Voice of the Times -  Anchorage Daily News  July 16, 1993

By PAUL JENKINS

   The all-too-predictable hysteria has become cliche.

   One of us embraces a demon and punctuates our insanity with
 gunfire. Like clockwork, newspaper editors and columnists clamor
 for handgun control, assault rifle control, or, more inanely,
 bullet control.

   The government must stop this madness, they say. And now.

   Guns, they say, are evil. We must control them. But to do that we
 have to control you just a little more. But you don't mind, do you?
 Because you'll be safe. Really. Listen to us. We know what's best.

    These people are idiots. And they are lying to you, or they
 would be calling for the banning of evil cars because they are used
 by drunken drivers.  Or evil cigarettes. Or evil alcohol.

    If there were no guns, we would find other ways to kill each
 other. I can almost promise.  The problem is not firearms. The
 problem is us - you and me, and what we've become as a nation.

   Somehow we've lost our will, our sense of honor, our character.
 We have become too tolerant. We have listened too long to idiots
 with easy answers.

    With newspaper editors and others telling us nothing is black
 and white, we've gotten lost in a vast, gray wasteland where the
 rules are defined by lawyers and bureaucrats. Conveniently, nothing
 is right; nothing is wrong. We live by the TV image.

   And we've become irresponsible, disrespectful of others' rights,
 profane, narcissistic, rude, lazy and increasingly stupid.

   If it's too hard, make it easier. Standards too high? Lower them.
 More can participate, and that's more important than excellence.
 Mediocrity is success; achievement somehow neurotic.

   We no longer insist on acceptable conduct from ourselves or our
 young. That would require time, self-discipline and tough choices.
 It would require that we draw a line. Instead, we embrace life as
 if it were a beer commercial. And we are never responsible for our
 actions.

   Communities and industries and lives are destroyed to save
 animals or trees that may or may not need protection.

   Our children are not taught to respect private property, that
 stealing is reprehensible, that vandalism is wrong. We fail to
 teach them violence is the surest indicator of stupidity. And we
 feed our young a steady diet of sex and violence and wonder why
 they indulge in both.

   Public schools are becoming war zones. But instead of permanently
 expelling violent troublemakers on the spot, we waste time and
 resources trying to rehabilitate them as part of the myth that all
 of us are going to make it in this society.

   Government wastes billions of dollars in a hopeless, expensive
 drug war while we happily smoke, snort or inject what manages to
 get through the net. Then we waste billions more taking care of
 those who use drugs, people who knew they were illegal and
 dangerous.

   Our elderly are treated as excess baggage and churches are
 loathed as bastions of right-wing craziness. And we wonder at the
 lack of standards in our communities.

   We turn our mentally ill loose on the streets, molest our
 children, beat and rape our women and kill each other with great
 glee. We hate each other because of religion. Or skin color. Or
 sexual persuasion. Or economic status. We hate each other for the
 sheer joy of hating.

  We tolerate government's bullying intrusion into every corner of
 our lives, and we put up with intellectually bankrupt elected
 officials with the morals of alley cats. We tolerate them even as
 they tax us into poverty, peddle our jobs overseas and refuse to
 live by the rules they lay down for us.

   And because of all this, and more, we live with a perverse,
 sullen rage.

   And guns somehow are responsible for all this? Hardly.

   Let's put the blame where it belongs. Us. You and me.

   We did it with our refusal to accept the fact there really is a
 right and a wrong - that right should be rewarded and wrong
 punished harshly, quickly and certainly. We wanted to do it the
 easy way. And here we are.

   We could change all this, but we'll have to stand up for what's
 right and raise hell about what's wrong. Each and every time. We'll
 have to raise our standards and accept no less than the best from
 ourselves, our children and our institutions.

   Maybe we could pull this off.

   The real danger is that so many of us are willing to continue in
 the same tired old rut - trading our rights or the rights of others
 to government for a false sense of safety in all this craziness.

   The real tragedy is that so many of us are willing to do just
that.