Opinion

Charles Trimble: Assassination attempt highlights gun mentality

Monday, January 10, 2011

I’m not one to say, “I told you so;” at least not in one of my columns. For, fortunately for the world, most of my predictions have come to naught anyway.

But a year ago I posted a column on indianz.com and in other Native journals about my concern over the soaring sales of weapons in this country, and about the mentality of fear and hatred being spread in a nation “gone rogue,” as Sarah Palin and her followers describe the movement. They tout the Constitutional right to bear arms, or as I’ve seen on one tee-shirt “The right to arm bears – Mama Grizzlies.”

Now with the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords (D-AZ) and the shooting of eighteen others at her “Congress on the Corner” gathering in Tucson, we’re seeing some of the fruits of the great harvest being reaped by gun makers and weapons sellers.

Here in Omaha, three years ago we had the killing of several people in the upscale Von Maur store by a high school student armed with an AK-47, and most recently the killing of an assistant school principal and the wounding of the principal by a disgruntled student in a local high school.

I would like to quote from that earlier column extensively, for I think I was right on the money with my concern:

“Guns have always had a good market here in America. It’s a market driven by hunters, frontier re-enactors and collectors. Certainly the underworld and youth gangs in most of the inner cities and increasingly in Indian reservations make up a huge subterranean market that is not even measured in the economy. But the most frightful and dangerous market is represented by paranoid yahoos who see national enemies around every corner and behind every tree. These are people who are driven by fear – mostly fear of minorities whose rights they have trampled over the years, and fear of their own government’s every action to secure human and civil rights and opportunity for those minorities and for the poor in general.

“In the early American colonies and later the ever-expanding frontier, hunting was important to survival; but it was fear of Indians mostly that there was at least one blunderbuss in every home. And this persisted down through the years. Even as late as 1973 when the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee, many whites in a wide area surrounding Pine Ridge and other reservations drove around in their pickup trucks displaying racks of weaponry in the rear windows. Although it has always been in manly vogue to carry hunting rifles in their pickups, some of the guns were assault rifles that wouldn’t have left much of a carcass for dinner.

“In the frontier of the late 1830s there was great danger along the Oregon Trail and other routes westward. At demarcation points between Kansas City and Omaha, booklets were being sold to the emigrants preparing for the trek, warning of Indian raids and giving advice on protecting against them. And, of course, selling guns to them. Gun sales boomed.

“History tells, however, that most deaths among those wagon trains came from drowning at river crossings, from wagon accidents, snakebites, and the dreaded Cholera that resulted from drinking the river waters that the pioneers and their animal had fouled. The biggest killer by far was firearm accidents, those very same weapons sold to the immigrants to protect them from marauding Indians.

“The same scare tactics used back then to sell weapons are being used today, much for the same purpose. Reports tell of a new arms mania, with gun shows overflowing, gun factories going flat out in production, and annual sales of guns in the U.S. reaching over $3 billion. Reportedly, Smith and Wesson stocks are up 115%, and Sturm/Ruger stocks are up 85%. Cabela’s arms sales are up 70%.

“The opening sentence of one report, however, causes me the greatest concern, and it reads: ‘Barack Obama’s victory in November sent weapons sales shooting upward.’ That report noted the major factor in this market surge was NRA-spread fears that the new President would outlaw all guns. I would hate to guess what the other factors might be.

“It doesn’t take much imagination to see the possibility that some lunatic might believe he could save America from whatever it is that some right-wing talk show hosts tell him is threatening our liberty. And it wouldn’t take much to convince such a nut that Obama has got to go. If a deranged assassin was successful in such a mission it would have unimaginable repercussions when blacks and other minorities see their hero martyred and the doors of opportunity opened by Obama for their children are again slammed shut. For this is how it would appear to many of them. How will their rage play out?

“What can be done about it, if anything? Most of the responsibility must lie squarely upon the Republican Party, for it is in their ranks that such lunacy festers. They should openly condemn the trend, then help isolate those nuts from society. There are many good people among the Republicans; the vast majority of them are decent, responsible people who would be as horrified as any American at the prospects of assassination of the President, or any of his family or his Cabinet, or members of Congress. I hope that somewhere in the GOP ranks some brave leader might speak up about it.

“However, there is no great alarm or even concern visible either on Capitol Hill or in any State political organizations. Indeed, the GOP’s fight against Obama’s mandates, especially for health care reform and economic recovery, brings forth questions of the President’s constitutional legitimacy, his patriotism, his motives, and even his sanity. There are even some people resurrecting the specter of a communist take over of the country if his initiatives are allowed to continue.

“At least publicly, none dare mention Obama’s race in their attacks on him, but there can be little doubt that it is a prime factor among many of those critics.

“Besides rational Republicans speaking out against the hysterical, inflammatory hyperbole of right wing nuts in their midst, a small start would be a new civility on the part of both political parties in debate over the critical issues that President Obama is trying to address.”

Charles "Chuck" Trimble, was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970, and served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972-1978. He is retired and lives in Omaha, NE. He can be contacted at cchuktrim@aol.com and his website is www.iktomisweb.com.