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
