Bob Costas, sports commentator extraordinaire, has created a bit of a firestorm with his recent postulating during a Sunday Night Football halftime…thing. Whatever you call it. I am not a football fan, and will never grasp the terminology. Sorry.
His commentary was brought on by the shocking murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs player, Jovan Belcher, who shot the mother of his child, then ultimately took his own life, also with a gun.
This event prompted Mr. Costas to share his thoughts on gun-control, and he quoted/paraphrased Fox News sports writer, Jason Whitlock. In doing this, he uttered a line to which I take a bit of umbrage:
“But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Come again, Bob?
Isn’t that a little….overly simplistic?
Listen, many of us have strong opinions regarding the gun-control issue, but I am not writing this to continue the debate. What I believe is what I believe, and what you believe is what you believe. I find myself struggling with more…base issues whenever this topic comes back into the headlines.
Whenever a story breaks, whenever a high-profile murder happens, and there is a gun involved, the factions start…factioning. And the debate wages on. And nobody really gets to the heart of the matter.
We start arguing about taking guns away from the general citizenship. We start dissecting the 2nd amendment. We start calling everyone with a gun a whack-job, and everyone opposed to gun ownership a commie.
And the true issue is never addressed.
Legislation is always the buzzword. Legislate. Legislate. Legislate. Tougher rules. Tighter regulations. Stiffer penalties. Laws must be written so this terrible tragedy can never happen again.
But what do laws do? What could they possibly accomplish? How are they going to make the bad guys walk the straight and narrow? Do we really believe that if we somehow managed to take every gun out of every hand of every citizen, that the problem of our violent society will be magically solved?
In my mind, it always boils down to one thing:
You cannot regulate good and evil.
Laws may be passed that declare that a particular act is not allowed to be performed in society, and if it is, certain punishments shall be meted out in varying degrees of severity, depending on the heinousness of the act itself.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
Social and religious morality can create an environment in which certain acts are considered unacceptable. The pressure of that morality, conscious or unconscious, can serve as a deterrent to participating in the act that is held as inappropriate.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
No one person is fully good or fully evil. And the definition of good and evil is a complicated, layered mess that could be debated endlessly. I don’t have the time or energy to really dissect the human psyche, frankly. But ultimately, a person is either a generally decent person, or he isn’t.
What is murder? Textbooks and dictionaries offer some variation of a definition that it is the unlawful or unjustifiable taking of another life. But what is considered murder now is not what murder was in other times and other cultures. There was a time when a horse-thief was dealt with by hanging or a bullet between the eyes, with or without a representative of the law doling out said punishment. Seems rather harsh in our day and age, but at the time, it was held as a fair response to what was considered a severe crime.
Something that seems so stark and obvious as the charge of murder can be left open to interpretation, when considering a host of historical and societal factors. But let’s just stick to our generally accepted 21st century definition, okay? However, no matter the time, the culture, the social factors, etc., you can lay pen to paper and outline what is considered right and what is considered wrong.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
A weapon in hand does not make one a madman. It does not increase your odds of doing harm. To imply that it does is ridiculous. By that logic, anybody found with a steak knife is suspect. A person with a baseball bat is a loose cannon. Holding a pair of scissors degrades your ability to maintain your composure in the heat of the moment. A brick in your grasp could make you snap.
A gun did not make Jovan Belcher commit murder. It was something within him that allowed him to cross that line. Something that I don’t believe is in the average person.
Were I ever to make the conscious choice to end another person’s life, it would be for one reason: I am in a situation in which I feel my life is in extreme peril, and I have no other way to save myself. This isn’t the only way I could end a life, since we all know accidents can happen, but in terms of choosing to take aggressive action, that would be the only circumstance in which I could ever do it. Even then, I wonder if I could make the choice.
Why? Because I am not a killer. Not even at my most volatile, angry, enraged, and emotionally affected could I actually choose to end a life because of my feelings regarding a situation. I would not kill out of anger. I would not kill for retribution. I would not kill with malice.
I am not a murderer.
I am not evil.
Pass any law you’d like regarding what object I can end a life with. It will not change who I am. Neither will what I happen to hold in my hand at any given time change who I am at my very core.
I am not a murderer.
There is a fundamental difference between me and your average killer. He has something in him. Something that allowed him to choose to kill with malice. There is something wrong in there that made him capable of choosing to end the life of someone who displeased him, angered him, raised his self-righteous indignation to such a heinous level. Evil? Insanity? A lack of a soul? I don’t know. But it’s in there. And it is not in me.
I don’t understand the ability to kill. I don’t want to. I am very content in knowing that I simply cannot fathom the act, and never will. It’s not in my nature.
There is good in every person, and there is bad. Which one dominates that person’s being is what colors the choices they make in life. It is what makes a person an abuser. It is what makes a person a rapist. It is what makes a person a killer.
Or it is what makes a person peaceful. Or loving. Or kind.
At our core, we are essentially one or the other. We are human. We have our bad days. We have our good days. We have times in which we may be insufferable, or bitchy, or kind of a dick, but deep down, we are either good or bad.
You cannot regulate that. You cannot pass any law that will change that base alignment. You can regulate instruments of death all you want, but you will never, ever change the nature of good or evil.
