Shadow Of The Gun

Daniel Greenfield (Bio and Archives) Thursday, March 14, 2013

Gun-free zone, Pacifists, The dreaded assault rifle or weapon of war or killing machine of mass death actually kills rather few Americans

Canada Free Press

Every day another one of the stories comes in. A teacher panicked by a plastic gun, an army man on a cupcake, a t-shirt, a pop tart chewed into the shape of a gun or a finger gun hits the by Deal Spy” href=”http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53764#” in_rurl=”http://i.trkjmp.com/click?v=VVM6MjcxMzM6MTg6cGFuaWMgYnV0dG9uOjdmZjk0MWE0ZGFjZTdiZjU3ZjFiYjExMWNmOThiYjVkOnotMTQ2MS0xNTczMDU6Y2FuYWRhZnJlZXByZXNzLmNvbToxODcwNTo4ZDVhNzU4N2ZjNTdiNjYxYzAxMDNhOTk4MzZmOTk1ZQ”>panic button. Supensions and lectures quickly follow as the latest threat to the gun-free zone, usually in the form of a little boy, is tackled to the ground and lectured to within an inch of his life.

Tellingly these incidents rarely take place in the inner city schools where teenage gang members by Deal Spy” href=”http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53764#” in_rurl=”http://i.trkjmp.com/click?v=VVM6MTAzNzQ6MjE4OndhbGsgdGhyb3VnaCBtZXRhbCBkZXRlY3RvcnM6ZmM3MDMzNDM0ZTlhNGQ2ZTY2NzllM2QzMDJmNWMyM2Q6ei0xNDYxLTE1NzMwNTpjYW5hZGFmcmVlcHJlc3MuY29tOjI0MDI6ODhhMzg3MGVkZDRhYjgyYzk4NTg5ZGZiNjk5OThmMzE” in_hdr=”">walk through metal detectors at the start of the day. The safety officers in those schools, big weary men with eyes that look everywhere at once, don’t waste their time on toys. Not unless those toys are full-size, painted black and filed down to look like real guns.

It’s usually the schools where a shooting is wholly unlikely; where gun violence is not a daily reality, but an unlikely convergence of horror, that institutional vigilance hits an irrational peak as every school imagines that it could be the next Columbine or the next Sandy Hook.

The NRA’s initial proposal of armed school guards was met with an irrational chorus of protests. More guns aren’t the answer, was the cry. And the leading crier was the White House’s expert skeet shooter. In a country where law enforcement is heavily armed and gunmen are stopped by gunmen in uniforms, a strange Swedenization had set in. The problem was not the man, it was by Deal Spy” href=”http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53764#” in_rurl=”http://i.trkjmp.com/click?v=VVM6MzI2OTU6MTQ2Mzp0aGUgZ3VuOmI2NjYzMGJmYjM3MThkMGZhNDRhYTI4MzVjYzc0N2I5OnotMTQ2MS0xNTczMDU6Y2FuYWRhZnJlZXByZXNzLmNvbTozNDE4MDphZDdiYjIxYzNjMDg1NzI4YzhhOTIzYTkyODMxYjA0NQ” in_hdr=”">the gun. Get rid of the guns and you stop the killing. Schools across the country are banning not the gun, but the idea of the gun. It is a conceptual prohibition that is meant to push away the threat of gun violence by eliminating any mention of the G word. Gun-free zones mean places where guns cannot be mentioned, depicted or even symbolized as if the refusal to concede the existence of a firearm will eliminate the threat of it being used on the premises.

This isn’t a precautionary attitude, but a pacifist one. Gun horror is not a productive emotion, but learned helplessness disguised as moral superiority. Rather than teaching children to hate killers, schools are instead teaching them to hate guns. And reducing murders to instruments rather than morals, children are left with no sense of right and wrong, only an instinctive horror of violence.

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Reposted with permission.