Speaking Truth to Power

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more domestic violence disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead…Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it…What I believe is, that if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Cassandra Perkins would be alive today.”                   Jason Whitlock, Fox Sports Columnist

Speaking truth to power is never easy. Power doesn’t want to have the truth spoken. Power wants to control the message and never have it' message challenged. Power will often vilify and punish those who have the courage to speak real truth. Eventually truth wins. Eventually those who try so desperately to convince us that evidence, common sense, and our shared experience isn’t real, will succumb to the truth. It sometimes takes a very long while, but I always have faith that truth wins in the end.

Just a little over a week ago Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, and the mother of his child. He then proceeded to the Chiefs facility where he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in the presence of his Coach and the team’s General Manager. Sports writer Jason Whitlock wrote an article criticizing the Chiefs organization for going ahead with a game the next day in the face of this horribly tragic event. His column went on to urge a serious conversation in this country over gun violence. The quotation above is part of that column. On the NBC Sunday Night Game that same weekend, sports announcer and commentator Bob Costas made a statement during the half-time show quoting Whitlock’s column and adding comments of his own favoring a real debate in this country over gun control.  As you might guess, Monday morning brought a torrent of criticism and downright hatred aimed at both Whitlock and Costas. The National Rifle Association (NRA) issued a strong statement against both men, and the right-wing talk radio machine ratcheted up to full strength crazy. They referred to Costas’ statement as a “rant”. On and on it went, as it always does. 

As you know the NRA is willing to defend any level of gun ownership, and in fact promotes gun ownership at every opportunity. The NRA has taken the position that gun ownership is an absolute right under the Constitution and is required in order to maintain this nation as a free country. They believe that any attempt to limit gun ownership or limit the types of arms or ammunition in America sets this country on a slippery slope to totalitarian rule and the total loss of our democracy. The NRA also has shown its willingness to use any political or economic means to silence those who would question their point of view or attempt to institute changes that threaten their absolute, intractable position on guns. So it was no surprise that when Costas and Whitlock used the Belcher situation to even raise the question for debate, they were met with the full force of NRA sponsored backlash. There were calls for Costas’ firing and for Whitlock’s dismissal. The more rabid nut-balls and “ditto heads” called for much worse treatment. But we have come to expect that thick-skulled thinking from the Limbaugh and Hannity crowd. Too many of them needed a class in critical thinking, but must have skipped school that day.

Situations like the one in Kansas City and all the other gun violence cases that have populated the news lately grab our attention and hold it for a short while. Then we settle back into the constant drone of the NRA rhetoric until the next horrible and avoidable shooting. It seems we only pay attention to the sensational cases, the athlete/celebrity cases, or the when someone has the audacity to mix an important civic issue with our football. But the real tragedy of the gun issue is that affects many thousands of lives a year that most of us never hear about. Guns are the cause of a pandemic of pain and loss in this country-and we need to change that.

I won’t bore you with the volume of evidence that supports gun control. The numbers are there-and they paint an unmistakable picture of a culture that is destroying itself because it clings to outdated notions instead of recognizing the plain facts staring us in the face. Reciting those same statistics now would be a useless waste of time. Instead I simply urge people to stop believing the old lines and allow yourself to speak truth and hear truth. The truth is that we need to control fire arms in America. My position would be to simply eliminate handguns from our culture. Go ahead, keep your shotguns and hunting rifles- but get rid of the handguns. There is only one purpose for handguns -and that purpose is to shoot people. The NRA is fond of its saying: guns don’t kill people-people kill people. The real truth is: people with guns kill people. Every legitimate study proves that guns kill hundreds of times more people than are ever protected by guns. It is time to re-examine the old myth that guns keep us free and protect us from our own government? Does anyone really believe that armed citizens would be any match for the US military- the most powerful armed force in the history of man? So don’t keep perpetuating the macho fantasy that our government would fear a bunch of guys with .38s and .357s. The Constitution is rarely absolute- it is subject to new interpretations and the 2^nd Amendment is not immune from legal re-examination. That's the real beauty of the Constitution. Remember that slavery was sanctioned in Article 1 of the Constitution- but that got changed.

The power that opposes rational debate over guns is the NRA and the congressmen they own. The NRA has been able to get its way in spite of all evidence to the contrary, because they are willing to walk into a congressman’s office and threat to fully finance a campaign against them if they cross the NRA. This act of political blackmail has been effective in preventing reasonable laws controlling guns and led to 11,700 gun deaths a year in this country. It is so important to learn the truth, then speak that truth over and over until it is heard.

Guns are just the latest example of our willingness as a culture to “believe” instead of “think”. We have seen the same pattern of thinking on global climate change. Those who denied the truth are far fewer now than just a few years ago- because we’ve decided to look at the undeniable evidence of climate change. We are finally accepting the truth that giving rich guys tax breaks doesn’t create jobs, and that wealth doesn’t “trickle down”. Why? Because there is no evidence of it- it’s just the opposite. For thirty years those who had a stake in us believing falsehoods got away with foisting economic lies on us. All along there were those who spoke truth to power and were shouted down, marginalized, made fun of, or just ignored- until they couldn’t be ignored any longer.

I am not a person of religious faith- but I have unshakable faith that the truth of things wins out in the end. History informs us that every myth eventually falls prey to evidence, rational thought, and undeniable evidence of truth. Some see the truth before others and I hope they keep shouting it at the powers that be. When it comes to guns, shouting the truth before another year passes will save thousands of lives.  We should be thanking Jason Whitlock and Bob Costas for their willingness to speak truth to power, as they give all of us the courage to do the same.

Thanks for looking in.