Remember the roadside billboards the gun prohibitionists put up a while ago that read \u201cNRA Is A Terrorist Organization\u201d? It was a classic example of why reasoned dialogue so seldom takes place in the polarized debate over guns in America. Our side feels like black folks trying to talk with Klansmen who are spitting the N-word at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 5\/26\/22 edition of the Houston Chronicle newspaper reported on the planned anti-NRA protests at that city\u2019s convention center. One of the protest organizers, Neil Aquino, was quoted as saying, \u201cIf the city can determine that protests are illegal gathering and disperse them, then why can\u2019t it declare an NRA convention with Trump and Cruz a center of insurrection and domestic terrorism? I don\u2019t understand how domestic terrorists and insurrectionists preaching replacement theory get use of the convention center in the most diverse city in America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ashton Woods of Black Live Matter Houston apparently didn\u2019t notice how many African-American NRA members were in attendance. He told the Chronicle, \u201cWe\u2019re (Black Lives Matter) not here to incite anything, we\u2019re just here to make the (NRA) uncomfortable and run them out of Houston.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The atrocity in Uvalde touched us all. It is human nature after such a cataclysmic incident to \u201cwant to do something.\u201d Unfortunately, that often translates into \u201cwe must blame \u2013 and punish \u2013 someone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Empty symbolism comes into play. The tool of the murderer becomes the focus. Then, by extension, anyone who owns such tools becomes the next focus of the anger. It is the antithesis of logic, but emotion has a way of pushing logic aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, let\u2019s try some logic. Logic encompasses history. Uvalde is about 160 miles from Austin, where the first school shooting massacre occurred more than half a century ago. In 1966, ex-Marine Charles Whitman ascended the Texas Tower on the University of Texas campus in Austin, and rained death on the citizens below, using primarily a five-shot bolt-action deer rifle. His ultimate toll was 18 dead and 31 wounded. Half an hour into the roughly 90-minute ordeal, the slaughter ceased\u2026because armed citizens on the ground with their own rifles returned fire and pinned the mass murderer down behind cover. This set the stage for armed citizen Allan Crum to lead Austin officers to the peak of the tower to confront Whitman. Crum, armed with a semiautomatic Remington .30 caliber rifle, fired the first shot of the rescuers\u2019 gun battle; Officer Ramiro Martinez emptied his Smith & Wesson .38\/44 revolver at the gunman; and Officer Houston McCoy dropped Whitman with two blasts of double-0 buckshot to the head and neck from a Winchester 1200 shotgun. In the excellent book \u201cTower Sniper: the Terror of America\u2019s First Active Shooter on Campus,\u201d authors Monte and Nathan Akers and Dr. Roger Friedman prominently mention \u201cdozens of students and bystanders who seized rifles to fire at the sniper in the Tower from the ground.\u201d Officer Martinez, who later became a Texas Ranger, wrote a book titled \u201cThey Call Me Ranger Ray\u201d in which he flatly stated it was the armed citizens on the ground who stopped the killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How quickly America forgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remember the roadside billboards the gun prohibitionists put up a while ago that read \u201cNRA Is A Terrorist Organization\u201d? It was a classic example of why reasoned dialogue so seldom takes place in the polarized debate over guns in America. Our side feels like black folks trying to talk with Klansmen who are spitting the N-word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7320,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318\/revisions\/7320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}