Guns As Our Moloch-Adoration of Moloch permeates the country-It is NEVER time to question Moloch

[kpete]

5:31 PM PST
Garry Wills... guns as our Moloch




Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?



Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.


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MORE:
December 15, 2012, 5:25 p.m.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/15/our-moloch/

[spin]

1. In the wrong hands a firearm can be used to murder and commit crime. ...

In responsible hands a firearm can be used for legitimate purposes. It can provide food for your table or hours of enjoyment as a recreational hobby. If used for legitimate self defense, a firearm can also save lives.

The problem is insuring that firearms are only used by responsible people. If both sides of the gun control debate were willing to stop insulting each other and would set down at a table to honestly discuss the issue, I feel we could improve our gun laws considerably. Unfortunately at this time the chances of this happening are slim at the best.

In all fairness the subject of gun violence is far deeper than banning certain firearms or the capacity of the magazines they hold. To make any real headway on the issue we need to also consider social economic problems, mental health issues and our War on Drugs which our nation lost decades ago.

[Mojorabbit]

5. +100 nt

[haele]

2. The problem is the psycholgical crutch of dependance on the gun.

To many people, a gun is a magical tool to keep the monsters and enemies away or gives the possessor strength to vanquish any danger. It become an addiction to many people, especially those who have fears or have heightened awareness of danger, because it gives them the feeling that they've got an easier way to defend themselves from whatever they perceive as dangers to them and the ones they love. They don't have to get close to the danger, all they have to do is "point and shoot". It's far easier than a spear, knife, stick, or fists...

Witness the number of people and children who are accidently shot because someone who has the need to be protected at all costs leave or keep loaded weapons at the ready and "something unexpected" happens - the gun gets bumped, dropped, or picked up and waived about and it goes off.

Even though a gun can be used to get food or be used in eye/hand coordination competitions, or can be works of art or history, the primary use of a gun is as a tool to kill by expelling projectiles at high speed a significant distance.

Unless you can address the psychological crutch to many that a gun is an easy way to "protect" one from the unexpected demons that haunt everyone's lives, you will have a lot of accidents or heat of the moment incidents where the common link is a gun that is not stored or used in a safe, responsible manner. There are a lot of people who are accidents waiting to happen, and a gun just allows that accident to happen more quickly and give it a greater percentage chance of occurring.
To quite a few people out there, a gun (or arsenal of guns) is God. Guns grant greater power than one can produce with their own bodies. So to those people, guns become more important than family, than community, than anyone or anything else.
(first edit spelling, second edit...)
On second edit, this comment does not mean that all people who have guns fall into that category.

What I'm trying to say is that like any substance or tool we use to make our lives easier, there is a danger of mis-attribution and mis-use. I know a lot of gun owners who are extremely cautious about their guns. And I also know (and unfortunately live near, apparently) a lot of gun owners who let their guns have way too much power over their own lives and how they react mentally and emotionally to conflict.
Haele

[spin]

3. All good points. ...

There is no doubt that we live in a society where many people have an unhealthy obsession with firearms. Much of this is due to promotion of firearms by the firearm industry as a necessary item to own to protect yourself and your loved ones from the predators who are running amok in our society.

But the simple fact is that violent crime in our society is approaching an all time low.

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s. At that time the only people I knew who owned firearms used them for target shooting and hunting or were involved in collecting rare firearms. I remember only a couple of people who owned handguns. One was my father in law who had fought in WWII and brought home a 9mm German pistol as a souvenir. He had no ammo for the weapon. I wish we could return to those times.

Of course, to be fair I grew up in a fairly rural area of northeast Ohio. There is no doubt that currently violent crime is dropping to levels last seen in the late 60s but far more people today own firearms and many have no real reason to own these weapons. Sadly many lack basic firearm training and a good percentage refuse to store their firearms securely. Consequently tragedies result.

I'm not opposed to firearm ownership and own a small collection of handguns which I have collected over my 40 years of handgun target shooting. Often people ask me about what gun they should buy for self defense and before I make any recommendations I try my best to discourage them. Firearms are not for everybody.

But I should also point out that it is quite possible that the only reason I am here to make this post is the fact that my mother was armed. In the 1920s my mother was returning home from work one night. She got off a bus and had several blocks to walk before she reached her home. A man was hiding behind some bushes and rushed her. Fortunately she had a small .22 caliber revolver in her purse with her hand on it. She drew the weapon and fired two shots over her attackers head. He ran.

I favor improving our NICS system of background checks and expanding the system to cover all purchases of a firearm. I would also like to see a requirement that anyone who buys a firearm or ammunition has to show proof of firearm safety training. Scuba divers have to show a card showing that they have training prior to getting air for their tanks. Sky divers have to show proof of training prior to boarding an aircraft at the jump zone. If nothing else perhaps we should promote firearm safety training and show how easy it is to store firearms safely in a series of public service announcements.

[The Blue Flower]

4. The weapons industry is but a single arm of Moloch

I have thought about Moloch, too. I see it as a generalized sacrifice of our children to greed, consumerism, and commercialism. There are one million homeless school-age children in the US. They're just the tip of the iceberg of the harm we're doing to future generations. Education budgets are being cut to subsidize the Walmarts and Boeings in states across the country. Children are being sent to school hungry, so that they can't learn what they need to learn to succeed as adults. Their minds are being co-opted by the Disney-fication of entertainment so that they become first and foremost consumers, rather than citizens of a functioning democracy. The list goes on. Our present system can't help but collapse because we're destroying our most precious commodity, our children.