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Purple Hearts September 1, 2003 Ms. Hunt: Look at the rows of white crosses in our National Cemeteries and on the bluffs above the Normandy shores and dare to ask "What Price Freedom?" Ask those of us who have Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars at home in our dresser drawers. Ask those of us who have suffered and died, "What Price Freedom?" Those of us who have trained, and sacrificed, and served to protect our Constitution through necessitated violence still contend that our right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment is the basis that will keep this country from being insidiously overwhelmed by those of you who would let our county go the way of the spoiled child. Guns are not the issue. Lack of discipline, rampant materialism, forsaken family values, disrespect, discourtesy, and minimal sense of humility and spirituality are the issues. These things ingrained into our children through lazy (or nonexistent) parents, the "do as you wish" educational system, and multimedia sensational-mush factories... these are the issues, not guns. If guns did not exist, it would be knives, or swords, or clubs, or bows and arrows, or fists. Or technologies far beyond firearms. Those who believe (granted, a frightening number of liberal lemmings) the distortions, lies, and unrealistic tenets of the likes of Michael Moore are responsible for this country's spiral into a very questionable future. I'm glad I got to grow up and live most of my life in a country that was similar to the one designed by our founding fathers. I grieve that it is nearly gone. Gone, thanks to folks like you, Michael Moore, and Dr. Spock. I'm sure your service to your country in Austria qualifies you to comment on the U.N.'s desire to disarm the world. I hope they are as successful in that endeavor as they have been in bringing about world peace. If so, then I can rest assured I won't ever have to give up my guns. The U.N. has become an ineffective group of countries tilting at windmills and vying for US foreign aid. My service to my country qualifies me to comment on the U.N.'s desire to disarm all but their "peace keepers". Evil people (and governments and groups of governments) will always try to oppress and destroy defenseless prey. I will not be defenseless prey. If you chose to be, so be it. What price freedom? It almost always requires "wet work" Ms. Hunt. If you are not willing to do it, be thankful there are those of us who will. We know the price. And rest assured, we won't pay it 'empty handed'. Richard A. Hime
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What Price Freedom? Cruising down a Wyoming highway in the 70s, I learned from a bumper sticker that "the West wasn't won with a registered gun." I have news. The American West was won about a hundred years ago. But the guns remain. And the war in Iraq was won two months ago, according to President Bush. But media reports continue to serve up bad news as American soldiers are killed or wounded, not by tanks and bombers, but pistols, rifles, grenades. These "small arms and light weapons" include machine guns, shoulder missiles, and explosives. Portable, cheap, and easy to hide. U.S. forces in Iraq have found stockpiles in schools, hospitals, mosques and homes. In Baghdad alone, they've uncovered tens of thousands of grenades and machine guns. But most caches were looted just before our troops arrived, and a thriving criminal market is funneling even more firepower from outside the country. Whether stolen, smuggled, or handed out during Saddam's rule, these weapons are integral to everyday life. There's an old Iraqi saying, "Give everything to your friend, except your car, your wife and your gun." In the months before the war, small arms were so readily available that Iraqi vendors complained of a slow, saturated market. The U.S. military has since clamped down on open sales, but Newsweek reports a flourishing underground business, where hand grenades go for $1.50 and rocket-propelled-grenade launches $70. Lest we forget, America has a similar love affair with small arms: More American teen-age boys die from guns than car wrecks. [Ed. Need a citation here. This is demonstrably false.] Ironically, when those boys are sent abroad in the U.S. military, they're still targets for handguns made in the U.S.A. The White House has a problem. How can the administration advocate disarming Iraq (or Sierra Leone, or Indonesia) if we won't disarm at home? Collecting arms from the citizenry, whether Asian, African or American, is anathema to the powerful National Rifle Association. [Ed. She lectures only on the 19th amendment?] Small arms have killed an estimated four million people worldwide in the past decade, which is why the UN Secretary General aptly calls them "weapons of mass destruction." They're spreading uncontrollably, and any one can be the target. Small arms are recycled from one war zone to another. Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias says, in "A Scourge of Guns," "all studies indicate that, in both the military and criminal sphere, the greatest percentage of violent deaths occur from the use of light weapons and small arms." A proliferation of small arms contributes to an increase in terrorist attacks, crime, home violence, and local warfare across the globe. From Monrovia to Tikrit to Boston, teens are fighting, killing, and dying. Gun running equips the world's fighters _ including guerrillas, gangs, and child soldiers. In many countries, children as young as seven, if strong enough to carry small arms, are abducted for military training. The problem is so pervasive, the United Nations launched a program two years ago to encourage member states to destroy surplus weapons, track gun ownership, and enforce arms embargoes. But compliance is voluntary, and the UN's role is limited to collecting information. The most effective work is being done by community-based nonprofit groups committed to ridding the world of this scourge. When the government of Albania collapsed in 1997, a half million small arms and light weapons and tons of ammunition were looted from military arsenals. The result: a sharp increase in violent crime and civil strife. Illicit arms smuggling was so extensive, the U.S. State Department estimates more than half of the stolen arms ended up in nearby Kosovo, exacerbating the violence there. Women's groups in Albania, working with the U.N., lobbied for the collection and public destruction of illicit arms. The Weapons in Exchange for Development program raised awareness of the dangers with the motto, "One Less Weapon, One More Life." By the end of the program, 12,000 weapons and 200 tons of ammunition were collected and destroyed in exchange for funding of development and public works projects. Smart. Here at home, school shootings and sniper attacks have fed a culture of fear. As filmmaker Michael Moore ("Bowling for Columbine") says, we believe that "we have the right to resolve our conflicts through violence, and that we will shoot first and inspect for weapons later. That's our mentality ... that's how we're going to rule the world. And it will be our ruin if it's not addressed." Straight shootin' talk. (Swanee Hunt, who lectures at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is the former U.S. ambassador to Austria. She can be reached at response@swaneehunt.org.) © Copyright 2003 Capitol Hill Blue |
