GUNSENSE

UNLOVABLE VICTIMS: MORE FROM THE NRA'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE

Victims?  Let's talk about victims.

But not your normal run-of-the-mill victims.  

I want to talk about those victims the NRA has left in its wake as it engineered and fabricated the ludicrous idea that the Second Amendment is now under siege.

Really?  The Second Amendment under siege?

It's not complicated.  If the Second Amendment is under siege, then that siege has been one of the most spectacularly unsuccessful sieges in American legal history.  

The Supreme Court has done nothing but expand, and expand dramatically, the Amendment's reach in its last two decisions in 2008 and 2010.  

Concealed carry is now legal in all 50 states.  The Second Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, does indeed allow individual citizens to own guns for their personal self-defense.  Over half of the states now have some version of Stand Your Ground laws.

In short, the Second Amendment has a greater reach now than at any at time in recent American history.  

Shooting someone in America, and getting away with it, is more feasible now in more states than it has been in decades.

So if leaving your house in the morning involves getting your car keys, grabbing your lunch, and packing your Sig Sauer so you can protect yourself from the crazed, murderous paranoiacs that you see everywhere—maybe even at Starbucks as you grab your skinny vanilla latte—then you're a happy American these days.  

The Second Amendment has been very, very good to you.  Wherever you go, so too does your 9 mm.

Those who believe, then, in the Besieged Second Amendment theory have been victimized by the gun manufacturers and the gun lobbies who need desperately for this myth to grow and prosper. Their livelihood depends on it.

But let me be clear.  These particular victims are not the majority of the members of the NRA; they are not the hunters; they are not the quietly responsible gun-owners in America that walked through my gun-owning, gun-toting boyhood.  (You can read more about those folks and that boyhood here.)

I am speaking of the radical fringe, the so-called Insurrectionists or Militia members, who offer up those counterfeit quotations from Thomas Jefferson and tell you that they've "read" American history.

As victims go, they're hard to love.

We have always had these folks among us, but these folks have not always had social media. And the NRA has not always had such open access to them.  They have proven to be a target-rich environment, to use the appropriate metaphor, for the NRA.

So as I said, not your run-of-the-mill victims, but victims all the same, who have been convinced that the Amendment that protects one of their passions—owning guns and building their identity on that particular ownership—is fading away.

Any form of gun control, then, threatens their identity.  And having one's identity threatened—however it's configured—is unsettling, at least.

So these folks become loyal apostles of the gun lobbyists who feed them their lines and even more importantly, shore up their self-conceptions by accommodating their fantasies.  Loyal footsoldiers, literally, in the defense of a fantasy.  

And incidentally, loyal brokers in making money for the gun industry.

The real story—that the Second Amendment is safer, more expansive, and more influential on daily American life than it ever has been—does not sit well with their seige mentality.  

Nor with the profit margins of the gun industry.  And that's the problem. 

THREE-YEAR-OLD DEAD IN CABOT: INADEQUATE THOUGHTS ON A TRAGEDY

I learned today that on Sunday, July 21, a three-year old in Cabot, Arkansas—a few hours south from where I write this—found a 9 mm handgun, picked it up, and fired it, shooting and killing himself.

As the father of a three-year-old, I can't imagine the grief that has visited the family of this little boy. My condolences, my deepest condolences, go out to those who loved him, who cared for him, and are now asking themselves unspeakably difficult questions. 

Tragedies of this nature occur every day in America, and I keep silent about them.  But I personalized this one because it happened close to my home-town, and because it assaulted so cleanly and forcefully my own sense of responsible fatherhood. I was moved by it in ways that, say, Joe Nocera's blog, doesn't move me.  I visit Nocera's blog every day, and it leaves me simply numb. 

But only numb.

I am not numb now.  I know—and knowing, particularly where guns are concerned, can be a form of grieving too—that a 9 mm is one of the most popular caliber handguns in America.  And I know that having children is even more popular than having 9 mm's.

And I know that in this case these two activities came together, and the result was catastrophic. 

I know further that everyone concerned with the issue of guns and children in America would do anything at all to return to Sunday morning before this tragedy occurred and quarantine those two activities in Cabot, Arkansas, so that the one never encroached on the other.  

So that having guns never touched having children.  So that this tragedy never occurred.

I know that all of us agree on this issue.

And I do not want to disagree on anything now.  

I do not want to discuss the Second Amendment. Or James Madison. Or Thomas freakin' Jefferson. Or the NRA.  Or Manchin-Toomey. Or an assault-weapons bans. Or clip sizes. Or background checks, state militia, or even insurrectionists.

