Not all heroes wear uniforms

This post originally appeared in the Wilson Times May 4, 2019.

             Remember this name: Riley Howell. A college student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Howell was in his classroom Tuesday afternoon when a former student barged in and began firing his handgun at students. Instead of sitting, paralyzed by the incongruous scene in the classroom, Howell ran at the gunman, tackling him.

            Howell died for his effort. The gunman shot him, point blank, and killed him. He was 21 years old. Another student was also killed, and other students were injured.

            Howell is being lauded as someone who always wanted to help, who would always put others first, who would rather be hurt himself than to see others hurt.

            The gunman, whom I will not give the dignity of a name here, faces two murder counts and other charges. His motivation seems vague. He told police that he just went into the classroom and started shooting guys.

          There is little doubt that Tuesday’s shocking news would have been far worse without Riley Howell’s heroism. He turned what might have been a massive death scene into a tragedy that could have been far, far worse. Courageously attacking the gunman, Howell knocked him off his feet and gave law enforcement additional moments to respond to the “active shooter” alert.

            The National Rifle Association likes to say that a “good guy with a gun” is the best defense against mass shootings. How much braver is it for an unarmed hero to attack an armed maniac? Maybe what you need is a good guy or two, even without guns. Remember the brave good guys on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. They rammed their way into the hijacked cockpit of the airliner and disrupted a plot to crash the aircraft into the Capitol or the White House.

            Let us applaud the heroes like Riley Howell and the passengers of Flight 93. America loves heroes so much that some people call anyone with a military service record a hero, although most veterans never faced hostile fire. Those who did, who attacked a machine gun nest or risked their own lives to save comrades under fire, have earned the title of hero. So has Riley Howell. He won’t win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but he is a genuine hero who deserves recognition and memorialization.

            Shootings like the one in Charlotte or any of the dozens of others over the past few years raise the question of why do young American males, mostly white and “privileged,” feel a need to shoot someone with a gun whenever things don’t go their way. “Something went wrong, so I gotta kill a bunch of people” seems to be the twisted logic of the mass killers.

            Where does this come from? From overly permissive parents? From video games featuring gunfire and other awesome violence without consequences? From an epidemic of mental illness? From society’s cuddling of children against disappointments or failure, all in the name of “self-esteem”? From the crumbling of moral standards?

            Whatever it is, we need to study the problem, study the offenders and figure out how to prevent these horrific acts. We don’t have enough heroes to stop all the killers.

Hal Tarleton is a former editor of The Wilson Daily Times. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

Life begins at conception, and so do rights

The National Rifle Association and the National Republican Campaign Committee announced today a new initiative for the 2020 elections and beyond. In a move that consolidates two major Republican campaign themes — guns and abortions — the initiative proposes arming fetuses, or, as Republican literature prefers to call them, "preborn voters."

This proposal dovetails with the stand of some anti-abortion activists who have sought to declare "personhood" as beginning at the moment of conception; therefore, preborn voters have, from the moment of conception, all of the constitutional rights of post-born voters, including the right to bear arms.

NRA researchers are working on miniaturizing AR-15 assault rifles so that they can be inserted into the womb. After such an implant, the preborn voter would be able to defend himself/herself against an abortion doctor, just as post-born voters can defend themselves from burglars, rapists and IRS agents.

"We see this as a combining of two great cultural movements," said a spokesman for the NRA's Guns for the Preborn Committee, who asked not to be named.

Another mass killing

Another day, another mass killing. Yesterday's senseless rampage in San Bernadino, California, elicited cries of "not again," and "what, another one?"

These shocking events have become commonplace. Some news outlets are reporting that this year's tally of mass murders has topped one per day. Some of these events are deliberate, terrorist attacks carried out by fanatics following some wild political or religious ideology. Others seem to have no rational explanation.

America may be the land of free, but it is also the land of the frightened. These killings are not limited to "bad neighborhoods" or big cities. They come to small towns, rural areas and "safe" places. No one is safe.

The National Rifle Association insists upon an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms"), which has led to peaceful gunmen terrifying bystanders by carrying assault rifles and other firearms openly into stores, theaters and other gathering places. The NRA also insists that the "right to bear arms" cannot be limited to only the sane, mentally healthy, rational and non-violent citizens. NRA wants no background checks, no waiting periods, no limits on magazine or clip capacity, and no restrictions of any kind on firearms.

