The Tipping Point

I’ve stayed away from the news today. I know what’s on it. Same old crap, but this time turned up to 21.

People ask me what I like about Korea. My response lately (I even used it today before I heard the news) is, “I’m not getting shot at.” I’ve watched the news recently and it seems that there’s always a shooting going on. And I’ve always been one to say that we Americans (sadly) need guns to protect ourselves. I would gladly defend the right to bear arms in the face of tyranny. What happened to the students of Tiananmen Square in 1989 should be a lesson in just that.

But a friend pointed out to me today that just a couple of years before Tiananmen, the unarmed citizens of Korea changed their world by standing up and forcing a change by overthrowing their government at the ballot box. The difference between China and Korea, it seems, is that the world could watch and hold the Koreans accountable for their actions, while the Chinese were allowed to proceed under the cloak of their own censorship.

But the point is this — there are ways to win without guns. And we’ve really reached a tipping point, where it’s time to repeal and replace the second amendment and let the chips fall where they may. I lived in Korea in the 80’s — a time when the government could, and did, round people up and “disappear” them. If anyone needed to stand up to the government, it was the Korean people, and they did it with tremendous courage from Gwangju in ’80 to the Summer of Democracy in ’87 (and beyond).

I live in a Korea today where I and the citizens of this country can walk the streets at night pretty much anywhere without fear (but still, quite prudently in any situation, with caution). Where, just a couple of weeks ago, the Korean people inaugurated a president whom they had freely and fairly elected. Where next week they will elect local officials. They went from there — black jeeps prowling the streets, instilling fear in its citizens — to here, and all without guns. It’s possible in a free country, and to think that our country would be less free without guns is narrow-minded. It doesn’t take into account that we are not a free country when we live in constant fear of these massacres happening to us and our children next.

I can’t say exactly how we can do it, but it must be done. I don’t want to completely remove the right to bear arms — even in Korea I’ve seen people with guns — but we need to regulate and control their use. And if we think our neighbors, who should (and in most cases are) be people who largely share our values, are going to be the ones to overrun and imprison us because the gub’ment took away our guns, then maybe we’d better start right now by making better neighbors.

But even this isn’t what gun control is about. Gun control is about keeping guns out of the hands of lunatics. It can’t be perfect, but it can be better. Unfortunately, we have too large a faction in our legislative bodies who run in fear of their more vocal constituents (and with the funding of powerful interest groups), but the reality is, the vast majority of Americans want common sense to prevail. They want this to stop, and if we can’t get what we need to happen from the people in office right now, we need to get new people in office.

It’s time. We’ve got to choose. Live in fear of some random “thug” that Fox News insists is around every corner (or sneaking over the border right now!), or continue living in fear of the all too prevalent lunatic who thinks their only option is it to shoot up a school, a church, a post office, a supermarket, an office.

I think the choice is obvious.