Last week a defining moment in the presidency of George W. Bush came and went – and the vast majority of Americans knew nothing about it.
The assault weapons ban, which was simple by design with real results, took the initiative to curb gun violence from Capitol Hill into the streets of America by eliminating repeat-fire weapons, ammunition clips and certain types of machine guns. A direct result of this was that incidents of gun-related violence declined.
Signed into law by former president Bill Clinton, the ban was a bold move to make American citizens safe from random acts of violence. Ironically, because of a president who prides himself in “citizen protection,” that movement is now over.
What is funny, though, is that during his many defenses of the tyrannical Patriot Act, President Bush has made the government’s rights superior to constitutional rights when it comes to protecting citizens from foreign threats. Many of the measures in the Patriot Act run opposite to the safeguards our constitution has to protect us from government tyranny.
While the Patriot Act shortchanges citizens of their rights to protect themselves from far-fetched doomsday conspiracies, it does nothing to address the real threat posed to all of us every day: domestic gun violence.
The reason for this seemingly conflicting policy lies in how the Bush administration ignorantly favors politics over people.
Most politicians, party view aside, would see that the assault weapon ban works because of the correlation of its introduction with declining gun murder rates. But Bush cannot oppose it because of the segment of voters he is depending on in November called the “Nascar Dads.”
Ever since February’s Daytona 500, Bush has made it known that this is his target population of likely voters. Many of these “bubbas” are uneducated country folk who don’t trust those who are highly educated, and they passionately agree with Bush on two issues: gun rights and religion.
Their passion for these two issues and ignorance of world events make them easy pickings for the public relations machine the Bush administration has become.
Bush, running a campaign fueled on citizen fear of another Sept. 11 attack and the testosterone rush of pummeling central Afghanistan and Iraq into the ground, preaches war and hate to children and citizens. As a society, we wonder why young people cannot go to public parks without fear of being robbed and raped, but then turn on the television and look at what our government – not the media – glorifies.
Destruction, violence and the attitude of “We’ll put a boot up your — – it’s the American way” by educationally challenged morons like Toby Keith have made many Americans violence-happy.
The logic used by gun-loving conservatives ultimately fails to measure up to their contradicting arguments. A young person gets a gun and massacres students in a school, and the National Rifle Association teams up with Bill O’Reilly to proclaim, “People kill, not guns.”
Later in the same show, the debate shifts to whether Larry Flynt has the right to publish a pornographic magazine and the same group of people shout, “Magazines pervert good people.”
It doesn’t make sense.
This past Fourth of July, I was almost ashamed at how many people in our country were dancing joyfully because we managed to beat two third world countries into submission. That is not patriotism – true patriotism is inherently diplomatic. The American way is diplomacy and peace, something Woodrow Wilson – a fellow Virginian – worked to achieve.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called people who deal with problems through diplomacy and resist the urge to shoot, search, and destroy “girly men.”
While Schwarzenegger and the rest of his republican counterparts may be muscle-bound and trigger-happy, they lack any development of the muscle that is the most important in any conflict: The brain.