I do not want to discuss Ted Nugent.

I want to discuss the difficult challenges all parents face in raising their children safely in America.

But everything I would say is already clear and present to those of you who are reading this, whether you are a parent or not, and so saying it would only further divert us from the task at hand:  grieving for this little boy and those left behind to shoulder this grief, and knowing at the deep place where inevitability is the informing mood that we will, working together as a people who stand against violence, solve this hideous problem.

Related articles

So You Want a Concealed Carry Permit? Read Heidi Yewman First. Please?

SO YOU WANT A CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT? READ HEIDI YEWMAN FIRST. PLEASE?

You might remember the dustup with Heidi Yewman and Ms. Magazine?  The gun-rights radicals came out in droves when the magazine published Yewman's first installment and left the kinds of comments that I expect from them—anger, fear, paranoia, violence, threats . . . the whole nine yards of NRA culture. Ms. Magazine decided to cancel the series until a petition launched by The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence convinced the magazine to do otherwise.  

The remaining installments, however, are now up on The Daily Beast. I'm told that Ms. Yewman decided to give it to the Beast even though Ms. Magazine offered to run the remaining articles. 

We need more essays like Ms. Yewman's, and I'd recommend that everyone have a look at them. Neither a gun-lobbyist nor a gun-grabber, Ms. Yewman simply followed the laws required in her state to get a Concealed Carry license, bought a gun, and carried it for a month. And she records her observations on having done so.

The gun issue, of course, is a divisive one. We are accustomed to watching the various sides of the debate lob the predictable statistics and quotations at the opposing side. It can get tiring, particularly after you've made up your own mind, and especially if you're not engaged in the legislative and lobbying arenas where these necessary debates occur. 

My own feeling is that Yewman speaks for the majority of Americans on this one, for those who don't have a Concealed Carry license, have heard the debates, and wondered how it might affect their lives if they had such a license and carried a weapon with them wherever and whenever they could. 

Most significantly, Ms. Yewman speaks to the onerous responsibility that ought to accompany carrying a gun, but that in this country often goes unmentioned. Of course, the gun lobbies don't want to have this discussion because the classes required to receive the Concealed Carry license are, across the board, dangerously inadequate. More on that later.

After bringing her gun home, with her new license, Yewman recalls a few unnerving statistics: 

A gun in a home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than kill someone in self-defense. With over 200 million guns in our country, most in our homes, it’s no wonder that over 19,000 people in America die from suicide and accidental death by a gun every year. So I decided to keep the gun in a locked safe when I was home. But that didn't seem to soften my worry and overall anxiousness.

I won't tell you how the last installment comes to its logical end. But I will encourage you to read each of the sections here.  And thanks to Ms. Yewman for undertaking this project.

Ms. Yewman crystallized for me several convictions I hold about handguns and self-defense, and I'll close with them.

If you decide to apply for a Concealed Carry permit, I believe that the gun you are then allowed to carry should become your obsession, in much the same way that a professional athlete's sport becomes the athlete's obsession. 

It's pretty simple, really.  If you take self-defense seriously enough to buy a gun and get the permit to carry it, then you must also take seriously the preparation required to use that weapon effectively and safely. If you don't, the statistics that you will hurt yourself or others are daily mounting against you. 

And I cannot repeat this enough—no state in the Union, in my opinion, gives you the training that will adequately prepare you to take another life in self-defense. You will have to procure that for yourself after you are licensed to begin taking the lives of those whom you deem a threat to your own.  So make certain that the seriousness you muster when you get that license is maintained in the training program that you create for yourself after you get the license. 

And always remember this: If you are getting your license for self-defense, you are getting your license so that you might potentially take another life. Three points to bear in mind as you undertake the training that prepares you to start taking lives whenever you feel called upon to do so: 

