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ABC News Perspective: Assault Weapons
by Hugh Downs
http://abcnews.go.com/
Years ago, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy distinguished himself
from his opponent Richard M. Nixon by saying that he, Kennedy, knew who he
was and that Nixon did not know who he was.
Knowing who you are suggests maturity and a sense of self hood.
Nations,just like individuals, also have identities and nationals can
understand who they are, too. Members of any civilization can realize
their uniqueness.
Sometimes some Americans seem to have difficulty understanding who they
are. The United States is unique and we shouldn't feel guilty or envious
because we aren't like other nations.
One issue that seems to magnify our lack of self confidence in who we are
is the gun debate. Some Americans think we should be like the Japanese
when it comes to guns. Other think we should behave like the British, or
the Swiss, or maybe some other foreign nationals.
The recent vote to repeal the so-called assault weapons ban seemed to
kick up the dust once again in the gun debate. Patrick Kennedy, a
Democrat from Rhode Island, equated weapons with satanic forces. "Play
with the devil, die with the devil," Kennedy said. Jim Chapman, another
Democrat from Texas, said banning certain rifles was like outlawing Rolls
Royce's because of drunk drivers and the damage they do. But the two sides
couldn't be more opposed.
Before we plunge into the question of what a so-called assault weapon is,
let's back up a few million years and consider their evolution. Our most
ancient hominid ancestors learned to throw stones to kill game. Later when
they learned how to throw spears, Anthropologists and paleontologists
theorized that the act of throwing was a tremendously stressful thing.
Combining binocular vision and distance estimation with delicate hand-eye
coordination had never been attempted before in nature. Humans pioneered
the technique.
And one of the consequences of mastering this technique was a more robust
nervous system; a nervous system that may be responsible for opening the
door to humanity's unique intellectual activity.
Spears turned into bows and arrows. And arrows turned to crossbow bolts,
and then to firearms. The development of field artillery created a demand
for sophisticated mathematics and mathematicians solved problems of
ballistic velocities and trajectories.
The manufacture of firearms gave birth to precision engineering, concepts
of mass production, and breakthrough insights in metallurgy.
As a result of the intellectual achievements, master gunsmiths in New
England and elsewhere created an economic powerhouse. Guns and
intellectual progress seemed to have been intertwined. Rocket science is a
direct outgrowth of humankind's fascination with ballistics.
Perhaps the most stunning of all these fruits is the development of the
computer. The purpose of the world's first computer, Eniac, was to
calculate artillery and missile trajectories. In other words, humanity's
most astonishing intellectual artifact, the computer, is an offspring of
our love affair with guns.
Well, that's a truth about guns. Guns exercised our unique intellectual
ability. They stimulated many scientific disciplines. They created wealth.
And the have defeated enemies from Adolph Hitler to Sadam Hussein.
Some people may not like the idea, but a large measure of our success as a
species is due to our passion for firearms. This is an ncomfortable truth,
because guns serve a dark side of humanity also. War is our dark side. War
destroys life and property. And everyone, even brave warriors, justifiably
fear it. Weaponry provided food for our tables and served us well in
certain crises.
But as instruments of war they play a cacophonous distasteful tune. Nobody
likes it. People who claim they like war, I believe, are lying to
themselves and to the world.
But guns do not make war. Guns can hold neither grudges nor hate. Guns
are merely instruments. A machine gun can no more launch an attack without
a machine gunner than an oboe is to play Mozart without a musician.
Instruments are extensions of people. Firearms are merely extensions of
people.
Firearms, in whatever numbers or whatever configurations, are not the
problem. The problem would seem to have its roots in national attitude
we have toward correcting things. Where did we develop the idea that
personal grievances or social wrongs can be redressed by shooting the
bad guy?
For example, we do not have the greatest number of handguns per capita. We
just have (the) greatest number of deaths from these weapons. Israel and
Switzerland are both ahead of us in number of handguns per capita. But
they don't have very much of this kind of crime. Almost every home in
these countries has at least one sidearm, given a person on completion of
compulsory military service. They have the guns, but they just don't seem
inclined to shoot each other.
