At a Sundance Film Festival discussion on Hollywood’s role in violence director Roger Corman was quoted as saying: “Canada sees the same motion pictures as do. They play the same video games that we do. They see the same television that we do. Their crime rate—and specifically their murder rate –is a tiny fraction of ours. The only difference is they have strong gun control laws and we (don’t). I wish somebody would ask the head of the NRA how he explains that.”

He could add to his list the other industrialized nations of the world and say the same thing, the difference is ‘gun control.’ However, this a too common sense answer to the question of why USA has so much gun violence and many people do not want to hear common sense answers.

In a letter to the editor ( see continue below) my friend wrote how “most things are not made to cause injury or death to people….but a “gun is made solely to do violence to others by intimidating or scaring others, maiming others or killing others.” This statement makes sense but that is the problem it makes too much common sense.

I, with help of others, wrote three essays The Catholic Church in North Central Milwaukee which went unchallenged by Archdiocese. However when we asked the Archdiocese Corporation Board to use the 1.1 million dollars they received from sale of three Church properties in North Central Milwaukee for spiritual and corporal works of mercy, we, especially me were attacked.

Instead of looking at our common sense argument for use of the money they choose to attack one of the messengers and ignore the common sense argument.
A Catholic University, Marquette University in Milwaukee, teaches killing, killing without conscience in its military departments on campus. Although we documented this fact with all types of research, essays and quotes from the military itself Marquette ignores this issue. ( See See Letter to the Provost of Marquette University) Research and Common Sense arguments like this military violates Christian values of priority of conscience do not make sense.

So what to do when common sense does not make sense any longer? One thing I am trying is to use stories, parables and pictures to make a point rather than common sense. Tonight I made up a cartoon about how a woman can now serve in the front lines of war just like a man but cannot be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church just like a man. (Cartoon to come to web soon once I figure a way to put it on a web page.) It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe a picture it can make more sense than common sense.

Letter to Editor

Guns made for violence

I saw in the Crossroads section of the Jan. 20 Journal Sentinel the political cartoon of many of the items that cause death in this country.

What is seldom brought out is the fact that most things are not made to cause injury or death to people. For example, a car is made to transport people, not to kill. An ax is made to cut down trees, not to kill people.

However, a gun is made solely to do violence to others by intimidating or scaring others, maiming others or killing others. That is its reason for being made. Therefore, those who buy or sell a gun, especially a handgun or assault gun, are being violent. They have shown that they are willing to do violence to another.

The other thing most people do not understand is that the right for the militia to carry firearms arose out of the days of slavery in the Southern states when militia were set up to keep the slaves from escaping or rebelling against their plantation owners.

One will notice that the Second Amendment does not say that all people in the country have the right to have firearms. It says that the state, not country, will protect the right of the militia (the slavery militia) to have a firearm. The firearm was meant to keep the slaves from escaping or rebelling. Those who tried to escape were killed by the armed militia.

It is time we renounce violence by renouncing the tools of violence. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he said “We either have nonviolence or nonexistence.”

Don Timmerman
Casa Maria
Milwaukee

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