1. You should train constantly with your weapon—at least 4-5 times a week for a couple of hours each session, both on the shooting range and at home, with stationary and moving targets. You will want to create the violent scenarios that you will confront as you protect yourself from the imminent threats you've identified.  You will also want to map out the appropriate responses that you learn from a trained specialist or soldier who has had the requisite experience in urban shooting. (Urban shooting is the environment that will confront you when engaged in this kind of self-defense, and it is a very complex and constantly changing environment.) You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and your fellow citizens to prepare yourself for the violent engagements that drove you to buy your handgun.  That, at least, seems clear. If you don't, innocent people stand a good chance of being injured or killed.
2. You should become familiar with tactical shooting and instantaneous threat assessment because you're not getting a Concealed Carry permmit to shoot skeet on a manicured lawn. You're getting this license to protect yourself, both at home and in public places, and if you don't have the proper expertise to undertake these fundamental calculations of armed response, you will endanger yourself and others who are around you at the time that you are attacked. As one of my friends told me—a sniper in Afghanistan and veteran of the US Army—"Using a handgun is like using a difficult foreign language. The moment you stop using it, your skills begin to diminish."  Take-home:  purchasing a weapon and undergoing the classes for a Concealed Carry permit do not qualify you responsibly to defend yourself. Remember—you have received your Concealed Carry permit so that you can defend yourself from the violent attacks that you fear will come your way, and with this in mind this old adage should become your mantra:  "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
3. You should understand, through studying the proper sources, the psychology complex killing—because if you fulfill the purpose for which you are arming yourself, you might have to take someone's life.  And while the gun lobby never addresses this problem, of course, the Veterans Administration strives on a daily basis to help our veterans handle the fact that they have killed, or witnessed first-hand the culture that was designed to foster efficient killing.  For your own sanity you must ask yourself the following question:  What makes you think that, having taken another's life in self-defense, you will escape the psychological difficulties that are currently afflicting many of our soldiers who have taken lives in defense of their country? Luckily, you have at your disposal a wealth of literature on these grim topics, and you should avail yourself of this material as part of your daily regimen. If you've never killed anyone intentionally, it is even more important that you start working your way through these sources as soon as you purchase your gun.  Taking a life will be like journeying to a remote and forbidding country, and you need a roadmap before you start out on that difficult journey.

Self-defense with a handgun is serious business, and it might be the most serious business you ever undertake. I mean, let's face it. When Calvin Johnson drops a ball, the odds are pretty good that you or someone else in your immediate vicinity are not going to die because he dropped it.

But when you drop your 9 MM Sig Sauer in your first Starbucks firefight, your odds of surviving that mistake are not very good. 

So go get your Concealed Carry license, and then start your training program. And consider yourself a professional athlete as you design your daily workout because your life, or someone's life whom you love dearly, might depend on on that training program.

 

 

VIDEO: OBAMA SPEAKS OUT ON RACE IN AMERICA: VIOLENCE WOULD DISHONOR TRAYVON

Here's the video from Obama's press conference today, in which he spoke very personally about race and nonviolence in America. The way forward. Thank you, President Obama for this effort on the behalf of nonviolence, race, and Trayvon Martin.

GUEST POST: DID GEORGE ZIMMERMAN AND HIS GUN MAKE HIS NEIGHBORHOOD SAFE

The following post is by S.K. Boss, Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas. Professor Boss is a member of Arkansans Against Guns on Campus, one of the organizations that successfully resisted Arkansas legislation to put guns on the campuses of our institutions of higher education. With the opt out clause added to Act 226, Arkansas colleges and universities have, to date, unanimously refused to allow faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons on our campuses. 

Note:  Gunsense welcomes guest posts from our readers. Send us an idea or a draft, and we'll respond.

In the aftermath of acquittal in Zimmerman vs. State of Florida this week, the nation continues its over 200-year search for the meaning of ‘justice’ as a child victim of gun violence remains forever lost and his assailant is freed by juried decree. 

Of course, it is appropriate for our nation to ask many questions about this case, its representation of ‘justice’, and Constitutional provisions for equal protection under law.  But as we ask these many questions, it is important that we focus on asking the right questions. 

There are so many questions we can ask for which we will never find answers. Questions particularly about what transpired on a dark, rainy night in a Florida gated community cannot be answered adequately with the information we have at hand—the statements of the sole survivor of the incident, recordings of 911 calls to the Sanford police, incomplete observations of residents who heard but did not see the commotion . . . all of these offer us woefully incomplete pieces of a puzzle for which the many missing pieces will never be found – hence, reasonable doubt and the verdict so rendered.

 In order that we might seek answers and deeper meaning to this case, I wish to offer a different, as of yet unexplored, set of questions for which I think the objective, evidence-based answers are clear.  I begin this exploration below by posing the question that is the title of this essay:

 Did George Zimmerman and his gun make his neighborhood safe?

After all, this was the ultimate justification offered by Mr. Zimmerman for his actions. His neighborhood watch program was organized to enhance neighborhood security, and he believed it was his civic responsibility to volunteer assistance to this program.

So, again, did Mr. Zimmerman and his gun make his neighborhood safe? 