The assault rifle debate takes our attention away from the underlying
problem: how to effect a change in our national attitude toward settling
differences by violence. This is what we should be focused on. But we seem
to (be) fixated on a buzzword like "assault."
Hunters, professional armors, and firearm historians say the term is
imprecise. Some claim there is no such thing. One common term, known as an
assault rifle, refers to a long arm or carbine capable of automatic fire
with ordinary military ammunition or big-game ammunition.
Fully automatic weapons, true machine guns, have been banned since the
1930s and that ban remains in effect. So the "assault weapon" ban cannot
refer to machine guns, although many people, I think, mistakenly think so.
All the banned weapons are semi-automatic.
Legislators who initiated the ban claim that semi- automatic weapons have
no sporting use. But semi-automatic rifles have long history in hunting
and other sports. The famous BAR, or Browning Automatic Rifle, is a
semi-automatic hunting rifle; so is the Remington Model 7400.
Semi-automatic shotguns have been on the market for many years.
The banned rifles differ from non-banned ones only in small decorative
details: decorations like a folding stock, a bayonet mount, or a flash
suppresser. Otherwise, the banned "assault weapons" are ordinary rifles.
They are not automatic military weapons.
But the Republicans are now embarrassed by a perceived necessity of
lifting the ban on so-called assault weapons. And they've elected to
do so as quickly and quietly as can be done to get it behind them so
it's not an issue later on when the elections looms. Many of them feel
it will not get past both houses of Congress anyway and they can then
say to the NRA, "We did our best."
Unlike Britons, Americans are citizens and not subjects. And there's a
very great difference between the two. Americans do not worship their
government as god, which is a thousand-year-old tradition in Japan. Nor,
like the Japanese, do we believe that government is infallible, as if
government authority were an extension of family authority.
Americans are not Canadians either. We are unlike both the strict
Quebecoise and the English-speaking subjects of the British monarch.
Americans are different and require different rules and laws.
Maybe when we Americans learn to responsibly manage our guns, and our
drugs, and our automobiles, or any other of the dangerous things in life,
maybe then we will know who we are.
For Perspective, this is Hugh Downs, ABC News.
*******
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed
a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research
and educational purposes only.
by Hugh Downs
http://abcnews.go.com/
Years ago, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy distinguished himself
from his opponent Richard M. Nixon by saying that he, Kennedy, knew who he
was and that Nixon did not know who he was.
Knowing who you are suggests maturity and a sense of self hood.
Nations,just like individuals, also have identities and nationals can
understand who they are, too. Members of any civilization can realize
their uniqueness.
Sometimes some Americans seem to have difficulty understanding who they
are. The United States is unique and we shouldn't feel guilty or envious
because we aren't like other nations.
One issue that seems to magnify our lack of self confidence in who we are
is the gun debate. Some Americans think we should be like the Japanese
when it comes to guns. Other think we should behave like the British, or
the Swiss, or maybe some other foreign nationals.
The recent vote to repeal the so-called assault weapons ban seemed to
kick up the dust once again in the gun debate. Patrick Kennedy, a
Democrat from Rhode Island, equated weapons with satanic forces. "Play
with the devil, die with the devil," Kennedy said. Jim Chapman, another
Democrat from Texas, said banning certain rifles was like outlawing Rolls
Royce's because of drunk drivers and the damage they do. But the two sides
couldn't be more opposed.
Before we plunge into the question of what a so-called assault weapon is,
let's back up a few million years and consider their evolution. Our most
ancient hominid ancestors learned to throw stones to kill game. Later when
they learned how to throw spears, Anthropologists and paleontologists
theorized that the act of throwing was a tremendously stressful thing.
Combining binocular vision and distance estimation with delicate hand-eye
coordination had never been attempted before in nature. Humans pioneered
the technique.
And one of the consequences of mastering this technique was a more robust
nervous system; a nervous system that may be responsible for opening the
door to humanity's unique intellectual activity.
Spears turned into bows and arrows. And arrows turned to crossbow bolts,
and then to firearms. The development of field artillery created a demand
for sophisticated mathematics and mathematicians solved problems of
ballistic velocities and trajectories.
The manufacture of firearms gave birth to precision engineering, concepts
of mass production, and breakthrough insights in metallurgy.
