Bob Costas stirred up a hornet's nest last night, citing an anti-gun-culture essay by Jason Whitlock regarding the Javon Belcher shootings of Saturday.
"Our current gun culture," Whitlock wrote, "ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."
That is true, even if you are card-carrying NRA member.
However, this is more an indictment of modern youth culture than of the Second Amendement. If a sub-culture has a leaning towads violence, giving said folks guns will tend to do more harm than good. Self-defence is quick to turn into offense if you take offense at something.
Can you do violence without guns? Yes, but what's the last drive-by-knifing you heard of?
"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us
to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather
than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their
possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?"
"But here," wrote Jason Whitlock," is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher
didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive
today."
I'll buy that. Could he have knifed his girlfriend and himself, or beat his girlfriend to a pulp then drove his car off a bridge? Yes, but both acts are harder to pull off than the simple pull of a trigger. A murder-suicide by knife in Wyoming last week is case in point that such things can happen, but they're far rarer than the lead-poisoning version.
He'd also have a shot to think better of it between swings or stabs than between trigger pulls.
Also, I didn't see any calls for repeal of the Second Amendment in either piece. It may have been assumed in the rhetoric, but one can be against the casual packing of heat and be supportive of folk's right to an armed self-defence.
You also have the right not to bear arms. If you might be temped to use it in anger in something other than self-defence, it would likely be a bad idea to have a gun handy.
I don't know Belcher's back-story. He might well have had a legit need to have a gun on him. However, something tipped him over the edge Saturday, and the edge was easier to go over with a gun handy.
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