Trayvon Martin was visiting in the neighborhood when Mr. Zimmerman killed him.  Trayvon Martin was not safe as a visitor in the neighborhood. That night, neighborhood residents were genuinely disturbed and fearful of the commotion occurring just beyond their doorways (evidently not feeling at all safe) and called 911. These calls document their insecurity.  Despite his gun, Mr. Zimmerman was injured in the encounter on February 26, 2012 and he was later charged with 2^nd degree murder and manslaughter.  It’s been reported that he was fearful for his life during the 17 months leading up to the trial, and remains fearful since his acquittal.  Did his gun keep him safe?

And what of the neighborhood of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida? Let us reflect on the incidence of gun violence in the neighborhood before, during, and after Mr Zimmerman’s participation in the neighborhood watch program. Empirically, we know Mr. Zimmerman became the agent of gun violence in the neighborhood.  Thus, Mr. Zimmerman became what the residents of the neighborhood most feared rather than making the neighborhood safe.

The single statement that reverberates in my memory from this case belongs to the Sanford police dispatcher instructing Mr. Zimmerman to not follow Trayvon Martin.  Imagine the neighborhood had these words been heeded: “We don’t need you to do that."

 

THANKS FOR YOUR RESPONSE. THAT IS ALL I HAVE TO SAY.

As with anyone who spends time on Twitter or Facebook or any of the other social-media platforms that engage too much of our time, I receive responses that take issue with what I have said or posted. Most of these are reasonable and well-intentioned, and I respond to as many of them as I can. However, some commentators—and their numbers seem to be growing, at least on my platforms—differ with my opinions in ways that I find unproductive and time-consuming. They fall into three categories, and I list them here:

1. THE ILL-INFORMED. These people are so ill-informed that responding to them is pointless. As Auden once said about reviewing in general—"You can't review a bad book without showing off"—so I would say the same thing about responding to the ill-informed: If I answer them, I'll show off. I used to be a show-off in other arenas, and it got me nowhere. Proviso for those who would accuse me of hypocrisy: I am also aware that those who write these comments feel the same about my own comments. All the more reason, then, not to open a dialogue. Some gaps cannot be bridged.
2. THE INFORMED & ANGRY. Commentators in this category are informed, but angry, aggressive, and to my way of thinking, narrow-minded. They have mastered a body of information, called it quits, and are declaiming their truth from that perspective. All of us are guilty of this to varying degrees, but anger, when it is present, makes discussion impossible. So why respond?
3. THE INFORMED & BUT NEEDING SUPPORT THAT ISN'T FORTHCOMING. Well informed, well intentioned, and sincerely offered—these are the folks that are the most difficult to ignore, but I do so because they speak to issues that can't be productively discussed in a series of 140-character responses. If these commentators can refer me to a book they have written, or an article, or even a blog that gives me the details of their opinion, then I'll read it, and the chances are greater that I'll respond. I have always tried to support my tweets with my blogs, but I've found that arm-chair tweeters often don't feel compelled to defend their ideas in other forums. I respect that decision, of course.


Our time is precious. But because our time is precious, I've decided that complexity and Twitter don't get along very well. So if these folks are neither willing nor able to refer me to a fuller expression of their ideas, then, as I said, our time is precious.

Posted with Blogsy

BECAUSE GOOD NEWS MATTERS: NO GUNS, NO MILITIA, NO DEBT RIOTS

This is not a story about racial hatred. No shots were fired.  And a life was potentially saved. And nobody's Second Amendment rights were infringed, compromised, questioned, or threatened.

Clint Eastwood, or his wannabe double, never even showed up. And still, order was maintained, a little girl was saved.

So the story probably won't get much press.

Because so much of the NRA's rhetoric trades on fear, racism, and apocalyptic predictions about the future of America, and because the media, both liberal and conservative, consistently report the tragedies and ignore the triumphs that regularly distinguish American life, I thought it might be useful to pause a moment and take note of what happened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday, July 11.

A five-year old girl, Jocelyn Rojas, was allegedly kidnapped. Her mother duly reported that her daughter was missing. Pictures of the abducted girl were spread around the community. Procedures were followed. Temar Boggs and his friend, Chris, both of them teenagers, saw the pictures and started out on their bikes to look for the little girl.

They didn't call up a militia. They didn't feel that the police had taken too long to respond.

And then they saw the the little girl in a maroon or burgundy-colored sedan and started out in pursuit. On their bikes. Without guns. Without concealed carry licenses. Without making dire predictions about derelict, irresponsible, unarmed citizens.

