Supposed Culture of Gun Violence
Gen Jerry Curry (Ret.)
Clash Daily Guest Contributor
Let us put some things in perspective. It is easy to look at present day events and forget that this nation has, since its founding, successfully faced the impossible and the unsolvable. President Washington walked where no man had walked before and through prayer and determination turned thirteen disparate colonies into a great nation. Lincoln became President just as the nation fell apart and put it back together. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) picked up the mantel of the nation’s government in the middle of The Great World Depression.
At the time FDR was being told by nearly everyone that the job of President was too hard and that the waters were so troubled that it was impossible to lead the nation to safety. But FDR brushed all that aside and told the American people, “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper … Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.”
Were the wheel chair bound FDR here today, he would throw the burdens of the nation across his broad shoulders, including fiscal difficulties, and say that the future cannot be turned over to an impotent Congress and President. It must thrust into the strong hands of an FDR or a Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK), men who knew how to lift our citizens and their way of life to new levels of accomplishment, men who refuse to flounder in the swamp of sequestration.
That is what MLK was talking about in his “I Have a Dream” speech when he said, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline … let us not wallow in the valley of despair.”
This is the kind of leadership our country needs today. So let us focus on conquering the hard things, on growing the American dream and not wasting our time on the easy things, like securing our southern border. To secure the border the President need only tell the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that, “This is a matter of national defense and security. You have ninety days to secure our southern border.” In ninety days the border would be secured. The Russians and East Germans secured 96 miles of the Berlin border overnight.
In this country most gun killing is black on black, Why? Are the guns and ammunition used in black communities more lethal than those used in white communities? No, gun violence does not kill; it is the culture in our communities that kills, the lack of MLK type leadership at all levels, a paucity of cultural, ethical and spiritual standards of conduct.
If we want to stop people from being killed we have to change more than the make and caliber of a gun or the size of its ammo clip. We must change the attitude of society toward killing innocent people and toward our community culture in general. Today Administration actions seem only directed toward control of guns, ammunition, and their owners, not reducing crime.
Guns are neither evil nor violent. Those of us who have spent time on the battlefield getting shot at have made peace with our guns. In fact, if you get shot at enough and live through the experience, your gun becomes a friend and you learn to be thankful for the peace, safety and tranquility that it brings.
Which of our leaders today champions scaling the lofty heights of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. It is the President’s job to lift our national culture up to the mountain top where MLK and President Ronald Reagan lived their lives. As MLK said, “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation … In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.”
Today we are once again desperately in need of FDR’s and MLK’s kind of leadership; for we have lost track of the nation’s purpose and its acceptable standards of cultural and ethical conduct.
The assassination of MLK was the beginning of the disintegration of the Black family. No one, white or black, stepped in to fill the gap left by his untimely departure. The dream of a seamless White and Black America died with him and the nation hasn’t been the same since. The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons who, throughout all these years, have pretended to be filling MLK’s shoes, can’t. They have no vision for themselves let alone for America.
The schools that exist in the most dangerous of environments are the schools in the nation of Israel which are subject to terrorist attack at any time. As best I can determine, all these schools have fences around them and are protected by metal detectors. Access to schools is strictly controlled and teachers, staff, workers and students carry picture IDs. In addition, visitors are required to sign in and out. All schools have safety guards and teachers who want to carry concealed hand guns do so.
There is no way of knowing what is really going on in Washington’s corridors of power concerning stopping or modifying the supposed culture of gun violence in our communities. But indications are that the Obama Administration is desperately trying to find a way to circumvent the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” is to protect the 1st and other Amendments, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
For the last few years the administrative departments of the federal government such as the Social Security Administration, are buying up enormous amounts of ammunition, so much so that the ammunition manufacturers can barely keep up with their orders. Investor’s Business Daily writes that in the last year the government has purchased nearly two billion rounds of ammunition, enough to fight 24 years of the Gulf War. Eventually, if this rate of purchase continues, it will be impossible for private citizens to buy ammunition, since this is a simple way for the government to confiscate ammunition that is in the hands of private citizens.
At the same time, “The Freedom Group” has been aggressively purchasing arms and ammunition manufacturing companies. If the trend continues, guns and ammunition sales to private citizens may be controlled more and more by the federal government, or by a company that works in close coordination with the federal government.
In the meantime public attention is being diverted toward secondary subjects like sequestration and exceeding fiscal spending limits, when the real danger is a failure to deal with entitlements and the Administration’s skirting of the 2nd Amendment and other parts of the Constitution.
Should the government control the manufacturing and sales of guns and ammunition, it will have successfully subverted the meaning and purpose of the 2nd Amendment. Attempted federal government power grabs like these are not new. What is new is having the federal government collude with the private sector to blatantly circumvent the Constitution for evil purposes.
But the American people are not easily fooled. If it turns out to be that the government is encouraging private manufacturing companies to buy up guns and ammunition to keep them out of the hands of ”We the People,” the people will strenuously object.
Image: Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; his famous, “I Have a Dream,” speech, Aug. 28, 1963; source: http://www.marines.mil/unit/mcasiwakuni/PublishingImages/2010/01/ KingPhoto.jpg; public domain.
General Jerry Ralph Curry (D.Min.) is a decorated combat veteran, Army Aviator, Paratrooper and Ranger. He enlisted in the Army as a Private and retired a Major General. For nearly forty years he and his wife Charlene have served this country both in the military and while he was a Presidential political appointee.