I think you've missed the point, buddy
Dec. 7th, 2003 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeQuote:
This was in response to someone who linked to my earlier post.
This is someone who missed the point entirely, IMNSHO. The answer to violence is not more violence.
It's true that the women who died on December 6th, 1989, were not martyrs. They were victims of a man who was disturbed and psychotic and violent.
That doesn't change what happened, nor does it change the fact that that man, no matter how disturbed he was, would not have decided that he hated "feminists" and women who didn't follow traditional callings if the sentiment had not been an underlying one in our society.
This man was a victim of abuse as a child, by a man.
This man committed an atrocity against fourteen dead women and thirteen others who thankfully survived.
The event shook our country to its very foundations. This act of sheer, unadulterated hatred was what it took for our society to realise that many women still live in fear.
What should the response be? Arm the women, says this guy. You know what? That's not good enough. You can't arm every citizen in a country, train them all to use a weapon responsibly just in case some nutcase decides to go on a rampage. How can you tell who should have a gun for protection and who's going to decide he's had enough of his wife's (real or imagined) unfaithfulness and put a bullet in her spine instead of beating her to a pulp?
Campaigns against violence and hatred are more effective, in the long run. Short-term, sure, arming a woman will make her feel more secure. Long-term, one day she'll forget to lock the safe in her bedroom and one of her children will find her gun and there'll be a new tragedy to deal with.
I realise I sound like a bleeding heart liberal here, and maybe I am (actually, I consider myself to be more to the political left than that, but that's not the point). But I'd rather see violence be ended thanks to education instead of being propagated through the erroneous notion that guns afford "protection."
Guns don't protect people: they encourage people to use them. It's like a "pre-emptive strike": be violent before the other side becomes violent. There's never any proof that violence would have erupted, but the argument of "better safe than sorry" always seems to convince people. It plays on people's fears and insecurities, uses the equivalent of emotional blackmail to convince people to increase Smith & Wesson's stock value.
:P
I don't remember the incident though. As for what they were talking about, I think that's what happens when "the personal is the political" and everything gets politicized. Utter B.S. Those women were victims of a vile creature who hated himself and decided to try and make other people share in that. He just used ugly rhetoric in a sick effort to paste some kind of twisted meaning onto a senseless act of murder and self-destruction. Those women were not "martyrs" for any cause whatsoever. They died for no other reason than the fact that they and those around them were unarmed. If people are really serious about ending this kind of socialized insanity then they had best realize that a white ribbon will neither change the mind nor deter the actions of malicious people. As I said elsewhere recently, it is certainly debatable whether God made men and women, but it is also certainly true that Col. Samuel Colt made them equal.
This was in response to someone who linked to my earlier post.
This is someone who missed the point entirely, IMNSHO. The answer to violence is not more violence.
It's true that the women who died on December 6th, 1989, were not martyrs. They were victims of a man who was disturbed and psychotic and violent.
That doesn't change what happened, nor does it change the fact that that man, no matter how disturbed he was, would not have decided that he hated "feminists" and women who didn't follow traditional callings if the sentiment had not been an underlying one in our society.
This man was a victim of abuse as a child, by a man.
This man committed an atrocity against fourteen dead women and thirteen others who thankfully survived.
The event shook our country to its very foundations. This act of sheer, unadulterated hatred was what it took for our society to realise that many women still live in fear.
What should the response be? Arm the women, says this guy. You know what? That's not good enough. You can't arm every citizen in a country, train them all to use a weapon responsibly just in case some nutcase decides to go on a rampage. How can you tell who should have a gun for protection and who's going to decide he's had enough of his wife's (real or imagined) unfaithfulness and put a bullet in her spine instead of beating her to a pulp?
Campaigns against violence and hatred are more effective, in the long run. Short-term, sure, arming a woman will make her feel more secure. Long-term, one day she'll forget to lock the safe in her bedroom and one of her children will find her gun and there'll be a new tragedy to deal with.
I realise I sound like a bleeding heart liberal here, and maybe I am (actually, I consider myself to be more to the political left than that, but that's not the point). But I'd rather see violence be ended thanks to education instead of being propagated through the erroneous notion that guns afford "protection."
Guns don't protect people: they encourage people to use them. It's like a "pre-emptive strike": be violent before the other side becomes violent. There's never any proof that violence would have erupted, but the argument of "better safe than sorry" always seems to convince people. It plays on people's fears and insecurities, uses the equivalent of emotional blackmail to convince people to increase Smith & Wesson's stock value.
:P
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:36 am (UTC)arming? education?
Date: 2003-12-07 10:58 am (UTC)Education is important. Campaigns against violence are vitally important. So are campaigns promoting getting involved and helping your neighbor. Criminals are generally out-numbered but the victims don't want to stand-out, don't want to risk being noticed. So, they stay back and hope they aren't the ones picked on.
In a different area, education is vitally important. There are very few tragedies like you speak of in heavily rural areas. This is because intelligent use of gun is part of the culture. It's not a hidden thing and kids know they can get very badly hurt by messing with the gun(s).
I still think we lack, woefully, in gun education. While there might be more metal in a car, it seems like it should be just as difficult to get a gun license as to get a shooter's license.
This being said, -we- don't have a gun because Cindy does like them. But at the same time, I know how to take care of pistols and rifles and can generally hit what I shoot at.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 11:43 am (UTC)Re: tragedies
Date: 2003-12-07 03:27 pm (UTC)I was talking about this tragedy:
one day she'll forget to lock the safe in her bedroom and one of her children will find her gun and there'll be a new tragedy to deal with.</ cite>
not the massacre.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 03:11 pm (UTC)And, right there, you've said a lot. No, these women weren't martyrs -- to suggest so would, indeed, be a misuse of the term. But they were, nonetheless, victims of a hate crime. The reason they were victimized was not just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because they happened to be in a particular place and were women. It was an act of "violence against women." (That men were, equally awfully, injured during the commision of this massacre is enfuriating and saddening, but, really, incidental to my larger point, because injuring men was not the killer's intent).
I know very little about this incident, but I think that, to suggest that "the personal is political" is "b.s." when applied to this particular situation is off-base. The motivation behind this atrocious crime is, essentially, an amplified version of the motivation impelling a man to strike or threaten or degrade-the-self-esteem out of his significant other. And that latter crime is still often regarded (though less than in the past, thankfully) as "a personal, family matter that needs to be worked out in private." Efforts to end domestic violence and violence against women have gained a lot of strength by demanding that the reasons that crimes of this nature -- large and small -- are commited are examined in a public forum and rooted out at the creche level (perhaps that sounds a little extreme, but I'm just very "worked up" about this). Hence, the "personal is political" here.
I commend you for your original post and this follow-up. I hope that more people learn the important lessons that it communicated.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 04:47 pm (UTC)I consider myself pretty much right-wing conservative; even then, I think the whole "arm people against violence" thing is a lot of hooey. Like trying to put out a fire by throwing oil at it.