So, Nicolas, this gun is evil! Why is that so?
Well here is Nikolai's picture of a fake gun:
Is the picture of the fake gun, with the title "An excericise in Futility" a comment on the ownership of guns as a means to control violence and defend civil society?
You obviously feel that the gun is itself evil. I try to see your point of view by placing myself back in Europe for the perspective of this discussion.
France, (a cradle that received and absorbed fundamental British logic and philosophy on the nature of man's inherent rights which lead to the French ideas on democracy), has much on its collective conscience. The French, I postulate, have, beneath their civility, guilt and pain.
- The endless chain of executions by the French Revolution: the State at the bequest of the people and the people at the bequest of the State. Yesterday's saviors became today’s accusers and tomorrow's traitors and were in turn beheaded.
- The suffering by feudalism, kings and Napoleon, himself, spreading war through Europe and wasting France's young.
- The wounds of two humiliating periods of the German Occupations of the 20th century
France however, feels that with all it has suffered it has given back far more to the world in terms of the remarkable ideas of
Liberty, Egalité and Fraternité and therefore,
social justice, that in a real way, French Culture can and
should be recognized as a source of insight and a pathway to human dignity.
The French, then, if they indeed have a delusion, it's that clear thinking, balance of judgment and civilization radiates from L'Etoile (through the configuration of 12 avenues leading from the most famous triumphal architecture in the modern world, the Arc de Triomphe).
The British too, nursing the wounds of implosion inflicted by one barefoot, unarmed Indian, also waft poetic about uneeded wars and righteousness, as if virtue can be distilled from convienience, self-interest and a strong U.K. currency.
Both the British and the French news services project their national sense of right and wrong!
On the BBC, and on the French news they talk, respectively, of decisions made in the "10 downing Street" or the "Quai d'Orsay" (in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, part of the left bank of the Seine) as if the world is just waiting for their pronouncements. That is sadly past!
Still, both the British and the French have a feeling that they are considerably more measured in what they do. The both have a better understanding of human nature and responsibility than the Americans. We are in fact viewed as 50 years behind the times except in movies and video games. We are considered as steeped in a mentality where having a gun means something and therefore, in private or through the State becomes the solution.
In a way, it's the idea that the USA is somehow unable to separate the Lone Ranger and John Wayne characters from real civil life where there are many more options than just pulling out a gun or calling up the U.S. cavalry.
So I understand when Nicolas considers a gun evil, it's from the modern, forward-looking, hopeful European perspective. In that constrained context, of course, he is correct.
A gun, he'd answer is made to kill, a car not!
To, me, however, I see Europe as being in a giant "delusionorium", in a drunkenness of hope, (with perhaps a shot of deceit, that, unfortunately, does not deal with the programmed genetics of man, "
The Ape" who happens to be able to use a Palm Pilot!
Wishful thinking wont make man civil. We need to work on this from the earliest moments in life and excuse no culture from basic values of treasuring all life. If we could do that, who's need to own a gun, except mounted next to the stuffed lions, bears, deer and moose we once hunted, eons ago.
Right now, a couple of hundred automatic weapons would save the lives of thousands of black Darfur Africans who, in the next year, will be hacked or shot to death and before that, their daughters violated before their eyes.
So, in the absence of development of universal respect for each other, guns, unfortunately are still needed, just for the next 10,000 years or until we finally blow ourselves off the face of the planet!
Asher
