Gun Culture
I’ve been annoyed for decades with the subtlety and growing
effectiveness of American media propaganda. I’m now deeply offended by
the politicization and media treatment of the Newtown tragedy. The term
that moved me to write something is “gun culture.” It’s a pejorative term
used by politicians and anti-gun activists, little different from personal
smears except that it uses a nationwide brush to smear all of us. To
balance the discussion, perhaps we should include the term “public school
culture.” I’m particularly interested in the innate reaction to threats,
usually labeled “fight or flight.” Although “flight” sometimes is
prudent, “fight” occasionally is a better option. We need to bare the
truth about these facets of our nation without consideration to political
correctness and without political bias.
I’ve also been concerned for decades with the massive
failure of American public schools. A central reason for my concern is
they’ve become overwhelmingly staffed by teachers and administrators whose
first loyalty is to the government and who now lean far to the effete, perhaps
overly effeminate, left wing. One consequence of this trend is a change
in the “fight or flight” instinct. Public school officials have
repeatedly demonstrated that their first and only instinct is “flight.” In
other words, the only option considered is to run and hide, a reaction amply
proven again in Newtown. I’ve concluded that public schools now
overwhelmingly belong to a “flight culture” without the balancing instinct to
“fight” even when the odds are in their favor. I’m suggesting that the
“public school culture” is married to the “flight culture” and the consequences
have been unfortunate.
It seems to me that one should make a rational decision when
threatened with bodily harm. In the Sandy Hook Elementary School,
confronted by a skinny, deranged kid, public school officials were so witlessly
frightened, they ran and hid in the nearest closet even though they outnumbered
him by fifty to one. In my outrage, I was reminded of the Singapore
disaster in February 1942. Unbalanced by a too-strong “flight” instinct,
General Arthur Percival surrendered 100,000 combat soldiers to 30,000
exhausted, ill-equipped Japanese who were almost out of ammunition. It’s
not my intent to commingle the Newtown tragedy with war but rather to point out
the mental process is the same regardless of conditions that produce the
threat.
To clarify, it’s not my intention to minimize the heroics of
Sandy Hook teachers, particularly the ones who shielded their children with
their own bodies. Further, I recognize fully that many women are more
physically capable than men in war and all other venues where firearms are
present. That said, and with no disrespect intended, the vast majority of
teachers, especially at the elementary level, are women. It’s pretty
clear, in our society, they’ve had little experience or training with physical
confrontations, let alone firearms. Notably, except for the head
custodian, all six members of the Sandy Hook Office Staff are women.
Based on a cursory review, 27 out of 28 teachers, from kindergarten through the
4th grade are women. All 16 members of the Specialty & Support Staff
are women. Even the substitutes that day were women. In summary, 48
out of 50 employees, 96 percent, are women. Not surprisingly, every teacher
killed was a woman.
It would seem sensible to balance the workforce with a few
more men. Not only would they serve as role models for male students,
they might balance things a bit for female students too. The large
numbers of single-parent homes add credence to the claim that we need better
gender balance in our schools. Few would argue that schools are not
highly liberalized and promote a strong anti-firearm agenda. A few men,
perhaps from the military, and perhaps even with combat training, might balance
things a bit. I know most schools will be repulsed by this concept
because they’ve often labeled firearm owners as paranoid. Of course that
claim is specious because bad people, even competent grown-up sociopaths, exist
and occasionally carry out terrible deeds. The left wing on many
occasions also has labeled military men as mentally compromised. That too
is a specious claim because the average education in the military exceeds the
average for the nation. And mental disease, drug use and other crime rates
also generally are lower than the national average. However, in spite of
the carnage and absence of resistance, the media have been relentless in their
descriptions of courage by Sandy Hook teachers and the numbers of lives
saved. It’s from a strong sense of courtesy and respect for the victims
and their families that I fully embrace those statements.
Because we’ll not disarm bad people in the foreseeable
future, at home or abroad, the need to protect ourselves is absolute. The
“flight-first, flight-only” people seem to be the paranoid ones because they
wish to disarm the only ones who would never harm them. And they fear the
only ones who have the wherewithal to protect them. I’d just like to
balance all these discussions with terms like “mental health culture” and
“public school culture” and perhaps put them together into what our ancestors
called the “American Culture.” It’s a term worth conserving.
1 comment:
Hey Sam,
What you need is a picture of two houses. One in pristine condition with a sign out front saying 'We are members of the NRA.'
The other home has windows shattered and junkies are roaming the property and the sign out front says 'This home is a gun free zone.'
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