Politicization

This is not going to be terribly elegant, because I am more furious than I can handle gracefully.  But here goes.

In the "wake" (well named) of the Sandy Hook Elementary slaughter, discussion has arisen (not too surprisingly) regarding the evident proliferation of powerful and extremely dangerous firearms in this country.  I should start, as a matter of truth in advertising, with the disclaimer that I know virtually nothing about guns, except that they are devices designed for the sole purpose of blowing holes in living flesh, a fact which makes me extremely uneasy.  That the people of this nation have seen fit  to acquire something over 300,000,000 of these devices entirely for their own personal gratification seems to me indicative of some serious craziness.  And I'm a clinical psychologist with over thirty years experience, and I understand a bit about mental illness.  Anyhow, I do not pretend to be able to speak knowledgeably regarding the relative merits of Glocks versus Smiths and Wessons, or the distinction between high-powered automatic assault rifle A versus high-powered automatic assault rifle B, or any of the other technical crap with which public commentary on this matter seems to be laden.  To me, they're all dangerous.  They're supposed to be dangerous.  It is their raison d'etre, if an inanimate object can be said to possess a raison d'etre.

I am an intelligent, peace-loving middle-aged white adult family man, and I can assert candidly that  in a life spent substantially in Houston, Albuquerque, and Detroit,  I have never found myself in a situation in which I would have been better off possessing a gun.  Except once in graduate school when I was really strapped for cash and would have liked to have something I could pawn for a couple of hundred bucks.  Of course, I may be mugged tomorrow and wish that, instead of having devoted my life to the treatment of the mentally ill, I had spent more time honing my quick-draw skills so I could gun down my assailant a la Matt Dillon (the marshal, idiot, not the actor!).  But one cannot be all things to all people.  So I shall attempt to steer clear of high-crime neighborhoods and avoid wearing expensive stuff (I don't have much, so this should be a piece of cake) that would tend to attract predators.

My issue concerning the present gun debate (why there should even be a debate eludes me) is the recrudescence of the term "politicization" (a made up word if ever I saw one).  As in "I don't think it's right for Obama to 'politicize' the Newtown tragedy for the purpose of pushing his socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, antichrist, Nazi, what have you, agenda."

So, what is meant by "politicizing"?  It seems to mean that Mr. Obama is cynically exploiting a sensational catastrophe to achieve some devious political objective.

But is that not precisely what we elect public officials to do?  To identify significant problems in our nation and devise ways of resolving those problems.  And sometimes, as in the matter of the slaughter of little children in Connecticut, to draw public attention to the nature and severity of the problem in order to marshal public support for solving it?  Isn't this why we have a Congress in the first place?  To identify problems and propose legislative solutions to them?  Or are they just there to pass resolutions declaring November 23 to be officially recognized as Franklin Pierce's birthday, or National Pork Belly Day, or National Kiss Your Mother Day, or National Think Nice Thoughts about Jesus Day?  If so - if we really have all the laws we need and Congress is only there to conduct such foolishness as the aforementioned - then why don't we shut it down altogether (it wouldn't seem that different from the present state of things) and just leave it to the Executive Branch to administer the presumably all-sufficient set of laws we already have.  We could divide the Capitol into condos and sell them to wealthy lobbyists (who, admittedly, would now have a lot of time on their hands, since there would no longer be influential congresspersons to bribe).

If by "politicize" we mean make use of a vivid example of an existing problem to bring public attention to bear on the existence and significance of that problem, then it would be a pretty lame public servant who did not thus "politicize" the Newtown massacre for the sake of enabling government to act to make it much less likely for things like this to happen again.

Unless, of course, you don't think it's a problem.

Conservative gun addicts have lately asserted that there is not a gun problem.  What we have instead is a "people problem", and that guns are protected under the Constitution.

I, for one, was under the impression that people, too, are protected under the constitution.

I read the view that the problem is a mental health problem, and so, to a considerable extent, it is.  And because we completely dismantled the greater part of public mental health resources back in the Sixties and Seventies, it may take a while to re-establish any serious attempt to address the problem of mental illness in this country.  Moreover, most mentally ill persons are not dangerous, even as most members of the Tea Party are not actually dangerous.  So, is everyone who qualifies for a psychiatric diagnosis to be deprived of his/her constitutional rights?  And is that not diving headfirst into Socialized Medicine?  The dreaded "nanny state"?

I also read that the problem is our "culture of violence", the ubiquity of violent movies, TV shows, and video games to which the USA seems to be addicted.  Now, I'm not a constitutional lawyer (like I said, I'm a clinical psychologist), but even I can recognize a First Amendment issue when it's this obvious.

So, what'll it be, folks?  Do we violate the Second Amendment (or, preferably, repeal it) so the government can pass reasonable laws concerning the possession of dangerous weapons?

Do we deprive all persons "convicted" of mental health problems of their civil rights, as though there were not degrees and varieties of mental illness, most of which are not at all dangerous?  That seems like a constitutional issue in itself and certainly at variance with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Or do we conclude that, in the absence of violent TV, video games, and movies it would never occur to anyone possessed of a gun to actually shoot someone with it?  That this is absurd beyond all previous Tea Party absurdities, and clearly involves inroads into the First Amendment that no one would consider acceptable can hardly be doubted.

Which leaves prayer.  I kid you not, I have actually encountered numerous expressions of the idea that the reason the Newtown slaughter occurred was because we have taken prayer out of our schools.  Any intelligent, mature, humane adult who gives voice to such pernicious nonsense should probably recognize that they have become a monster and lock themselves away from the rest of the world.

The point about prayer is that it is essentially trusting to luck.  Landing a plane "on a wing and a prayer" means hoping to hell you manage to bring the plane in successfully in spite of damage to essential systems.  A "hail Mary" in football means throwing the ball as far as you can and hoping that your guy catches it.

I wasn't there, but I'd be willing to bet that there was more praying going on at Sandy Hook School last Friday than at any other school in the world, and it didn't accomplish a thing.

In sum, then, if Obama is "politicizing" Newtown for the sake of trying to see that homicidal maniacs are not equipped with sophisticated weapons with which to conduct their horrors, then I say "politicize away".  And any public servant who doesn't is being grossly, immorally, criminally irresponsible.