A distinction,
but no difference, in deaths
Commentary
by PAT MURPHY
Terrorism
is in the eye of the victim.
The
several thousand people who died innocently in the World Trade Center
were called victims of terrorism.
But the
men, women and a child cut down by a sniper’s gunfire in the Maryland
and District of Columbia areas in the past week probably will be
classified as victims of homicidal assaults or murder, not terrorism.
It’s a
distinction without much of a difference. Sudden, violent death from
ambush by a sniper or suicide bombers is ghastly in any event, and acts
of terror.
As
President Bush tries to make his case for power to launch a pre-emptive
strike on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to disarm a terrorist of murderous
weapons, it’s worth remembering that homegrown "terrorists"
with guns this year will kill perhaps three times as many as those who
died in the WTC towers.
If U.S.
intelligence experts can measure the threat of Saddam Hussein and set
the stage to disarm him, could domestic law enforcement intelligence
experts concentrate on developing ways to measure the threat at home
posed by some gun owners and the terrible toll they take on life and
find ways to disarm them before they kill?
Americans
continue to be the world’s most heavily armed people with 192 million
firearms, including 65 million handguns, in the industrialized world’s
most violent culture.
Surely
homegrown crime that takes thousands of lives every year is deserving of
as much all-out measures as the threat from a tyrant on the other side
of the world.
•
A reader
admonishes me for singling out Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo for
breaking his term limit pledge to run for a third term, and overlooking
others.
Research
turns up more—Republican Congressmen Scott McInnis, of Colorado, now
serving a fifth term after promising to serve only two; J.C. Watts, of
Oklahoma, re-elected to a fourth term but who is now leaving Congress,
and George Nethercutt, of Washington, now a fourth termer, and Democrat
Martin Sheehan, of Massachusetts, now in his fifth term.
Betraying
voters is an equal opportunity offense across party lines.
While at
it: what possesses politicians to claim they’re "family
values" candidates when in fact their lurid personal lives
contradict their campaign messages?
Two come
to mind.
Democratic
Gov. Paul Patton of Kentucky, 65, finally admits he had a two-year
affair with a 40-year-old nursing home operator. And U.S. Sen. Tim
Hutchinson, 54, an Arkansas Republican, dumped his wife of 29 years to
marry a 38-year-old member of his staff.
Auditors
caught cooking the books explain away their behavior as "accounting
errors": how long before "family values" politicians
caught philandering use the excuse of "marital errors?"