A young black man and his friend helping to rescue a young white girl—if the picture is accurate—and none of them cared about race, black helicopters, or the coming debt riots. Or even Latin American drug gangs.  

The abductor saw the two boys, who chased him for fifteen minutes, until thinking better of his rash and violent actions, freed the girl at the bottom of a hill. The little girl told Temar that "she needed her mother." 

Temar granted her request. Mother and daughter were reunited. Without guns. Without an insurrection. Without a race war. Without paranoia.

Without much press coverage. Read the full story here.

My point is a simple one. This stuff happens on a daily basis in America, and it happens more frequently than debt riots. 

The NRA's profile, if you will, of the human animal, and more specifically, of the American animal, is simply wrong.  We know why they choose to profile us as they do.  The arms industry needs money.  

So we continually remind ourselves that most Americans are neither the paranoid, fearful insurrectionist, armed-to-the-teeth civilian soldier nor the deranged, serial, campus-stalking murderer—the two species of Americans that the NRA has identified.

And in the current climate, Jocelyn and Temar's story won't get much air time. Because it wasn't about race, and it wasn't about guns, and it wasn't about fear, and it wasn't about hatred, and it wasn't about paranoia.

It's a boring story of two guys on bikes looking for a little girl. And they succeeded.

Not all stories end this well, but when they do, I think we need to celebrate them. 

We are not who the NRA think we are. We are the very best at what we do—living decent, unarmed lives, looking out for one another without fear or suspicion, day in and day out—and stories like this one remind us of that simple, salient and national fact. 

Thanks, Temar, for welcoming all of us, once again, to the real America.

It's a pleasure to live here.

MS. MAGAZINE REVERSES DECISION TO CANCEL YEWMAN'S SERIES ON GUN VIOLENCE

Ms. Magazine has announced its decision to publish, as originally scheduled, a three-part series of articles on gun violence by Heidi Yewman. This new decision comes in the wake of the magazine's having announced that it would cancel the series after it received hostile and threatening responses to its first installment, which you can read here.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence floated a petition, which I signed, urging Ms. Magazine not to give in to these threats, and as a result of this petition and other factors too, I suspect, the magazine announced that it would continue to publish Ms. Yewman's work. You can read CSGV's statement here.

There's a lot to celebrate in this little engagement. First, kudos to Ms. Magazine for commissioning the pieces from Ms. Yewman and to CSGV for getting together the petition when the magazine momentarily faltered. And to the citizens who signed the petition in support not only of gunsense and the free sharing of information, but of the press's fundamental freedoms as well—to them I would say simply, "You made a difference."

And finally, another nod to Ms. Magazine for listening to its readers and reversing its course.

As the magazine said in its statement, "shying away from controversy" is not part of its history. Intimidation and bullying, of course, have long been staples of the NRA campaign, and here this kind of angry and threatening response to a civil and responsible piece of journalism was successfully defeated by the readers of the magazine.

Score one, then, for civility, strength, and responsible resistance to intimidation.

Thank you, Ms. Magazine and CSGV!

Keep up the good work!

BACK FROM INDIA: REFLECTIONS ON GUNS, NONVIOLENCE, AND DREAMING THE DREAMS THAT WILL KEEP US ALIVE

Sidney Burris and Geshe Thupten Dorjee

I recently returned from India, where I lived for three weeks in the Tibetan refugee settlements that lay scattered from Drepung Loseling Monastery in the south to Delhi in the north, and even farther north, in Dharamsala. I went to India with my friend and teacher, Geshe Thupten Dorjee, and 17 University of Arkansas students who are helping gather the stories of the Tibetans who are currently living in exile in India. These stories comprise an oral-history project at the University of Arkansas called The TEXT Program (an anacronym for Tibetans in Exile Today).  This was my fifth trip to India living with the Tibetans, and as always, I returned with a different India in mind, as well as a different notion of the Tibetans' struggles.

Before I left, several of my colleagues and I at the University of Arkansas had spent the previous five months struggling to keep guns off of our campus—currently, forty-six Arkansas institutions have voted on Act 226, and forty-six institutions have declined to allow faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons. While it was a difficult period for all of us who were involved in the campaign, it's heartening to see that our university communities have spoken out unanimously against our legislators and their top-down legislation.

I went to India, then, with guns on my mind, and I'll confess that I was relieved to spend a few weeks in a country that isn't as obsessed with guns as America currently seems to be. India, of course, has its share of debilitating problems, and living in the refugee settlements, I saw them regularly: inadequate housing, a crumbling infra-structure, homelessness, pollution, over-crowding, sanitation . . . all of these issues confronted us on a daily basis.  India also has a long-standing relationship with religious terrorism, as the recent attacks at Bodh Gaya dramatically illustrate.

