SECOND AMENDMENT CREATED TO ASSURE SLAVE OWNERS THEY COULD BRUTALLY PUT DOWN REBELLIONS

Below is a letter to the editor to the Indianapolis Star. Although I knew it was longer than the ones they usually print, I felt it had so many points that needed to be made, including information on the origins of the 2nd Amendment.

They rejected it on the grounds of its length, yet I pointed out in a series of emails to Tim Swarens, editorial-page editor, that they have been running lengthy pro-gun articles, so I suggested he not consider it a "letter to the editor," but a “conversation” or “my view” -- and run it. He would not.

Further down in my letter, you will find a description of the true origin of the 2nd Amendment. Those who love guns more than they love children seem to believe that the 2nd Amendment was carried down from the mountain top by Moses. The first step in the process to appeal it, which can’t come soon enough, is to understand why it was created.

You might have thought this point alone would have caught the eye of a fair-minded journalist who wanted to examine and report on this well-documented interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. If you help bring this to the attention of the media, we can get it out there, helping to educate both the media and their readers, listeners, and viewers.

But, please, also read the first part of the letter too that provides details of the Indianapolis Star's lust for guns – in only one issue of the paper. Two days later, on Saturday, January 19, a man shot himself accidentally after shopping at the gun show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. The Star buried this front-page story back in the Metro section the next day. Earlier, it had also given little notice to the story of three people who were shot at another gun show, again when an idiot (read: gun-show lover) accidentally shot them.

Yes, I do start off with "appalling" a lot - but, aren't we all appalled. A lot?

Dear Editor:

I was appalled by the number of column inches in a single issue of the Indianapolis Star (Thursday, January 17) devoted to pro-gun sentiments.

The top item on Local Living’s “Things to Do Near You” was the Indy 1500 Gun & Knife Show at our Indiana State Fairgrounds. I’ve been appalled for years that the board and staff of the state fairgrounds welcome gun shows. It is even more appalling that your paper touts this as a place to go, with children, no less, especially when gun shows have long been proven to be gigantic loopholes in the efforts to control the sale of guns and the background checks on those who buy them. And you know that.

Erika D. Smith’s column about the delight of shooting the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle (the same one used to murder the children in Newtown, Connecticut) was sickening. Perhaps it would be appropriate to have photos of children to shoot at for target practice?

A survey of our members of Congress brought the expected, knee-jerk reaction defending the right to own guns, ignoring the horrible consequences of owning – and using – assault weapons. The comments from my representative, Andre Carson, said nothing about assault weapons. I want a hero to represent me in Congress, not a coward.

There isn’t room to comment on the idiocy of most of the writing about guns on the editorial page and in the letters to the editor.

I don’t believe in “gun rights.” I believe in human rights, the right to be safe from those who bear arms.

Attempts to sidetrack us into a discussion (another word for “long delay”) of mental illness doesn’t address the fact that the Newtown shooter’s mother owned an arsenal of weapons, including her own AR-15, which proved ineffective in defending herself against her own mentally ill son. We hear a lot of talk about “criminals” – people like her are the criminals, along with those who rob a store or another individual. And, no one who supports the right to own assault weapons is in his or her right mind.

President Obama’s proposals, matching those in the new legislation out of New York, allow current owners of assault weapons to keep them, legally. (We also deserve to have a hero in the White House, not a coward.) As you read this, assault weapons are being sold at a rapid pace, either at a gun shop or, even sadder, at our state fairgrounds. Perhaps Erika D. Smith will buy one at the fairgrounds, if she can stomach the displays of Nazi flags and uniforms, and go whoop it up with her own semi-automatic weapon.

The Second Amendment was willfully misinterpreted by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. It is a little-known fact that the purpose of that amendment was to provide comfort to slave owners when the United States was in its infancy. Professor Carl T. Bogus argues in his book, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, that there is strong reason to believe that, in significant part, James Madison drafted the amendment to assure his constituents in Virginia, and the South generally, that Congress could not use its newly-acquired powers to indirectly undermine the slave system by disarming the militia, on which the South relied for slave control.  Read more at this link: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1465114

Perhaps persons of all backgrounds might be less eager to shout about trampling on the 2nd Amendment if they realized it had been designed to insure that slave owners could brutally put down any slave rebellions.

It’s a great pity that the Indianapolis Star does not have the courage to call for the banning of all assault weapons, including those now or soon to be owned. Obama called them “weapons of war.” Now, however, he has caved, as always, and does not include the banning of the vast arsenal of them already in the hands of the true criminals in this country.

John Sherman

NRA Is Responsible

When a horrible act is committed by a terrible organization, it has become customary for the group to call the media and "claim responsibility."

The National Rifle Association needs to call the media to take responsibility for the horrors of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

The NRA is a vile, evil organization.

22 Minutes of Your Life You’ll Never Get Back. Nightly.

Prior to founding my own firm, I used to travel frequently on business. Each morning in the hotel room, I’d turn on the TV to catch the local news. I was appalled. Not only was I trapped in look-alike airports and look-alike hotel rooms, the local news programs were also look-alike/sound-alike. Dallas. Cleveland. Minneapolis. Perky airheads gleefully bringing us the latest murders, uncritically reporting on whatever some local politician said, making sure the reporters’ faces were on camera as much as the persons being interviewed. With that description, I am compelled to add Indianapolis to the list.

Soon, I had to give it up. I wanted to be a good sport and learn something about the city I was in. But, after trying to scream and brush my teeth at the same time. I had to skip Trixie and Skippy on Local News Watch (not exactly) and turn on CNN when, in its pre-Nancy Grease-Lou Dobbs-Glenn Beck days, it provided at least a modicum of real news.

