The NRA Mask of Death

On March 25,
1911, a fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Garment Factory in New York
City. The sweatshop owner had deliberately locked the doors to the stairwells
and exists to prevent the women from stealing scrapes of fabric. Consequently,
the fire caused the death of 146 garment workers, their bodies were found
crushed against the locked exists or on the sidewalk below where they had jumped
to their deaths.

The names of
these young women were published on the front page of every newspaper across the
nation. The attention and empathy of the American people became focused on the
two youngest victims of this tragedy, 14 year olds Kate Leone and Sara Maltese.
The needless death of these young women became a personal tragedy for all
Americans. After all, death is not general, not a statistic, and not
measurable, it is the most personal and individual experience of our lives and
we must face it alone.

The despair
of the American people resulted in quick action to prevent this type of tragedy
from happening again. Despite opposition from corporate leaders, the owners of
the sweatshop were indicted for first and second degree murder and laws were
passed to improve safety standards in factories. But most important was the
child labor laws that were passed to protect the most vulnerable victims of
this tragedy, the children.

At the time,
corporate leaders tried to suppress public outrage and strip death of its
personal quality. Corporate ethical standards were always stoic and indifferent
to death. However at the time, the American people were rightfully outraged by
this tragedy and they insisted that corporations justify their power and authority
over life and death. We then passed laws and regulations to force corporations
to respect life and provide the individual with dignity.

Today, America
is facing a different form of tragedy, but no less deadly. The tragedies we are
facing today amount to the man-made slaughter of innocent people. The names of
these mass shootings are embedded in our collective psyche; Columbine High
School, 12 murdered, the Texas Tech Massacre, 32 murdered, the Aurora Movie
Theater Shooting, 12 murdered, and now Sandy Hook Elementary School and the
horrific shooting of 20 First Grade children and 6 of their teachers. 

The reaction
of the gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association is no different
from the corporate reaction to the Triangle Factory fire. The NRA and the gun
merchants try to strip death of its personal quality and humanity. Utilizing
propaganda methods, they try to make the individual death of even innocent
children seem meaningless compared to their corporate ideology of any gun and
any bullet. The NRA in an all-out effort to protect the profitability of the
gun merchants would have us believe that individual life is meaningless
compared to the sacred rituals of the gun culture.

The NRA is
stoic and indifferent to death, sugar coating the evil of assault weapons by
propagating the myth that they are protecting the constitutional rights of
law-abiding gun owners, enslaving reason for profit by spreading fear and panic
within the gun culture. The NRA philosophy is based upon a self-created myth
that the individual death of innocent victims is meaningless, an incident
buried in vital statistics, measurable and predictable, thereby stripping death
resulting from mass murder of its individual quality and humanity.

We must
remember that in the Twentieth Century, totalitarian dictators also preached
that the death of an individual is insignificant compared to the continued
existence of an ideology. Totalitarian dictators caused two world wars and the
death of tens of millions of people believing that individual life is nothing
more than a leaf on the tree therefore meaningless compared to their cause and
ideology.

The NRA should
never be allowed to mask death to be sold as hobby or recreation. We can never
again allow a military assault weapon designed for war to be used on 6 and 7
year old children in a First Grade classroom. Children have rights too, basic
human rights; the right to attend school without fear and the right to feel
safe, secure, and protected. It is not NRA ideology or the profit of the gun
merchants that is sacred, rather it is the lives of our children, each
individual life is a gift that we must honor and protect.