The Benevolent Thou

Indifference to suffering is humanity’s greatest moral failing.

The children and adults of Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, whose lives ended that horror filled day

Because of the congressional conservative’s opposition to any regulation that might save lives—especially the lives of children—President Obama has announced the details of his executive order, executed in an effort to curb unfettered avenues to firearm purchases.

The main thrust of the executive order is to expand background checks partly by naming any person selling a firearm at a gun show a dealer and, therefore, must conduct background checks. The executive order also will include stricter control of Internet sales of firearms, which is now a robust industry in itself.

Republicans will say that he has overstepped his authority, but he has not. Recall that G.W. Bush and de facto President Cheney embraced the doctrine of a strong Unitary Executive as a means to block aspects of laws that they didn’t like, even though they were passed by Congress. To my knowledge, no conservative ever objected.

Bush’s use of the Executive Order was no different from the Iraq constitutional Theocracy, where only those laws approved by the head cleric may be allowed to manifest.

The March on Washington after Sandy Hook and the lobbying efforts of the parents of the dead children had no effect on conservatives. They blocked subsequent legislation.

President Obama’s executive order on gun control is different. He is acting in a virtual national emergency situation where Congress refuses to act. While conservatives continually chant the mantra that the first duty of the president is to protect Americans, it is clear that they don’t mean by reducing the number of Americans killed by domestic gun violence. After all, that would cut into corporate profit.

The President’s action will be condemned, as usual, as using Executive Orders to illegally grab power from Congress when, in fact, President Obama has executed fewer executive orders than any president since William McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901, having served 4.5 years.

According to The Gun Violence Archive, the total number of Americans killed by gun violence in 2015 was 13,338. There were 692 children, ages 0-11 and 2,688 teens, ages 12-17 killed or wounded.

By contrast, terrorism in the U.S. (domestic and foreign) since 9/11/01, has claimed the lives of 74 Americans.

Conservatives are indifferent to the 13,338 killed by domestic gun violence, but horrified by the 74 killed by domestic and foreign inspired terrorism.

Imagine the pain!

The reason there are so few terrorist attacks in the U.S. is because conservatives push for strong controls and liberals agree, to an extent. The reason death by firearm violence in the U.S. is so high, is because conservatives fight against even the mildest controls.

It is a serious moral crime to sit and do nothing about gun violence in the U.S. It is an even greater crime against our fellow citizens to fight against any attempt to reduce these numbers, which is the main purpose of the Murder Industrial Complex (firearm manufactures, the NRA—their de facto political bribery/threat arm—and the politicians they’ve bought to do their fighting or threatened to keep them silent.

PLEASE SEND THE PRESIDENT A “THANK YOU” FOR THIS ACTION.

And consider, as well, that the only candidate now running in the presidential primary who has vowed to fight hard against corporate money in politics (which drives the anti-firearm control madness) is Bernie Sanders.

— Max T. Furr is author of The Empathy Imperative, a novel featuring a trial of God in an ethereal courtroom where He is charged with creating evil, willful and harmful negligence, and with terrorism. His interrogators are a professor of evolutionary biology and a professor of psychology.

Is the god of the Bible amoral? Do true-believers believe that whatever their god does, he does because it is the moral and right thing to do, or are his actions right and moral because they are his actions?