Editorial Response by FCI Director Michael Marks
Responsibility-Not Rhetoric
On September 8th, 2007, a wildfire swept through Bald Mountain, Oregon, damaging some 425 acres
of protected land. In any reasonable mind, this is a tragic loss, made all the
more senseless by the nature of its origins. According to the Polk County Sheriff's Office,
a fifty caliber owner negligently started the fire playing around with tracer ammunition. Playing, as
Smokey warns us all, with fire.
Sadly, at a time when the media should be focusing on personal responsibility, Carol McAlice
Currie, a writer for the Valley Voice, chooses instead to sidestep an intelligent discussion in
favor of inflammatory claims and politicized rhetoric in support of another pointless ban effort. Beginning
with a litany of not only unsupported, but in many cases publicly refuted claims by
veteran gun- banners from the Violence Policy Center, Ms. Currie launches into a largely canned
diatribe as to the evils of large-bore rifles in general, and of tracer ammunition in
particular. All this, one must note, based on the irresponsible behavior of one man using
them in ways they were not intended.
The response to this leap of logic took me straight to a fundamental question. Does
Ms. Currie smoke? (and no, I do not refer to mind- altering substances, but merely
common cigarettes.) I ask because at a ratio of literally thousands-to-one, wildfires are overwhelmingly started
by equally negligent smokers who, in their myopic "the world is my ashtray" style, flick
burning butts out on dry grass with daily abandon. Yet we hear no hue and
cry to ban cigarettes in order to save our forests, a much easier conclusion to
achieve when one considers the death and suffering caused from first and second-hand smoke on
top of all the fires. By comparison, the cigarette, and its deadly companion the match,
contribute to millions upon millions of deaths and an equal number of acres scorched.
But that
logic was lost on Ms. Currie, who chose instead to climb a tired podium and
rehash a dilapidated speech in the hope that it might after years of failure gain
some traction. Rhetoric is the refuge of those who have no original thought, Ms. Currie,
and if our only hope of saving our forest is by banning everything with which
those who are challenged by a lack of common sense among us can make fire,
we will have to ban the very sticks in the forest themselves.
The discussion that should
be on the minds and lips of every American is not how to bubble-wrap the
planet and idiot-proof every possible hazard. It should be instead on resurrecting the ideals of
personal responsibility, of educating our citizens as to the impact of their actions. Moreover, it
should focus on holding the minority who are challenged, accountable for their insipid deeds. The
tools of our potential destruction lay everywhere, it is only by staying the hand that
wields one that we can know peace and safety and preserve the environments that we
cherish.
It is this aversion to accountability which I find most unfathomable. Can the banners of
the world be so lacking in imagination that a knee jerk "ban it" is the
best idea they can offer? Drunk drivers kill thousands each year, yet we do not
ban alcohol, much less cars. But try to put a drunk away for a sincerely
harsh sentence and the same bleeding hearts that will ban things in a second come
out to embrace the poor, misunderstood drunk and cry for his next chance to take
to the road, beer in hand, and kill again.
If bans worked, then we would have
"drug free zone" signs plastered on every city corner. We would have "violence free zone"
signs in every home and nary a wife or child would be abused. We would
have law and order because each and every citizen, no matter how evil or twisted,
would sigh and abandon their malicious ways lest they run afoul of a ban. One
needs no well-honed sense of sarcasm to note the fallacy of that supposition, nor will
the rose-colored immaturity of someone who thinks that bans achieve anything but the waste of
taxpayer money.
You want to help stop fires, Ms. Currie? Petition for a change of law
that says that anyone causing a fire will be responsible for full financial restitution of
all costs to include firefighting, costs of replanting, and criminal responsibility for every scrap of
property and personal injury, with perhaps a "double bonus round" for those whose actions meet
the criteria for not acting reasonably in circumstances such as this. (and I would argue
this incident qualifies.) Make the cost of causing harm so high that it causes fear,
and then stick to your principals. Let society take a stand that says we are
sick of this type of irresponsibility; we are tired of negligent fires no matter what
was used to cause them.
Prohibition failed miserably, just as bans on drugs have failed to
keep them off our every street corner. Even in the most controlled environments on the
planet, our very prisons, illicit trade runs at a vibrant pace, with strictly banned products
and services flowing unimpeded past barbed wire, metal detectors and concrete walls. How in the
world does any sane person think they will ban anything in the great wild of
the free world? The promotion of a ban is only one short step removed from
"close your eyes, wish real hard and it will go away" - both approaches have
an equal chance of success. It is time that our society steps up to hold
accountable the few who use a tool for ill rather than the proven futility of
blindly ascribing evil to the tool itself. Only then we begin to weed out the
handful who continually set the bar of behavior lower for the rest of us.
Michael Marks
Federal Affairs Director
Fifty Caliber Institute
