When it comes to guns, it’s ‘monkey-see, monkey-do’
High on the altar of American values lies the “macho” culture. Part and parcel of this “culture” is its revered symbol—the golden gun.
High on the altar of American values lies the “macho” culture. Part and parcel of this “culture” is its revered symbol—the golden gun.
It used to be thought that with its finite resources the world cannot support its expanding population, but now undisputed—except by the uninformed and the guilty—is the fact that there is enough for every man’s needs but not enough for every man’s greed. This applies worldwide, even in the United States and Wall Street. “Bato-bato sa langit, ang tamaan huwag magagalit.”
The bizarre incident that took place on Jan. 22 in a municipal trial court in Cebu City, in which a Canadian retiree shot down his neighbor and the latter’s lawyer, compounds the sense of things coming unhinged in a nation at the mercy of the gun. The fact that the incident took place in a courtroom, at a time a firearms ban was being implemented by the Commission on Elections because of the election season, is confounding and, at the same time, alarming. What is our world coming to?
I find P-Noy’s rejection of a gun ban for the coming elections rather disquieting. He himself has sought an exemption from it, as he has for certain groups of people who stand in harm’s way and need to defend themselves. He argues thus: “I myself have been a victim of violence in 1987 and [...]
The calls for gun control are all too predictable, and worrisome. I fear that after a few weeks, public concern will wear off and people will forget the two children killed by still unidentified gunmen ON New Year’s Eve, and the victims of gunman Ronald Bae in Kawit, Cavite.
I did say last time out that the worry is that this country being wont to copy American fads with colonial ferocity, even murderous ones, we could always find ourselves in the grip of a Sandy-Hook-type horror. But I did say as well that that worry wasn’t all that urgent, we still had a culture that militated against the kind of alienation that could induce someone to massacre schoolchildren in cold blood.
Gunshots served to welcome the year—gunshots that killed a total of nine innocents and 13 others whom law enforcers described as “members of a big criminal group.”
Only a week old, and the year 2013 is already groaning under the weight of a terrible burden: the death, by gun, of many innocents.
If you’re a parent, you’d know the feeling. In fact, if you’re someone’s brother or sister, you’d know the feeling. Still in fact, if you’re just a human being you’d know the feeling.
Today is Holy Innocents’ Day or Childemas, commemorating a bloody event that supposedly occurred shortly after Christ’s birth, Herod ordering the killing of all male children below the age of two, in an attempt to kill Jesus as well. Historians say this massacre probably never happened, but Dec. 28 has taken on new meanings [...]
If there’s one thing I don’t mind us copying, or imitating, or aping America, it’s in drawing attention to the proliferation of guns in this country. It’s in our Congress bestirring itself to pass laws regulating gun ownership. It’s in our executive branch leading the way toward enforcing gun control.
