"Christopher Michael-Martinez’s Father Gets It Right"

[applegrove]

Christopher Michael-Martinez’s Father Gets It Right

by Adam Gobnik at the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/05/christopher-michael-martinezs-father-gets-it-right.html

"SNIP.......................


I don’t think I’ve ever been as heartbroken by anything as I was, last night, by the video of Richard Martinez, whose twenty-year-old son, Christopher, a college student at the University of California Santa Barbara, had been murdered the day before. Christopher and six others were killed in a mass shooting near campus. That I have a twenty-year-old son who is also a college student makes an empathetic response easy, almost obligatory—but I suspect that many others felt the same way, and that they felt this way because they were hearing a hard truth spoken clearly. Martinez, almost overcome with a grief that he knows and we know will never fade, not for as long as he lives, still struggled to speak sanely in that moment. And so there was something almost heartening amid the heartbreak. Richard Martinez, in the height of his grief, somehow did the hardest thing there is, and that is to find the courage to speak a painful truth: “Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A.,” he said. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this?’ Too many have died. We should say to ourselves: not one more.”


Christopher died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A. That’s true. That the killer in question was in the grip of a mad, woman-hating ideology, or that he was also capable of stabbing someone to death with a knife, are peripheral issues to the central one of a gun culture that has struck the Martinez family and ruined their lives. (The shooter, Elliot Rodger, had three semi-automatic handguns that, according to the Los Angeles Times, he’d purchased legally.) Why did Christopher Michael-Martinez die? Because the N.R.A. and the politicians they intimidate enable people to get their hands on weapons and ammunition whose only purpose is to kill other people as quickly and as lethally as possible. How do we know that they are the ‘because’ in this? Because every other modern country has suffered from the same kinds of killings, from the same kinds of sick kids, and every other country has changed its laws to stop them from happening again, and in every other country it hasn’t happened again. (Australia is the clearest case—a horrific gun massacre, new laws, no more gun massacres—but the same is true of Canada, Great Britain, you name it.)

Martinez’s brave words put me in mind of a simple point, which I failed to make in a long essay about language this week, or didn’t make strongly enough. The war against euphemism and cliché matters not because we can guarantee that eliminating them will help us speak nothing but the truth but, rather, because eliminating them from our language is an act of courage that helps us get just a little closer to the truth. Clear speech takes courage. Every time we tell the truth about a subject that attracts a lot of lies, we advance the sanity of the nation. Plain speech matters because when we speak clearly we are more likely to speak truth than when we retreat into slogan and euphemism; avoiding euphemism takes courage because it almost always points plainly to responsibility. To say “torture” instead of “enhanced interrogation” is hard, because it means that someone we placed in power was a torturer. That’s a hard truth and a brutal responsibility to accept. But it’s so.

Speaking clearly also lets us examine the elements of a proposition plainly. We know that slogans masquerading as plain speech are mere rhetoric because, on a moment’s inspection, they reveal themselves to be absurd. “The best answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” reveals itself to be a lie on a single inspection: the best answer is to not let the bad guy have a gun. “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” No: obviously, people with guns kill more people than people without them. Why not ban knives or cars, which can be instruments of death, too? Because these things were designed to help people do things other than kill people. “Gun control” means controlling those things whose first purpose is to help people kill other people. (I’ve written at length about farmers and hunting rifles, and of how they’re properly controlled in Canada. In any case, if guns were controlled merely as well as cars and alcohol, we’d be a long way along.) And the idea that you can be pro-life and still be pro-gun: if your primary concern is actually with the sacredness of life, then you have to stand with Richard Martinez, in memory of his son.




......................SNIP"

[deathrind]

1. Mr. Martinez is right.

There are plenty of ideas out there to restrict the ability of people to acquire firearms who should not have them (like wait periods to perform comprehensive back ground check, annual registration/permts, requiring some form of liability insurance) that would in no way infringe on the 2nd Amendments "vaguely" stated right to own a "firearm" but we have a congress that is wholly owned (both sides) by big business and their lobbying efforts. Congress is not rudderless...it's rudder is steered by money from organizations like the NRA not common sense.

[billh58]

2. K&R

With special emphasis on this (edited for emphasis) excerpt from the last paragraph in the OP:

"Speaking clearly also lets us examine the elements of a proposition plainly. We know that slogans masquerading as plain speech are mere rhetoric because, on a moment’s inspection, they reveal themselves to be absurd.

The best answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, reveals itself to be a lie on a single inspection: the best answer is to not let the bad guy have a gun.

Guns don’t kill people, people do. No: obviously, people with guns kill more people than people without them.

Why not ban knives or cars, which can be instruments of death, too? Because these things were designed to help people do things other than kill people.

These tired, old, overused, and false "talking points" have been repeated so often that gullible Second Amendment extremists actually believe them, and repeat them continuously.

More and more Americans are waking up to the facts of the source of gun violence in our society, and are beginning to take action through grass roots gun control movements all across the nation. Join in and help where you can.

[applegrove]

4. I hope Martinez runs for office and

shows the politicians how to lead.

[GP6971]

8. If, and if, he runs and wins

Anything he tries to do would be squashed by the opposition. It's the unfortunate reality.

I fight the NRA tooth and nail........but for now, I think it's a losing battle. I remember when the NRA was a respected organization...I grew up when NRA members supervised indoor shooting ranges for us kids......it was ALL about safety. It was a time when the NRA prospered on members dues, not the manufactures.

It wouldn't surprise one bit if today's NRA gets a commission on every weapon and round sold.

[applegrove]

9. I'm used to the the NRA being 'too tough' to go up against on the DU. And whenever

Last edited Fri May 30, 2014, 10:18 PM - Edit history (1)

I'd post something in the old gungeon, NRA types would show up and attack, no doubt warned by 'bots' that some gun discussion was taking place at the DU. And they'd always be some 'friendly' there to tell me that they were with me but there was no point in going up against the NRA, that they were too strong. I ignored them and pointed out the bullshit in their NRA positions and the ways they used to tools of psychopaths to fight....and at some point the NRA stopped attacking me. They stopped showing up to argue with me. Martinez has what it takes to move this gun discussion to another level. The House already is talking background checks for mental health and it has been only a week. Thank you for your warning but I'll follow my own heart on this.

[billh58]

10. +100

They never stop trying, or lying. And yes, Martinez, like Gabby Giffords, is the real deal and is adding his voice to a growing groundswell of opposition to the right-wing gun lobby and its extremist cheer leaders.

[flamingdem]

3. K+R

Smart man

[BrotherIvan]

5. “Gun control” means controlling those things whose first purpose is to help people kill other people

Why did Christopher Michael-Martinez die? Because the N.R.A. and the politicians they intimidate enable people to get their hands on weapons and ammunition whose only purpose is to kill other people as quickly and as lethally as possible.

Any gunner who tries to pretend that their gun is meant for anything other than killing is LYING. It is, in fact, one of the stupidest things I think I've ever heard. The ultimate oxymoron: Harmless Gun.

They live in a world of fear and now they have made this country into the unsafe place of their delusions.

[pacalo]

6. Well-written article!

[flamin lib]

7. And the NRA creates another gun violence advocate.

We won't forget. We won't go away. We're hear to stay. We outnumber the gun industry and will soon have bigger war chests and yes, it is now a war.