"Don't mourn, disarm"
Peoples Weekly World Editorial
May 1, 1999
Vice President Al Gore asked the 70,000 mourners in Littleton, Colo, last Sunday to " feel the embrace of literally hundreds of millions who weep with you " for the 14 students and their teacher who died in the Columbine HIgh School massacre. Yes, the nation mourns.
But then Gore added, "America is a good and decent place, and all our goodness is a light to all the nations of the world."
It was hardly an appropriate time to hold up the U.s. as a beacon for the world. In the flood of news accounts about the two young gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, they are described as "ordinary" with no clues that a volcano was about to erupt.
Yet fellow students reprot hearing Harris threatening to kill, heard their admiring comments about Adolph Hitler. They were more or less openly assembling bombs in their homes and Harris had a sawed off shotgun on display in his bedroom.
No one noticed because 20 years of Reaganite ultra-rightism has made hateful and violent political rhetoric commonplace. Less than a week after the Columbine massacre, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani suggested that New York City schools should be "blown up".
Our political elite promotes high explosives as a quick solution to complicated problems, most recently in Yugoslavia.
The right-wing rage that consumed these two young killers, as well as Timothy McVeigh, is a lethal brew when combined with easily obtained firearms. It was appraently easy for these boys to obtain a Tech-DC 9 capable of firing 300 rounds a minute, no questions asked.
We don't need to "feel good" about America right now. we need to fact the truth. There is trouble in River City. and it is time to disarm before more innocent live are lost. Outlaw handguns now.