I was
referring to weapons which have no real legitimate purposes at all for civilians,
Legitimate purposes.
Well, doesn't that sort of depend on whom you ask? One of the problems of that sort of value judgment is that it depends on other people sharing your values, and I find that usually isn't true.
I also happen to abhor the supercilous assumption that many of my friends make that our values are better than other people's because we are better educated, or more computer literate, or somehow "better" people. [I met many people in the South during my days in the civil rights movement who were by all common definitions ignorant, uneducated, and uncouth, who never aspired to fame or fortune, but who were more human and had far better values than many of the educated and wealthy friends I had in the sophisticated world.]
I happen to cherish T.E. Eliot, and for me--in my opinion for society--he has many more legitimate purposes for being in every American home than handguns. But if you asked a cross-section of Americans which has more "legitimate purposes" in our society, handguns or the Four Quartets, I suspect handguns would win hands down. What makes my opinions better or more valid than theirs?
For perspectives of what I mean from two vastly different approaches, I offer Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" and Loretta Lynn's "One's On the Way." |
