The Expansionist

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

NRA, Militarism Kill Another Kid. The Associated Press reported today that:

A man who neighbors say was devoted to his meticulously kept lawn was charged with murder in the shooting of a 15-year-old boy who apparently walked across his yard. * * *

Larry Mugrage, whose family lived next door, was shot in the chest with a shotgun. The high school freshman was pronounced dead at a hospital.

[Charles] Martin, 66, allegedly told police he had several times had problems with neighbors walking on his lawn. * * *

Neighbors said Martin lived alone quietly, often sitting in front of his one-story home with its neat lawn, well-trimmed shrubbery and flag pole with U.S. and Navy flags flying.

The NRA says over and over again, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." (I don't know if that is an exact quote from the NRA, but it certainly has achieved currency as the NRA's public stand.) But this is one of innumerable cases in which, absent a gun, no one would have died. A 15-year-old kid could outrun some 66-year-old maniac with a knife. But he couldn't outrun shotgun pellets.
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This murder is yet another disproof of the suggestion that only restrictions on handguns are warranted to keep us safe, because people who own long guns are responsible gun owners and can be trusted to control themselves. No, they can't.
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I find it telling that this Ohio lunatic flew a Navy flag, not just the national flag. Militarism is a poison that cheapens human life. Prussian militarism led to Nazism; Japanese militarism led to the Rape of Nanking, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the retribution of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Where will American militarism lead us?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,319.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:13 PM

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