LEADERHIP AND THE SECOND
AMENDMENT
By
Maj. Gen.
Jerry R. Curry
CurryforAmerica.com
When
I was a boy attending a country school in western
Pennsylvania, every classroom had a copy of the Ten
Commandments framed and hung on its wall. One of
those commandments was: “Thou Shall Not Kill.”
It unequivocally told us children that
killing was wrong and that those who killed would be
severely punished.
It
reminded us that “Not Killing” was a societal
behavior standard and we school children saw it in
big print every day, all day. It was a constant
reminder to us that killing was not only wrong, but
a sin. That standard sunk in and all of the children
in my school grew up knowing that killing was evil,
and that American society would not tolerate it.
Because children in school today have few societal
standards to help them know the difference between
right and wrong, our civilization has lost its
integrity. We have departed from and destroyed the
roots of American civilization; and we have eroded
the principles and standards of decent behavior.
We
have also become hypocrites. President Obama’s
children attend a school in Washington DC that is
protected by armed guards, but he refuses to support
the idea that children attending public schools
should be protected by armed guards. And he does not
champion teaching school children basic foundational
and fundamental standards of conduct such as the Ten
Commandments.
The
mentally and emotionally disturbed killers who have
been slaughtering our school children of late are
fundamentally troubled, unprincipled and rootless.
Society has
cut them off from our nation’s historic roots and
moral teachings and rejects them when, as adults,
they act like they have been cut off from those
roots and teachings. Now is the time to re-establish
and rebuild the walls of the nation’s historic moral
and cultural foundations, those laid by our Founding
Fathers.
Can
we prevent the killing and slaughtering of America’s
school children? Certainly we can. Let us train and
authorize all teachers who are willing to volunteer
to qualify for concealed carry gun permits. Enough
of them will voluntarily carry weapons that no armed
intruder will be able to successfully break into a
school and systematically execute little children
and their teachers one by one as happened at Sandy
Hook Elementary School.
The
problem that bedevils our society is not gun
violence; it is a lack of spiritual and ethical
standards, an absence of proper leadership, and an
absence of a climate of good, solid mental health
nourished by thriving cultural roots. Love and
empathy won’t keep children safe, armed teachers and
security guards will.
In
Michigan a few days before the Sandy Hook shooting
incident, labor union thugs resorted to all sorts of
foul language and violence, punched in the head and
stomach a TV news reporter and threatened to kill
him; then they threatened that if a right-to-work
law were passed by the state legislature, there
would be blood in the streets.
If
we had real leadership in the White House and the US
Congress, all of our elected officials of both
political parties would have gone before the TV
cameras and said that such demonstrations of hatred
and violence would not be tolerated and that if
there was blood in the streets, the police would
arrest the union members involved, put them in jail
and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
Instead, the President and Congress were intimidated
into silence by the political power wielded by the
unions. That silence sent the union thugs a clear
message. “Do whatever you want to do. Beat people
up, threaten them with death. You won’t be arrested
or prosecuted and you can count on the federal
government protecting your back.” Why should a mass
murderer in Connecticut show restraint when both the
President and the Congress refused to show any?
Guns used to protect the President or the police are
considered good. Evidently guns used to protect
little school children are considered bad. But guns
are neither good nor bad; they are simply mechanical
devices. Based on how they are used, they can kill
people or they can keep people from being killed.
A
foundational principle of our society used to be
that there was no “culture of violence” and that the
killing of children and school teachers was
unacceptable, would not be tolerated and anyone who
did it would be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned.
To remind us of this standard of acceptable conduct,
on the walls of school classrooms was fixed a copy
of the Ten Commandments.
First, the nation should return to the practice of
hanging a copy of the Ten Commandments on school
classroom walls and teachers should daily teach them
to their students. Second, we should not hesitate to
allow teachers who volunteer to be trained, to carry
concealed weapons.
And
three, such actions are meaningless absent strong
Presidential leadership of the kind of Teddy
Roosevelt and, without such leadership, there is no
chance of success, no chance of
returning our country to the virtuous
national character it had when it was passed on to
us by our Founding Fathers.
Leadership does not simply consist of tired,
repetitive presidential lectures and slogans given
to a bored citizenry.
Real leaders lead by example. Like General
George Washington they lead from up front, from
where the bullets are whizzing and the mortar rounds
are exploding. They shout, “Follow Me;” and a
grateful citizenry responds with, “We Are On The
Way.”
These
three steps will not entirely solve our “culture of
violence” problems; but they could help us begin the
long, slow, painful process of returning law, order
and safety to our schools and to rebuilding the
nation’s morality.