Check for web archive captures
Attitude of Latitude....or of Caring Circumspection?
By lindamuralidharan on 2013-03-07 23:15:31
[caption id="attachment_4199" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="We need a balance of hope and action to right
this situation of gun violence, image from http://clanarmstrong.tumblr.com/page/88"]
. bIGH TA GAN
KORHOP
if
% | ¢ j
VL ENBLIGH WA FIRE
UNDER CONGRESS
TO LEGISLATE '
[/caption] I am back to talking about gun safety
again even though my first thought is that I have said much and others have said much..what more is there to say? On
second thought, it is clear that new perspectives can and need to be explored. I guess religious institutions have not stopped
their clerics from going over the same subject (of theology) again and again, have they? I guess there is a significant place
for repetition. I choose the word attitude in the title because that is the perspective that concerns me most and because it is
often touted by successful therapists and substance abuse recovery programs as one of the fundamentals of leading a
physically and mentally healthy life. You get to choose your attitude, and you may choose one that is positive or one that is
negative. In my experience...both directly and through the stories of others...addiction to anything boils down to not wanting
to accept limits. Enough is not actually enough. The antidote, then, is an attitude of gratitude wherein one accepts limits in
life and approaches life with the understanding, the "attitude," that I am very thankful that I have this list of positive things
going on, and while I may like some further improvements, I am not going to obsess on them or compulsively drive toward
them. I can, after all, live within limits. So, back to guns. We have ways of obtaining them quite legally if we have not
messed up too badly in the past. We have a vast variety to choose from, and we can choose personally to look at them as a
means of personal and family protection or as tools for some kind of sport or as a hobbyist's object of collecting. All of the
above purposes can be achieved by the use of guns that are outside the category that would be prohibited under potential
assault weapons legislation and without the need to purchase the super powered magazines. As I have suggested in previous
writing, the biggest achievement of such legislation would be to set a standard. A standard of limits on the one hand and a
standard on the other hand that violence is not a tool for solving problems by the individual. Clear and present danger, se/f-
defense is in a different category, and I am not proposing one "turn the other cheek" when a human life or limbs are in "clear
and present" danger. But for most of us, it is both desirable and adequate socially to leave the use of major fire power to
police and military actions. We can all find through research that some of our pet ideas are bogus. Some of my discussion
here is backed by research and some may not be. Some of the research may be flawed, and I recognize that anecdotes are
only useful up to a point. Let's take for the moment the claim by certain opponents of "gun control". Some have been
quoted as saying the only solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And yet in the past two months alone
TV has shown one shop keeper stopping an armed jewelry store robbery with his bare hands and a fast food employee
stopping another robbery by throwing hot coffee at the perpetrator. How often this happens, I don't know. We don't hear
very many stories of a bad guy or gal coming after some civilian with a gun when the civilian manages to access his own
weapon and drive the perpetrator away or shoot him/her. But it does happen. We have these competing anecdotes. Research
is varied also but seems to be trending in the direction that says gun safety is helped by legislation. We have heard the results
of the research, often promulgated by law enforcement officers, that homes with a gun in them to begin with, have more
accidental and purposeful gun deaths than homes that do not contain guns as a matter of course. And today I heard of a new
research report that shows there are more suicides and other gun deaths in states with the fewest gun laws compared to the
states with the larger numbers of gun laws. Caveat here: I would like more and/or stricter laws in general, but I would not
claim that these particular state laws caused the lower rates of gun violence. It is possible simply that where there is a high
proportion of the electorate that agrees with my attitude against violence as a problem solver there will be more legislators
willing to support the passage of strict laws in the first place. In this case, it is the better attitude of the populace that helps
to prevent some gun violence not the laws themselves. I have no idea which is the case. But I would like to make the effort
to change attitudes for the better by setting gun safety standards into law. Speaking of attitudes again, I have written in other
years about the apparent connection between domestic violence and both macho attitudes and males having a history of
emotional and/or physical abuse in childhood. I went at some length to discuss the special prevalence of these connections
in the all too frequent instances of domestic violence in the military. Where there are "attitudes" of male entitlement,
privilege, and the pressure to be super "masculine", domestic and other kinds of violence are likely to thrive. I have
observed a sad phenomenon here in Hawaii. Without going in to a lot of detail, there are elements of what main stream
culture has called the "feminine" in overall Hawaiian culture. "Aloha" is often practiced and greatly praised by men and
women alike. And..the University of Hawaii called some of its male varsity sports teams "Rainbows" or "Rainbow
Warriors". (By the way, some research group last month determined that residents of Honolulu are the happiest of any city
in the nation on average.) Now we have a new athletic director at the university and he insists that the male teams call
themselves "Warriors". He openly admitted that he has trouble recruiting players from the rest of the country to play for
what sounds like such a non-masculine team as either "Rainbows" or "Rainbow Warriors". This seems to me like regression
in terms of male and female liberation and bodes ill for a society wanting to have a healthier outlook on everything from
home life to competition. Well, let's hope we don't move too far backward here because the study on gun laws by states
found Hawaii has relatively little death by gun. One can be tough when need be and soft and gentle when need be and be a
man or a woman. One can adopt the attitude that there are many ways to solve problems and the use of force will be the
very last resort when all else has failed. Think of how tough and honorable the Mississippi Freedom Riders were. They
achieved much and sacrificed much, and they did it with their bodies, their minds, and the use of the American court system
and eventually the legislative system. It took a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of patience, but we have a much fairer
society today than before the activists in the various civil rights movements swung into action .. . without arms. I would like
to see several gun safety laws passed including the ban on the most destructive guns and magazines. I would like the law of
the land to give less latitude to folks to take the law or a gripe or revenge into their own hands. I would like us all to urge
legislators to set a standard that says we care enough about human life to set limits, to be circumspect in how far we ought to
allow ourselves to go in the exercise of the Second Amendment. The more we set standards like this the more people will
begin to emulate problem solving that stops short of killing or even threatening to kill. [caption id="attachment_4196"
align="aligncenter" width="250" caption=""There will come a time when the Earth grows sick and when it does a tribe will
gather from all the cultures of the World who believe in deed and not words. They will work to heal it.. they will be known
La
as the "Warriors of the Rainbow." From a Cree prophecy"] [/caption]
