The Core of the Matter

The national discussion America is having right now exemplifies our immaturity as a nation.  The number one way that America can address gun violence is by ending the drug war, but instead we are squawking about ammunition clips.

Our infantile attachment to reactionary policy and band aid sentimental politics rather than delving into mathematics, science or reason to contemplate and bore into the root of our societal ills is predictable and damning. 

Prohibition of any good by the government must be used with extreme caution in context to the level of capability of the now-made criminals from over reaching the boundaries of the state and the magnitude of the breach of morality when doing so.  The preponderance of gun violence in America is a direct result of drug prohibition.  Therein the expansion of our addiction to prohibition will invariably lead us into further perdition.

America was founded in revolution in an age where firearms existed.  If guns were present during similar preliminary stages of policy for European powers, broad swords would be deemed an equal candidate for defense of the populace.  The shear girth of America’s unexplored west, which required the assassination of millions of natives for the European-founders to conquer as if America was Rome, necessitated the average settler to bare defense and assault upon those whom he intersected.

We have crossed a threshold of adoption.  This includes rifles and semiautomatic weapons, but not missile launchers or grenades.  This has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with fear.  Retracting firearms with a gigantic levitating magnet from a roving blimp and leaving the remainder of household toasters and high definition televisions intact is as likely a solution as prohibiting guns in America.

The drug war produces a neo-slavery amongst the poor, which produces a malignant economic cancer that paralyzes minds into bypassing the traditional tax and educational systems.  By converting our systematic processes of facilitating marijuana, cocaine and heroin in America to controlled substances rather than illegal corporate industries, we could address the turf wars and gang violence which are a direct result of the dysfunctional economics created by prohibition.

What happened in Newtown was horrible, but it is not surprising or novel.  The rank of the gun violence common to the drug war touched an idealistic Northeastern suburban canvas.  America is hyperventilating. 

Yet as before Newtown, any person could choose to perform a terrorist act on a school, stadium or subway station at will.  There is no public safety system capable of stopping an individual willing to perish in trade for the death of others within a ten minute time limit.  This is a standard contemplation of every Baghdad mother. All appendages to legislation to promise this assurance are fraudulent.

Now we cling to our weapons on the double edge of fear.   What others will do and what we must hold to deem ourselves adequately self-sufficient.  At the core of this debate the fear must be bathed in an unsettling tolerance for what might occur given the free will of man. 

The placating balms of religion, faith, the police, human compassion and familial promises each represent a flawed contractual mechanism subject to the core leverage of man inside his out court of free will.  To avoid the anomaly of terrorist murder-suicide, the core of the matter includes a man having a measure to lose in exchange for his biological continuation upon this planet.

How long are we willing to barter the health of our totality for our judgmental preoccupation to hammer a moral high ground over the psyche of the economically disadvantaged?  No more.  No more.  

Do you want to address gun violence in America; end the drug war with a systematic, economically sound paradigm that treats addiction as a medical issue allows American taxpayers to regulate marijuana, cocaine, and heroin as market commodities.   

Cartels will be impoverished.  Poverty will have a chance at being addressed and as Lincoln said we can quit making crimes out of things that are not crimes.