And let’s face it. I could kill you with a toothpick, if I wanted to.
I don’t.
I’m not a murderer, and never will be.
This event prompted Mr. Costas to share his thoughts on gun-control, and he quoted/paraphrased Fox News sports writer, Jason Whitlock. In doing this, he uttered a line to which I take a bit of umbrage:
“But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Come again, Bob?
Isn’t that a little….overly simplistic?
Listen, many of us have strong opinions regarding the gun-control issue, but I am not writing this to continue the debate. What I believe is what I believe, and what you believe is what you believe. I find myself struggling with more…base issues whenever this topic comes back into the headlines.
Whenever a story breaks, whenever a high-profile murder happens, and there is a gun involved, the factions start…factioning. And the debate wages on. And nobody really gets to the heart of the matter.
We start arguing about taking guns away from the general citizenship. We start dissecting the 2nd amendment. We start calling everyone with a gun a whack-job, and everyone opposed to gun ownership a commie.
And the true issue is never addressed.
Legislation is always the buzzword. Legislate. Legislate. Legislate. Tougher rules. Tighter regulations. Stiffer penalties. Laws must be written so this terrible tragedy can never happen again.
But what do laws do? What could they possibly accomplish? How are they going to make the bad guys walk the straight and narrow? Do we really believe that if we somehow managed to take every gun out of every hand of every citizen, that the problem of our violent society will be magically solved?
In my mind, it always boils down to one thing:
You cannot regulate good and evil.
Laws may be passed that declare that a particular act is not allowed to be performed in society, and if it is, certain punishments shall be meted out in varying degrees of severity, depending on the heinousness of the act itself.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
Social and religious morality can create an environment in which certain acts are considered unacceptable. The pressure of that morality, conscious or unconscious, can serve as a deterrent to participating in the act that is held as inappropriate.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
No one person is fully good or fully evil. And the definition of good and evil is a complicated, layered mess that could be debated endlessly. I don’t have the time or energy to really dissect the human psyche, frankly. But ultimately, a person is either a generally decent person, or he isn’t.
What is murder? Textbooks and dictionaries offer some variation of a definition that it is the unlawful or unjustifiable taking of another life. But what is considered murder now is not what murder was in other times and other cultures. There was a time when a horse-thief was dealt with by hanging or a bullet between the eyes, with or without a representative of the law doling out said punishment. Seems rather harsh in our day and age, but at the time, it was held as a fair response to what was considered a severe crime.
Something that seems so stark and obvious as the charge of murder can be left open to interpretation, when considering a host of historical and societal factors. But let’s just stick to our generally accepted 21st century definition, okay? However, no matter the time, the culture, the social factors, etc., you can lay pen to paper and outline what is considered right and what is considered wrong.
But, you cannot regulate good and evil.
A weapon in hand does not make one a madman. It does not increase your odds of doing harm. To imply that it does is ridiculous. By that logic, anybody found with a steak knife is suspect. A person with a baseball bat is a loose cannon. Holding a pair of scissors degrades your ability to maintain your composure in the heat of the moment. A brick in your grasp could make you snap.
A gun did not make Jovan Belcher commit murder. It was something within him that allowed him to cross that line. Something that I don’t believe is in the average person.
Were I ever to make the conscious choice to end another person’s life, it would be for one reason: I am in a situation in which I feel my life is in extreme peril, and I have no other way to save myself. This isn’t the only way I could end a life, since we all know accidents can happen, but in terms of choosing to take aggressive action, that would be the only circumstance in which I could ever do it. Even then, I wonder if I could make the choice.
Why? Because I am not a killer. Not even at my most volatile, angry, enraged, and emotionally affected could I actually choose to end a life because of my feelings regarding a situation. I would not kill out of anger. I would not kill for retribution. I would not kill with malice.
I am not a murderer.
I am not evil.
Pass any law you’d like regarding what object I can end a life with. It will not change who I am. Neither will what I happen to hold in my hand at any given time change who I am at my very core.
I am not a murderer.
There is a fundamental difference between me and your average killer. He has something in him. Something that allowed him to choose to kill with malice. There is something wrong in there that made him capable of choosing to end the life of someone who displeased him, angered him, raised his self-righteous indignation to such a heinous level. Evil? Insanity? A lack of a soul? I don’t know. But it’s in there. And it is not in me.
I don’t understand the ability to kill. I don’t want to. I am very content in knowing that I simply cannot fathom the act, and never will. It’s not in my nature.
There is good in every person, and there is bad. Which one dominates that person’s being is what colors the choices they make in life. It is what makes a person an abuser. It is what makes a person a rapist. It is what makes a person a killer.
Or it is what makes a person peaceful. Or loving. Or kind.
At our core, we are essentially one or the other. We are human. We have our bad days. We have our good days. We have times in which we may be insufferable, or bitchy, or kind of a dick, but deep down, we are either good or bad.
You cannot regulate that. You cannot pass any law that will change that base alignment. You can regulate instruments of death all you want, but you will never, ever change the nature of good or evil.
And let’s face it. I could kill you with a toothpick, if I wanted to.
I don’t.
I’m not a murderer, and never will be.
