I guess it’s time to quote Betty White, “Getting old is not for sissies”.
It’s tough when the majority of your years are probably in your rear view mirror and you realize that you have been very wrong about something very important.
It is not that I didn’t pay attention in school, or that I didn’t care, or that I wasn’t active in promoting causes to correct injustices. What seems to be the case is that I have accepted the idea that change is an evolutionary process, something that takes time. That is wrong.
I don’t know exactly when I accepted this gradualist philosophy. In my youth, I was far more insistent that changes should occur NOW, right this instant, while I am alive to see it. Changes for voting rights, women’s rights, the right to eat in any restaurant, the right to use any public restroom or water fountain, the right to sit anywhere on public transportation, the right to equal employment opportunity, the right to live wherever you could afford, and the right to marry whomever you happened to love.
During my youth, important changes happened in all of those areas. Society today is greatly different than the society I was born into in the United States, largely because of those changes.
After a recent conversation with my oldest daughter, I reflected on these things. Why was my generation so dramatically successful in forcing those changes, while the current generation is being stymied at every turn? Then it occurred to me. We had the both carrot and the stick. We had Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. (the carrot) AND Malcolm X (the stick). We had the Urban League (the carrot) AND the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council Commandos (the stick). We had CORE (the carrot) AND the Ministers of Defense (the stick). It was then that I remembered something I once thought I would never forget:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
– Frederick Douglass
That is when I had to admit I’ve been wrong for years now. We are missing the stick. We have nothing but carrots.
I should not be insisting on ammunition purchase limits, gun magazine capacity limits, wait-times after purchase, or background checks.
The NRA is right. I have been wrong.
More Americans need guns. Specifically, more American women need guns. In fact, I believe we can fix the gun rights debate, the equal pay for equal work debate, the minimum wage debate, the fair share tax debate, the abortion rights debate, spousal abuse, rape, and a host of other issues if American women were REQUIRED to have a gun.
The NRA should be salivating at this prospect. I expect their whole-hearted support. This should be the country in which every woman carries a gun. Of course it will be hard for gun manufacturers to keep up with the demand for new guns at the beginning. This will probably result in more opportunities for employment (a little help in the job growth stats), however.
I am forced to abandon my previous position, and advocate that every woman of child bearing age in America be required to have a gun with a caliber large enough to kill a 240 pound man with a single shot to his central body mass. A gun of smaller caliber can be substituted if it is semi-automatic and has a high capacity magazine. As soon as a girl receives her menses she should be required to take a gun safety course. She should be issued her gun and a permit to carry it upon successful completion of the course. Permits should be issued by the federal government, and valid throughout the US. If she cannot afford to buy a gun, the government should help her pay for one. All young women still in school or recently graduated should be required to participate in this program. Religious exemptions (conscientious objectors) should be honored.
All other women should receive their guns from programs sponsored by their employers, or from their husbands.
Employers that do not comply should be fined and principle officers jailed. Husbands that do not comply should be fined and/or jailed.
The government can offer a tax credit to businesses and husbands for this purpose. If the woman is being sustained by a government program, or her children are sustained by a government program, the government program should provide the training and the gun. Women in active duty military families should receive their fire-arms training and weapon from their respective branch of service.
No program like this should be implemented for men. Let them figure it out for themselves.
I predict that in the short term there will be an uptick in violence. This will be the consequence of some women solving abuse problems and whatnot, but I think that I can guarantee that rape will decline to almost nothing in a very few years. So will spousal abuse. Guys will probably stop shooting other guys over a woman, since their dominance will only nominate them to be the person she is mad at.
I predict that bosses, who are predominantly men, will definitely be more circumspect and thoughtful about granting a requested raise. They will be particularly prudent when that woman has not been earning the same wage as her co-worker equivalents. The threat of a gun empowered woman going postal in their place of business would not be far from their minds.
I predict that men out on the town for a good time will think twice about plying a woman with liquor. That liquor might lower the wrong inhibitions.
I predict that no protesters will show up at the abortion clinic without body armor. I further predict that those who do show up will be much better behaved.
I predict that a self-important white man will probably not be inclined to challenge a 90 year old black woman who has always voted at this very polling place about her voting credentials.
Thank God I have lived long enough to see the error of my ways. Now let’s get together and make this happen.