As a result of the intellectual achievements, master gunsmiths in New
England and elsewhere created an economic powerhouse. Guns and
intellectual progress seemed to have been intertwined. Rocket science is a
direct outgrowth of humankind's fascination with ballistics.
Perhaps the most stunning of all these fruits is the development of the
computer. The purpose of the world's first computer, Eniac, was to
calculate artillery and missile trajectories. In other words, humanity's
most astonishing intellectual artifact, the computer, is an offspring of
our love affair with guns.
Well, that's a truth about guns. Guns exercised our unique intellectual
ability. They stimulated many scientific disciplines. They created wealth.
And the have defeated enemies from Adolph Hitler to Sadam Hussein.
Some people may not like the idea, but a large measure of our success as a
species is due to our passion for firearms. This is an ncomfortable truth,
because guns serve a dark side of humanity also. War is our dark side. War
destroys life and property. And everyone, even brave warriors, justifiably
fear it. Weaponry provided food for our tables and served us well in
certain crises.
But as instruments of war they play a cacophonous distasteful tune. Nobody
likes it. People who claim they like war, I believe, are lying to
themselves and to the world.
But guns do not make war. Guns can hold neither grudges nor hate. Guns
are merely instruments. A machine gun can no more launch an attack without
a machine gunner than an oboe is to play Mozart without a musician.
Instruments are extensions of people. Firearms are merely extensions of
people.
Firearms, in whatever numbers or whatever configurations, are not the
problem. The problem would seem to have its roots in national attitude
we have toward correcting things. Where did we develop the idea that
personal grievances or social wrongs can be redressed by shooting the
bad guy?
For example, we do not have the greatest number of handguns per capita. We
just have (the) greatest number of deaths from these weapons. Israel and
Switzerland are both ahead of us in number of handguns per capita. But
they don't have very much of this kind of crime. Almost every home in
these countries has at least one sidearm, given a person on completion of
compulsory military service. They have the guns, but they just don't seem
inclined to shoot each other.
The assault rifle debate takes our attention away from the underlying
problem: how to effect a change in our national attitude toward settling
differences by violence. This is what we should be focused on. But we seem
to (be) fixated on a buzzword like "assault."
Hunters, professional armors, and firearm historians say the term is
imprecise. Some claim there is no such thing. One common term, known as an
assault rifle, refers to a long arm or carbine capable of automatic fire
with ordinary military ammunition or big-game ammunition.
Fully automatic weapons, true machine guns, have been banned since the
1930s and that ban remains in effect. So the "assault weapon" ban cannot
refer to machine guns, although many people, I think, mistakenly think so.
All the banned weapons are semi-automatic.
Legislators who initiated the ban claim that semi- automatic weapons have
no sporting use. But semi-automatic rifles have long history in hunting
and other sports. The famous BAR, or Browning Automatic Rifle, is a
semi-automatic hunting rifle; so is the Remington Model 7400.
Semi-automatic shotguns have been on the market for many years.
The banned rifles differ from non-banned ones only in small decorative
details: decorations like a folding stock, a bayonet mount, or a flash
suppresser. Otherwise, the banned "assault weapons" are ordinary rifles.
They are not automatic military weapons.
But the Republicans are now embarrassed by a perceived necessity of
lifting the ban on so-called assault weapons. And they've elected to
do so as quickly and quietly as can be done to get it behind them so
it's not an issue later on when the elections looms. Many of them feel
it will not get past both houses of Congress anyway and they can then
say to the NRA, "We did our best."
Unlike Britons, Americans are citizens and not subjects. And there's a
very great difference between the two. Americans do not worship their
government as god, which is a thousand-year-old tradition in Japan. Nor,
like the Japanese, do we believe that government is infallible, as if
government authority were an extension of family authority.
Americans are not Canadians either. We are unlike both the strict
Quebecoise and the English-speaking subjects of the British monarch.
Americans are different and require different rules and laws.
Maybe when we Americans learn to responsibly manage our guns, and our
drugs, and our automobiles, or any other of the dangerous things in life,
maybe then we will know who we are.
For Perspective, this is Hugh Downs, ABC News.
*******
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed
a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research
and educational purposes only.