A timid Congress and a complacent judiciary has made the NRA's interpretations the law of the land, so now we count the bodies after each mass killing and resign ourselves to the gasp that nothing can be done.

Take another tack on mass shootings

Another mass shooting. Another nine people dead. Another nine families grieving. It is beginning to become routine.

And America, despite its billions of dollars spent on law enforcement and mental health services and dispute mediation, not to mention the ever-vigilant National Security Agency, seems unable to do anything about it.

Columbine, Newtown, the Washington Navy Yard, Aurora, Gabby Giffords, Umpqua. The names have become routine. The shock has worn off. When the "breaking news" alert sounds, we are no longer surprised when it's about a gunman. More Americans die of gun violence than residents of any other country in the world. What's worse, nearly all of these firearm murders are senseless. A loner who has trouble fitting in and lives in a fantasy world decides he'll make his mark by killing children in kindergarten or high school students or community college students. Any grouping of defenseless people will do.

Efforts to bring about sensible limits on the gun culture that facilitates the homicidal rage of mentally ill or simply angry young men with an arsenal of weapons have been torpedoed by the National Rifle Association, which grows rich on its fearmongering over imagined government plots to "take away our guns."

Let us resign ourselves to the fact that limits on the Second Amendment are not going to pass a Congress that is largely in the pocket of the NRA. So we can either give up on feeling safe in public places, such as elementary schools, or we can attack this problem from another angle.

It's not just guns that are feeding these murderous rages. The deranged murderers are also products of a culture of violence that is unabated and largely ignored by politicians and mental health professionals. College and professional football games (a violent sport in and of itself) are interrupted by commercials for video games that feature mass killings, rapacious creatures, weapons of all kinds, all of them used to kill anything that stands in the way of the player. An entire genre of music extols a culture of drugs, sex, violence and death.

Is it any wonder that young men raised in this culture take out their frustrations and their grudges in the same way they destroy the computer-generated enemies on the screen? The "Me Generation" distills an ethic that makes anything that benefits "myself" moral and acceptable. Digital cameras are not pointed at the wonders of the world or at the needs of society but at "self." Public schools were encouraged to concentrate on youngsters' self-esteem, regardless of their discipline or educational achievement.

Reared without moral standards and unwilling to be disciplined, this generation finds it only a short step into making your "self" really important by killing a dozen people whom you didn't know anyway and wouldn't have cared about if you had. No, "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" would not be seen as ancient wisdom by this generation but as antiquated foolishness. After all, it's all about me.

Changing the way America raises its children and entertains them will be a monumental task, but it might be easier than breaking the gun lobby's lock on Washington. Until we change, the shootings will continue.

All freedoms have their limits

What is the most feared lobbying group in Washington? Not the AARP. Not the NAACP. Not Big Pharma. Not the health insurance industry. Undoubtedly, the most feared group in D.C. is the National Rifle Association.

Just look at the way left-leaning Democrats have scurried for cover at even a hint of strengthening assault-weapons laws in the wake of the Aurora, Colo., massacre. President Obama belatedly suggested that the mentally ill shouldn't be allowed to buy firearms and that rapid-fire, large-capacity guns should not be in civilian hands. Democrats in Congress ran for cover as if they were being sprayed by a 50-caliber machine gun. And the gun supporters pulled out their usual arguments that "guns don't kill people ..." and "laws don't stop criminals," and "if owning a gun is a crime, then only criminals will have guns." Yeah, we've heard it all before.

But no one is suggesting that gun ownership be banned. It cannot be so long as the Second Amendment is in the Constitution. But like all constitutional rights, the Second Amendment is not absolute, regardless of what the NRA might tell you. Freedom of the press does not prohibit lawsuits for libel. Freedom of speech does not prohibit defamation lawsuits. Freedom of assembly may be limited by a requirement to obtain a parade permit or to prohibit violent disruptions. And the right to bear arms can be limited by sensible restrictions to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people and to limit possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Gun advocates' opposition to background checks for gun ownership plays into the hands of the mentally ill and outright crazy who end up murdering people. If the right to bear arms is absolute, as some people claim, then it is all right for a civilian to own 50-caliber machine guns, artillery pieces, rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-air missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles and hydrogen bombs. But that right is not absolute.

The issue should be: Where do we draw the line on the right to bear arms? That's an issue that can be sensibly debated and decided based on the collective will of the people. But so long as the NRA claims there can be no debate over limits to the Second Amendment, that discussion cannot take place.