Some of you may recall me blogging about the mass shooting murder which took place in Aurora, Colorado in the summer of 2012 while I was on a course in nearby Wyoming. Several of the course participants were from Colorado and they along with the rest of us were shaken by the news. Morning chapel was turned over to prayers for the situation, but I was aware not one person prayed that the madness of weapons available so indiscriminately come to an end in the United States. As the lone Canadian present I was angry that this evil now seems inevitable there.
I think I used the word evil then, and I use it again in regard to a recent story about a columnist named Dick Metcalfe for a magazine called Guns and Ammo. Metcalfe has been a respected figure in his field and received lots of freebie hardware from weapons manufacturers to assess and review. But he wrote what has been described as a nuanced piece called Let's Talk Limits and his journalistic world caved in fast. No more column, no more toys. How can someone I doubt I would want to hang out with because of his love of guns go from respected figure to leper so quickly? The New York Times article in which I read about this is entitled Banished for Questioning the Gospel of Guns and this just about says it all. This is a false religion, an idolatry, which punishes those who aren't mindless adherents. I admire Metcalfe for his courage, but what a sad comment on the supposed freedom of speech.
Does anyone else find this deeply disheartening?
1 comment:
I just don't understand this love of guns and the "right to bear arms" mentality. I don't get it.
After one of the mass shootings(sadly, it's hard to keep track of them now), I watched documentary producer Michael Moore being interviewed on Piers Morgan on CNN.
While Moore may have his faults, I agree with so much of what he has to say...and he was absolutely outraged over the recent shooting. In fact, he invited the millions of viewers to email a certain senator who refused to sign off on firearms restrictions - and gave out the email address on the air!
Unfortunately, not much seems to change.
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