SCHOOL SHOOTINGS: WORD GAMES

The willingness of some in our society to play with words for their own ends is inexcusable, particularly when peoples’ lives are at state. It is bad enough that we live in a society that seems hell-bent on word games and on destroying the English language—but when innocent lives are lost because of these games, it is inexcusable. Nothing is what it seems, everything is how one perceives something—everything has to be “win-win;” no one loses, no one fails. At least that is what some want us to believe.

Our children are being taught in school that they don’t fail, they only have “deferred successes.” Incredible, absolutely incredible!! Silly me, I thought that part of a child’s development rested on teaching her or him how to deal with adversity; how to learn and grow from failure. Was I wrong? I don’t think so. This sort of shallow and superficial word gaming mean we are ignoring the real world and raising our children in a dream world environment that will make them unsuited to deal with reality. Please, someone free us from this “win-win” nonsense! People lose, people lose every day!

In fact, in school shootings there are no winners—everyone loses.. We all lose, the murder victims lose, the families lose, and society in general loses. Once again the glaring weakness of society surfaced and no one is ready to face up to the harsh realities of what needs to be done. In the case of the school shootings here in Virginia, no one is ready to support, much less adopt, laws and rules to keep guns out of the hands of violent people.

The Second Amendment advocates revel in word games; they are particularly manipulative. Their word games are insidious. They raise the fear that if you do not own a gun your home will be broken into, that your wives and daughters will be violated, and that your children’s lives are at risk. Actually they are right on one point, our children’s lives are at risk, but it is because the Second Amendment advocates have blocked the passage of laws to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill; out of the hands of individuals who are a danger to themselves and others. If you need proof, just look at the facts surrounding the shootings at the Appalachian School of Law and Virginia Tech.

The Second Amendment proponents cite the Constitution as giving the American people the right or liberty to own guns. But the Preamble to the Constitution talks about ensuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty for all of us—not just gun owners. Clearly, the words of the founding fathers put the general welfare and tranquility—LIFE ahead of the right to bare arms. You cannot have liberty; much less own a gun, without life.

Most of the proponents of wide-open gun ownership are pro-life people. But, for them pro-life only seems to apply to the unborn. They are not pro-life if you are already here. The are not pro-life when it comes to our children in school; they are not pro-life when it comes to those of us who are here and walking around—if they were they would be working feverishly to protect our school children; they would be working to keep guns out of the hands of the unfit.

The worst word game of all is the failure of the Second Amendment advocates to recognize that life, according to our founding fathers, was more important than the liberty we have; more important than owning guns. Our founding fathers recognized that without life there can be nothing else—Second Amendment advocates ignore that fact.

The Declaration of Independence came before the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The founding fathers began the Declaration with the following: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”

Without the Declaration of Independence, there would be no Constitution, there would be no Bill of Rights guaranteeing us the right to bare arms. But, the Declaration of Independence puts the right to life in the primary position of human rights. How can a secondary right trump the most basic right we have—LIFE? It does not make sense!