So I'm not going to romanticize India, even though the Beatles introduced me to the subcontinent decades ago, and I could excuse myself for doing so. All I can say is this:  on my fifth trip to India, I noticed a couple of things I should have noticed on my first trip.  The reason I did not previously pay attention to these things, I guess, is because they were so obvious. But because they are so obvious, they are deeply connected to Indian culture, as guns are connected to American culture. They're cultural clichés, in one sense, but they became clichéd for a reason.

So I thought I'd share these observations because, for me, at least, they demonstrate to
Americans the kinds of things that remain within the realm of possibility, even though violence seems to be more and more a part of our daily life. 

1. It doesn't matter where you go in India, the truck stops, tea shops, and cheapest lodgings in the middle of nowhere hang hand-lettered signs that simply say, "Veg and non-veg options." I'm not suggesting that the truck drivers who order up a dal fry are highly principled, articulate, and devoted adherents to the long tradition of ahimsa, or nonviolence, that distinguishes their country, but I am saying that the attempt to avoid the unnecessary spilling of blood in pursuit of human nutrition is part of the fabric of Indian life. Once this simple idea finds its footing, the other decisions we make—about how we confront others, how we envision our collective futures, things like that—will see compassion as an increasingly important component in making those decisions. Valuing all sentient life becomes part of our climate and is no longer quarantined as a potentially interesting, though radical, decision a few of us might make.
2. The cow thing is for real:  they're everywhere.  On the interstates, walking through intersections, wandering into shops and homes, and no one—I mean no one—would dream of hassling them.  Cows have been revered in India for thousands of years, and they figure prominently in India's sacred iconography.  Part of this reverence stems from the fact that they provide milk and cream, as well as sheer labor.  Tractors can't negotiate the soaked rice fields that cows negotiate with relative ease, and so cows have gained a reputation of being labor-saving, food-providers that deserve protection. Modern science supports the ecology behind the protection extended to cows—meat is a dramatically inefficient way to get protein—and so I am always struck by this confluence of ancient spirituality and contemporary sustainability that accompanies every cow down every back alley of India. These meandering cows speak to the same Indian reverence for life, or cow-life, at least, that I mentioned above. The simple optics of the thing—cows wandering through the nation's capital—demonstrate that all forms of life, from the Indian perspective, deserve and demand respect and preservation. This is yet another face of Indian nonviolence.
3. Finally, let me offer this proviso. I realize that poverty, radical income inequities, and a health care system that is unavailable to the lower rungs of a population are all forms of violence. I realize that India suffers from these kinds of violence.  Also, I know that India is
   

   Geshe Dorjee and tutelary spirit
   not Shambhala, nor was meant to be. But I also know that we do not measure a country's potential solely by its current socio-economic data. We also plumb its essence by looking at its dreams, and everywhere in India, I find the dream-residue of nonviolence.  I find the deeply held conviction, no matter how that conviction is currently faring, that both violence and nonviolence are choices that we make, and that when we make these choices, we must also be aware of the consequences that ride those choices and surely, inevitably, dismount at our doorsteps. In short: the world that we see around us is the world that we have made.  No excuses.  And we had best get used to the second person plural, "we," because that is our new sense of community ably represented by a very old grammatical form. If this is a special kind of awareness that seems in short supply in America just now, I can only say that India has been cultivating this awareness for millennia. We've got only a couple of centuries behind us.  So I'll cut us a little slack.  But I'll look to our elders in India to remind me, on a daily basis, that violence, and whatever policies, weapons, or programs encourage its growth in our culture, must be resisted, now and for as long as we wish to nourish our own American dreams of a civil and harmonious nation built on self-respect and liberty. 

There's nothing left for us to do.  We shouldn't draw such hard lines between our dreams and our realities. Besides, it's time for us to start dreaming again.

 

DOCUMENTARY ON GUN VIOLENCE AIRING AT OMNI CENTER, FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS

On July 14, 7:00 pm, at the Omni Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a documentary film on gun violence will be shown. The film is entitled Living for 32 and refers to the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. The film is by Colin Goddard, a survivor of the shooting, who will be available for discussion after the film through a Skype connection.  

You can download the flyer here.

Please disseminate this information widely, as this promises to be an enlightening evening, particularly as we approach the 2014 Senatorial elections in Arkansas.