Riveting. Take the time to look at it, as the photos are iconic and moving. It puts many things into perspective… or at least, it should.
While I accept and acknowledge that sometimes violence is the answer, it’s certainly an ugly answer… and I wish it didn’t have to be an answer. The realist in me carries a gun and studies martial crafts. The idealist in me wants peace and love. The optimist in me strives for that ideal.
In the latest issue of the Tiger Valley newsletter, lead instructor T.J. Pilling recounts what should have been a routine SWAT execution of a warrant. Instead, it went wrong and had potential to go really wrong but thankfully did not.
I thought the final summary of the incident was worth repeating:
How did things go bad? The door was blocked, divert guy hesitated and adrenaline was pumping with everyone involved. The next thing is everyone wants to make up time, which, just like a match, can’t be done. Even the most basic of techniques, like checking your corners went out the window. It was lucky for everyone that the guy behind the door wasn’t armed, since he would have had the drop on the entry team, which missed him on the primary search. When things go bad, stick to the basics, slow down and do things by the book, you can’t catch up on time you already lost.
It’s hard to remember to stick to the basics and slow down, especially when the fur is flying. This is something I struggle with myself. But success comes in mastering and utilizing fundamentals, in all areas of life.
No one’s rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
— Ayn Rand
A few days ago I wrote a brief entry about the shooter at University of Alabama, Huntsville. While the entry itself wasn’t much, it’s generated quite a comment thread.
In writing one reply I was thinking about how great icons of pacifism, like the Dalai Lama, aren’t against guns. In the “Seattle Times” on May 15, 2001 The Dalai Lama was quoted as saying:
If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
Even Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t against guns. He understood they had a place. While I was Googling around to find some quotes, I ran across this page. A gentleman named “Peter C” wrote this:
Up until approximately 1978, I described myself as a Gandhi-an pacifist. As we were leaving an emergency doctor appointment with my doddering old half-blind father, I on one arm and my mother on the other at 11 pm that night, a man larger than any of us came bellowing in our direction — “what is this!? A wedding coming down the street!!” He was obviously… something… drunk? Anyway, I had exactly two emotions at that moment. The first was apprehension. The next was a full-fledged and absolute willingness to die in the protection of my parents. I did not care for my own life _or_his_. Right or wrong, up or down, left or right, green or yellow… I was in that moment pledged to kill or be killed. As it turns out, whether he sensed my resolve, or had a moment of clarity I don’t know, but he nearly instantaneously ceased in his bellowing and harrassment [sic] and went on.
Personally, I have reviewed my personal “peace policies” and frankly, I have a much different view today than at that time. The Indians have had done to them as bad as anything Adolph Hitler is credited in doing to those unfortunate enough to occupy his internment camps. For full documentation of British barbarities, I recommend reading Mike Davis’ “Late Victorian Holocausts” for the full telling. Could guns have prevented these barbarities? I do not know. I know that above the meditation place of the Dalai Lama is a gun. Like most things, the solutions are never one thing. Certainly violence is an act that must be considered in its practical context I believe.
But “evil” seems to be a matter of the human heart, and not born of an implement per se. The implements change, but the heart of evil changes little. Change the heart and you change the implements. I pray that we learn to change our hearts by deep meditation and thus the implements that cause suffering will therefore change to implements that create peace. Meanwhile, let’s stop being so idealistic in our focus upon the implements instead of the deeper causes of unnecessary violence.
It’s the last paragraph that is most relevant.
People want to ban guns because they believe in doing so violence will go away. Sometimes they choose their words to say “gun violence” will go away. Sure, I’ll grant that if there are no guns there would be no gun violence. I mean, we don’t have any Star Trek phasers and consequently we don’t have any phaser violence. Trouble is, while “violence” may be eliminated, “violence” is not. No gun? Fine, they’ll use a knife. Look at the UK. Ban knives? They’ll use sticks. Ban sticks, they’ll use their bare hands. What are you going to do then? Cut off our hands? then we’ll use our feet. Are we then going to cut off our feet? Because once we do that yeah… that might actually finally inhibit things. I know it sounds like a ridiculous extreme, but that is the path it takes. You can ban all the objects you want, but it doesn’t change what’s in the heart of a person. If some person is intent on causing pain and suffering, violence and destruction, they are going to do that even if the only thing they can use is their bare hands.
So yes, let’s stop focusing on the implements and instead start focusing on the deeper causes of unnecessary violence.
Earlier I made mention of two concepts: paranoid, prepared. I think it’s worth elaborating on them.
To some, a particular level of preparedness is paranoia. You carry a gun? You must be paranoid, thinking everyone is evil and bad guys lurk around every corner. You’re storing food and water? Do you think Armageddon is coming? Yes, I can see how some could perceive these two notions as a range, and how one could classify something closer to one or the other. However, I don’t think these two concepts are mutually exclusive nor on a range. Nor do I think someone who is prepared is (necessarily) paranoid.
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Been watching more of VBS.tv, mostly the “Vice Travel Guide” stuff.
When you look at what’s presented to you, when you look deeper, when you read between the lines… you come to realize some things.
The best philosophy in life? Live and let live.
The more we meddle in the affairs of others, the more we prohibit and prevent others from living their lives — even a life we find revolting — from there our problems and conflicts arise.
You live your life, I’ll live mine. I’ll leave you alone, you leave me alone…. unless you ask for it. And that could mean it either way, that you might ask me for help, or you might ask for an ass kicking.
Yes it may mean some people will be living a life that you don’t like, but that’s the way it goes. Instead of worrying so much about how I’m living my life and how much you don’t like it, why don’t you spend your finite time and energy living the life you want instead?
It may also mean that you may not get all the things you want in life. That you may have to do without. I may have something you want, but you find what I do revolting. But instead of passing laws or using other means of force to stop me and thus let you get what I want, you’ll need to find a way that works to our mutual benefit or just learn to do without. Else all you’ll foster in the long-run is more ugliness.
Is this a perfect maxim? No, but it’s a very good guiding principle. We’ve got 6 billion people in this world, and if you really want us all to live in harmony, letting people live their lives so long as they don’t infringe upon yours is a good start towards that harmonious goal.
The difficulty is that we do not see, we do not listen, we do not perceive things directly and simply as they are.
-Krishnamurti
David Kopel has an interesting legal analysis of church (or other place of worship) bans on concealed carry. And this isn’t talking about “free speech”…. remember there’s other things in 1A too.
Moreover, the CHL ban also violates the Establishment clause because it favors some denominations over others. In effect, the statute privileges pacifist denominations over non-pacifist ones, by forcing the non-pacifist religions to obey pacifist standards of conduct in their own houses of worship. This is not only a Free Exercise violation, it is an Establishment clause violation, because it plainly creates the message that the pacifist way of being is the only way of being which the state will allow in any church, anywhere in the boundaries of the state.
It seems in so many ways we create problems because we poke at things too much. Consider the large structuring of laws that got us to even have to consider the above. If those laws were stripped away, we wouldn’t be having this discussion and all involved groups would be able to freely practice whatever it is they believe.
When are we going to learn to sometimes leave things alone?
General George S. Patton:
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
While it came from Gen. Patton, the remark goes well beyond fighting and war to just the general notions of life and death. When people die, all too often those they left behind are stuck on mourning the loss instead of being thankful the person ever lived in the first place. We are so focused on avoiding death, I think sometimes we forget to live. You’ve only so much time and energy in a day, it’s up to you how you want to spend it: dealing with death or dealing with life. I like dealing with life.
Stuff From Hsoi 