Being old enough to remember decades’ worth of people, events, and causes and effects could be considered good news/bad news. It’s good in that it earns one perspective; it’s bad news in that it is even more reason to yell at TV reporters and anchors who do not share my passions: a sense of history and a sense of perspective.

Local TV news wasn’t always bad. It’s only been that way for the past 40 years.

While, to be fair, I can recall the incredibly rare reporter or anchor who startled you with his/her adherence to news coverage, I am more likely to remember the 15-minute nightly TV news shows on the Ft. Wayne stations that featured people who were not selected for their perfect haircuts or Botoxed smiles. The old guys (and they were all guys) not only read the news, sometimes looking down at the typewritten pages in front of them, they actually understood the content of what they were reading and could have, if asked, been able to hold a lengthy discussion on where that particular news story fit into the spectrum of events. We shared a passion for news.

They understood that history and the reporting of it (after all, “breaking news” is merely today’s tiny footnote to “history”) is on a continuum. The story of the night might well be part of a trend, the effect of some causes from days or decades or ages ago, and the same stories were likely to come around again and again before their careers were over. And the newscasters understood that.

Often, there were editorials, where one of the staff read a statement, giving the TV station’s opinion on a topic of local, state, national, or even international interest. Sometimes, the station lost advertisers. It wasn’t necessarily bold or brave, but it did take a stand, after an investigation of the facts. And, I don’t ever recall seeing a retraction. It had been investigated, it was determined that this would be the side chosen, and on the air it went.

While murders, fires, accidents, and other human tragedies were reported, they did not consume the news. Other more important stories and their impact on us all – actual news – lead off most broadcasts.

Today, those old newscasters would not recognize the local news. First of all, nobody loves a murder like a TV reporter, anchor, or news director. Easy reporting. Nothing incisive, nothing investigative, just standing breathlessly at the edge of the police tape, interviewing those who want their 15 seconds of fame, unable to resist the vulgar, “How does that make you feel?” If I walk into the room when the newscast has already begun on one of our local stations, I know it’s some delicious tragedy, by the stance of a particular reporter. Bent over, his shoulders curved inwards, his hands held reverently, barely able to grasp his microphone, he assumes the position of a supplicant returning to his pew from the communion rail.

One huge elephant in the room, as we like to say these days: Guns. No one questions the use of guns, even though guns made the murders possible. No one asks “Why?” It’s as if guns were some benign, some innocent catalyst in the process, not at all aiding and abetting the killing of family members or random multiple murders at a public place.

No time for such analysis, but too frequently on the short newscast we get the banal, scripted, and rehearsed “ad lib” comments between anchors, weather reporters, and sports reporters. And the head shaking and unwanted, unnecessary comments by the anchor after the bloody story has been reported. (“What a tragedy” or “Terrible, isn’t it, Skippy”) Just once, as long as we’re getting their opinion, could we hear, “We gotta get rid of guns.”

We need TV reporters, editors, newscasters, and anchors who are educated. They need to know history. Trends. What causes effects. Basic stuff. Critical stuff. Then, they need to be objective, determined to bring us real news, digging into a story to find out what really happened, not use only a politician’s press release or be carried away by a horrible vehicle accident or shooting, feeding on misery, giving over most of every broadcast to a litany of tragedies, avoiding the job of covering the need-to-know, unreported stuff that is – drum roll here -- news.

When an elected or appointed official makes a statement, wouldn’t it be nice if the news team would put it in perspective, report on what’s bound to happen, based on what’s happened in the past, along with a healthy dose of common sense. The anchors should read copy that is the result of the reporter asking a lot of hard questions. And follow-up questions. And, if the question was ignored, the reporter would have said, “Let me ask you that again, since you didn’t answer it.” Explore, learn, and then share with us the underlying causes, not the veneer that does not inform.

I want the TV anchors and other on-air “personalities” to stop being personalities. I want them to stop being cover stories in local publications, emcees at community events, guests of honor. They think they are the story. Their predecessors knew they were the messengers. We didn’t cover this in my Journalism and Ethics class. Because, with barely an exception, it didn’t exist.

On the other hand, have you ever seen a local TV newscaster appear on a public panel to discuss important issues of the day? That’s what we want. But, I’m afraid it won’t happen, as they don’t know the background, those cause-and-effect factors, the history. Speaking about complex economic, political, social issues is so damned hard. Murders, fires, car wrecks? Not so much.

Trying to get coverage for a deserving event a few years ago, I asked the TV assignment editor, “Do you want a body?” He laughed. I didn't. I went on, “Well, I know if I could guarantee you a body, you’d send someone.” Of course, no one came. But, I’m sure blood and guts from somewhere else in Indy flew off the Teleprompter that night.

If I were in charge, I’d hire majors in history, psychology, human behavior, geography, political science. And take them on a rugged training course in investigating, doggedly pursuing the story, putting it in perspective, resulting in an objective reporting of events. Then, in the remainder of that 22 minutes or so, subtracting time for we’re-all-going-to-die! weather reporting and much more sports than necessary, I’d squeeze in a recitation of the latest tragedies, if they could be somehow proven newsworthy, followed by an announcement of that day’s body count in Indianapolis from guns and the total, to date, for the year. Then, most nights, an editorial on something not necessarily related to that day’s coverage.

And they wouldn’t come on the air two or three times earlier in the evening, teasing us with some top stories, but not telling us what the story is – “Learn what top state official has been fired by the governor. And why. Stayed tuned for the eleven o’clock news.” No! Give me the name now. Will learning the name at 9 p.m. mean I won’t bother to watch at 11?

Let it start in Indianapolis. And let it spread across the land. And, business travelers and tourists can, once again, turn on the local TV news and brush their teeth at the same time.

News. A great concept. It could, once again, be a great practice.