Room for a view

See no Evil, Hear No Evil

By Lorna Tychostup

Guns have always been present in my life. In my younger years, my uncles would take out their war relics for proud display at family events. “This is a Mauzer,” my Uncle Henry would snarl at us little ones. “You shoot it at the bad guys...”
In 1962, at six years of age I began a lifelong journey with my first gun-related tragedy. My family began spending vacations on a dairy farm in what possibly could have been the smallest town in Pennsylvania. The farmer’s 16-year-old son had been out hunting the previous year with a dentist’s son—a city boy—who shooting at what he thought was an animal in the brush, instead shot the farmer’s son. Severely wounded, the boy ran more than a mile back to his house where he died in his mother’s arms.
This story still brings tears to my eyes.
As the years passed, I came to love the dead boy’s horse, Trigger. While galloping wildly through the fields, I always wondered about who he might have been and how a little education could have saved his life.
When my own son was five I heard another gun story on the radio: something about an isolated family farm in the Midwest. After the men had left for the fields, a gun-wielding man showed up and started roughing up the farmer’s wife. Their six-year-old son grabbed his Dad’s shotgun, pointed it at the man and said, “Leave my Mom alone or I’m gonna blow you away.” The man hesitated. The boy, who had grown up around guns all his life, cocked the shotgun and repeated his request. The man fled.
Another story my Mom told me about. A woman’s car had broken down on the highway. A man stopped, offering her aid, and ended up forcing her into the trunk of his vehicle. Driving to an isolated spot, he opened the trunk—only to be blown away by the handgun that the woman had on her.
No doubt the gun issue is a hot one. Just ask us here at Chronogram, who have spent enormous amounts of energy debating all the related issues since our first reading of Silberger’s viewpoint. Both of my editorial cohorts instantaneously demanded air time to counteract or balance out what they felt was Silberger’s paranoia-charged and leading questions that he asks us, the reader, to ponder.
Silberger wants us to question what he feels are obvious questions in relation to the actions of the media and the government. He wants us to question why are we now subjected to this clamoring for gun control when none of it existed in the not-so-distant 60s.
On March 7, President Clinton asked the nation, “How many people have to get killed before we do something?...When first-graders shoot first-graders, its time for Congress to do what’s right for American families.” He was referring to the recent killing of six-year-old Kayla Rolland by her six-year-old male classmate. The boy lived with his mother and two other men (neither of whom was his father) in what was described in the media as “a drug-infested flophouse.” Clinton’s request of Congress to pass a gun bill by April 20, the first anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings, was nothing short of political drama. His answer to the problem? Child safety locks on all guns, background checks on gun show sales and national licensing of all gun owners, among others. Smirking, Clinton added, “I’m not at all sure that even a callous irresponsible drug dealer with a six-year-old in the house wouldn’t leave a child trigger lock on a gun.”
I don’t think the man who shot his wife to death a block away from my house during my elementary years cared any more about a lock on his gun than my friend’s father, who lived across the street from my house, cared about the plastic bag the nylon stockings came in that he wrapped around the throat of the young nurse whom he strangled to death after raping her. If someone wants to kill, they will—no matter what.
I think it’s a little late for our President to finally think about doing “what’s right for American families.” This latest political fad of using children as a shield from behind which to advance one’s own agenda is nothing less than abusive. According to Yale researcher Dr. John Lott, guns are used to prevent crime five times as often as they are used to commit crime. Clinton’s fear-mongering request of the Congress is yet another action that will, intentionally or not, weaken an individual’s right to defend themselves—whether against a personal attack or against an out-of-control government. I personally don’t want that right diminished.
Six-year-old Kayla Rolland was dead generations before she was born. She was killed by a society which is slowly legislating away its freedom instead of investigating and airing deep-rooted familial abuse and devastation. She was killed by a society unwilling to spend the money to educate, protect and rehabilitate its children and their parents from the abuse handed down though the generations of their families. She was killed, ultimately, by a society refusing to take responsibility for itself.

Fueling the Fire

By Todd Paul

Gas out, gas out. All I hear about these days is the Gasout. Somebody, somewhere in PC-land has decided that we should all avoid filling our tanks on some specific weekend in April… or maybe in March… to show those damn Arabs we won’t stand for high oil prices. Yeah, we’ll show them a thing or two.
Don’t believe it. First of all, the Gasout won’t make a bit of difference. I’ve been advised to fill my tank the day before the blessed event, so that I can continue to drive as much as I like; and of course, we’ll all run out for a refill the day after. Averaged over a week, is this going to make any difference at all? Of course not. We’ll keep driving, so we’ll keep using gasoline at the same rate as always. We’ll just buy it on a different day.
The Gasout won’t work—and it shouldn’t. Gas should be expensive. It’s a non-renewable natural resource, the manufacture, transportation and use of which pollutes the environment. We in this country are spoiled by a long history of artificially low gas prices; Europeans have been paying $3 to $5 per liter for decades. We get cheap gas because every so often we bomb Iran or Iraq, or defend poor little Kuwait. We consume it at a disproportionately high rate. Mass transportation systems in the US are decades behind Europe and Japan. American stockbrokers, doctors and housewives who have never driven off-road in their lives cruise around in sport utility vehicles that get perhaps 12 miles to the gallon—because they can. The results—global warming, air and water pollution, increased highway deaths—are paid for by all of us.
The answer to all this isn’t lower gas prices, and it isn’t an additional tax at the pump that would burden the working poor. What we need is a pollution tax on SUVs, lower emissions standards and some way to make oil companies ante up for development of public transportation systems and alternative fuel technologies and for environmental cleanups. Perhaps somebody should sue them, as has been done with cigarette manufacturers. The lethal legacy of leaded gas alone has placed a heavy burden on our society, as generations of lead-poisoned children require billions in Special Education funding and medical services.
So if someone wants to propose a Driveout—one day a month when we all take the bus, bike or walk—I’ll support it. But not the Gasout. So there.