American University Emeritus professor of literature Charles R. Larson claims the NRA’s “screeds against gun control in the United States” can be readily connected to “genocide in the world… [and to calls] for jihad against those who would attempt to impose any controls on gun ownership.”
He wrote that this provides cover for “many Americans” who suffer from a “gun addiction… [that is] as out of control as alcoholism or the abuse of other substances.”
According to CounterPunch.org, Larson contends that those who possess this so-called “gun addiction” have “dangerous if not irrational beliefs.” Chief among them is the widespread fear that, “Obama is going to take [Americans’] guns away” and that such addicts use guns to deal with “trivial incidents of daily life.”
He tries to support his thesis by pointing to incidents like the 71-year-old man who murdered another man during an argument in a movie theater, two kids who were wounded when a student brought a gun to a Pennsylvania school, and an Elkhart, Indiana criminal who was killed by police after murdering two individuals in a grocery store.
Larson says these incidents send the message that “those who do not possess guns” are “under attack.” Thus, “gun owners–and especially NRA spokespeople who have never demonstrated one iota of concern for the innocent victims of gun violence who are killed every day in our country–have created such an atmosphere of fear that they have become blood brothers of religious jihadists.”
He said the thousands of firearm-related deaths in our country each year point to “genocide by another name,” and he lays the blame at the feet of the NRA.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.