Exploiting tragedy for personal gain is never attractive, but it is particularly ugly when those being exploited are children.
The National Rifle Association and its newly elected president, Charlton "Moses" Heston, an actor who now sells beer and promotes firearms, have plumbed the depths of tastelessness to use the heroics of a high school wrestler as the symbol of how good guns really are.But bad taste is nothing new for an organization that sends out Christmas cards with a well-armed Santa on the front and opposes every attempt to bring sanity to the use and proliferation of firearms and ammunition, including bullets designed to pierce the protective vests of police officers.
At its national convention in Philadelphia, the NRA hailed as representative of the true gun-owning American family the heroic act of Jacob Ryker, the 17-year-old wrestler who although wounded tackled and held a teenage gunman in the high school cafeteria in Springfield, Ore., after he had slain two and injured 23. In the sonorous voice that made him the star of biblical epics 40 years ago, Heston praised Jake, with his family standing nearby, as what the American "community" is all about.
So full of "sea to shining sea" rhetoric was Heston, however, that he apparently forgot to note that the young killer wasn't armed with a sling shot or bow and arrows but a variety of firearms from home when he carried out his insane attack. Would it be out of line to suggest that if those guns or rifles or whatever weren't available, perhaps the killings wouldn't have happened?
It's one thing for Heston to be naive about the nation's gun problems. He apparently thinks of America in terms of one of his old cowboy flicks. It is quite another for Senate Republican leader Trent Lott to advocate arming every citizen, including students on college campuses.
"Everyone is scared except the criminals," Lott said while proposing the use of police stations to train gun owners. "The way to change that is give the criminals something to be afraid of. That something is a well-armed public."
Are you nuts, senator?
Haven't you been reading about all those highway shootings and incidental slayings by "well-armed" citizens who have never hurt anyone until they get mad in traffic or wherever, and someone gets killed or wounded or maimed for life? Haven't you been aware of the rising incidence of accidental or incidental deaths associated with guns? Don't you understand that playground beefs that once were settled by fists are now arbitrated by automatic weapons?
Wayne LaPierre Jr., executive vice president of the NRA, whines a lot about the lobbying group's distorted image and, along with Lott, advocates no bail, no plea bargaining and so forth for gun-related crimes as a means of fighting the criminal use of firearms.
It would be helpful if Lott or LaPierre could explain how to stop citizens from shooting those they perceive as criminals but are really just other innocent citizens. Take, for instance, the young Halloween-costumed Japanese boy who approached the house of a neighbor innocently and was shot by the man of the house while egged on by a hysterical wife.
The NRA is the champion at blaming everything but its own policies for the nation's astronomical gun death rate. The real culprits, of course, are lenient judges, television violence, absentee parents and dilatory prosecutors, among other things, they argue. While all these things may contribute to youthful violence particularly, it's a safe bet that without the easy availability of firearms, there would be a large decline in successful crime.
Young Jake Ryker is a true hero who stopped his assailant without the benefit of a weapon other than his own strength and courage. It would be hard to imagine what would have happened had he been armed and started shooting away in the crowded cafeteria. More might have died in the crossfire.
Hunting and skeet shooting and target shooting are legitimate sports, and the NRA has had a long history of promoting these activities. Arming citizens to act as latter-day vigilantes is bad business. And to hold up Ryker as a reason to sell more guns is worse.