sin, radical Islam, etc. The tools used in them are barely important. If we took away all guns we would have mass stabbings, just ask China.
Ted Cruz isn’t a terrorist, and neither is Wayne LaPierre, but I do know that the person who called him that isn’t a journalist.
The poem I began with, by Rudyard Kipling, continues on from the promises of perpetual peace by saying: But when we disarmed they sold us, and delivered us bound to our foes.
Thus is the end of all such endeavors.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not infringed.
No matter what.

Andrew C. Abbott

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