Media Display Schizophrenia Over Guns at Home and Abroad
November 1, 2003
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
Regular New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert reveals himself as a stereotypical anti-gunner in an Oct. 13 opinion piece entitled “The NRA Is Naming Names.”
Herbert’s piece is about the National Rifle Association (NRA) website listing of organizations, companies and celebrities who have demonstrated public anti-gun philosophies or endorsed specific gun control proposals at the request of its members. Herbert seems to equate such listings as symptoms of what he considers NRA’s paranoia.
“The National Rifle Association doesn’t call it an enemies list, but deep in the recesses of the organization’s website is a long, long compilation of the names of groups and individuals that the NRA considers unfriendly,” Herbert noted.
“I’m happy to report that I’m on the list, but my name is truly one among very many,” he continued. “The AFL-CIO is there, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Children’s Defense Fund and the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs are there. The United States Catholic Conference, the US Conference of Mayors and the YWCA of the USA are all there.
“Among the celebrities on the list are Dr. Joyce Brothers, Candice Bergen, Walter Cronkite, Doug Flutie, Michelle Pfeiffer, Vinny Testaverde, Moon Zappa and the Temptations.
“Also on the list are the Kansas City Chiefs, Hallmark Cards, the Sara Lee Corporation, Ben & Jerry’s, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.
“I’m sure there’s a method to the NRA madness, but to tell you the truth, all I can see is the madness.”
Herbert’s Denial
“All of the groups and individuals listed are supposed to be anti-gun. I can’t speak for the Kansas City Chiefs or Moon Zappa, but I’m not anti-gun,” Herbert claimed before he continued. “I think soldiers, the police and certain other law enforcement officials should have guns. Civilians, however, should be required to demonstrate a good reason for having firearms. We should go to great lengths to keep guns out of the hands of children, criminals and insane people. All guns should be registered. And all gunowners should be properly trained and licensed.”
How a supposedly thoughtful person can claim not to be anti-gun when they support registration of all guns in private hands and a demonstration of need to acquire and keep any gun is beyond me. Perhaps this is a further example of anti-gun schizophrenia, like that of monster.com billionaire Andrew McKelvey and his Americans for Gun Safety (AGS). McKelvey’s group doesn’t deny being anti-gun as Herbert did; it claims to be pro-gun. But McKelvey, AGS and Herbert all march lockstep with the Brady Bunch.
How they can have read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without understanding any of it escapes me.
Herbert concluded his Oct. 13 column with a pitch for at least continuing the Clinton gun ban, unless there is an opportunity to win even more of his anti-gun agenda.
Kosovo
But The New York Times is not the only major newspaper whose writers blame guns for so much of the world’s violence. Writing from Kosovo on Sept. 26 The Christian Science Monitor’s Arie Farnam managed to link grenades, rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launchers and explosives with common individual small arms. Farnam’s report, which also reflects the inability of the United Nations to deal with home-grown violence in any country, is about a teacher killed by a grenade but is headlined “Gun culture stymies the UN in Kosovo.”
“The victim was a schoolteacher, killed by a grenade as he sat in a grocery store in the village of Cernica in eastern Kosovo,” Farnam began.
But Farnam tied that incident to the headline by continuing with “. . . Radusha Brankica a fellow teacher, cried and pleaded, “I can’t take any more of this violence. With grenades and guns everywhere, how can we stop the killing?”
“The blast this month was part of a recent rash of weekly shootings and explosions that are raising international concern over uncontrolled weapons in this UN protectorate,” Farnam continued.
Some statistics were provided, which, while interesting, further demonstrate an inability of the UN and many others to differentiate between small arms in a war zone and individual arms for defense of homes and families where domestic tranquility is non-existent.
“A recent United Nations study estimates there are about half a million small arms in Kosovo, primarily illegal weapons held by civilians. In a province of 2 million people, almost every family is armed—a legacy of ethnic strife here and a threat to efforts to stabilize the province,” Farnam continued.
“Kosovo was flooded with weapons in 1997 after rioters looted military armories in neighboring Albania. Many of the pilfered arms went to the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was waging a guerrilla war against Serb rule over this primarily ethnic-Albanian province. In return, Serbian security forces issued machineguns to Serb paramilitaries and ordinary farmers alike. The conflict culminated in a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that forced Serb soldiers to leave and put the province under UN administration.
“The proliferation of arms has the rest of Europe worried,” Farnam continued. “For the first time, Kosovo is now a net exporter of weapons, primarily those smuggled to Albanian gangs and organized crime in Italy, Greece, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
“Some countries have a mafia, but in Kosovo, the mafia has a country,” Farnam quoted one American security official in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Especially with the increased activity of Islamic extremists and al Qaeda groups in and around Kosovo, this situation could pose a real security threat to Europe.”
Not surprising, considering the UN agenda regarding civilian gun ownership, the UN administration of Kosovo has mounted a massive anti-arms campaign, and declared another month-long amnesty for civilians to turn in illegal and unregistered arms without penalty. Farnam reported that billboards and posters depicting a child holding out a rose toward the shadowy figure of a man with a machinegun have multiplied across the countryside, along with UN information stands and weapons-collection teams provided by KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force there. In a place where no wedding is complete without celebratory gunfire, anyone caught with an illegal weapon after the end of September was expected to face eight years in prison.
Peacekeeping
NATO-led forces, including many Americans, imposed an uneasy peace in Kosovo four years ago, and the UN was put in charge of establishing order and supervising reconstruction. But the troops are still there, the UN is still trying to set-up a global-oriented model government, and the violence continues.
These are the same people who are having a hard time in Iraq, where there is a real gun culture that is beyond the understanding of most of the UN and US and allied military personnel. Iraq is another country where ownership of firearms is a mark of citizenship even if not of freedom as we know it in the US.
In Iraq, a country that didn’t exist until after World War I but where there exists a long history of Arabic/Islamic self-reliance, the people shoot guns in the air to mark special occasions such as weddings and births of new family members. They also consider firearms and swords as the surest means of protecting oneself, one’s family and one’s property from unwanted attack.
The military forces of other countries, especially the British and many Americans otherwise conditioned to view any display of firearms as a threat, are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the allies want to restore some semblance of national order and gain willing civilian support while eliminating the constant danger of terrorist or guerilla attack to allied forces. On the other, if they attempt to separate all Iraqis from their prized small arms, they will fuel further resistance and violence.
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