“I’ve been a member of the NRA, I collect, make and shoot guns.” Senator Barry Goldwater. Remember Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona? In 1964, he was the Republican presidential candidate and many times in the past had posed with his favourite hunting rifle in the NRA’s national magazine advertisements that say publicly: “I am the NRA.”Despite this posturing,
in 1989, common sense dictated to Goldwater to change his earlier stance and was quoted by the Washington Post’s Chuck Conconi to have said this: “I’m completely opposed to selling automatic rifles. I don’t see any reason why they ever made semiautomatics……… I’ve never used an automatic or semi-automatic for hunting. There’s no need to. They have no place in anybody’s arsenal. If any SOB can’t hit a deer with one shot, then he ought to quit shooting.” People are killed in horrendous ways these days in the U.S, thanks to gang violence, neurotic folks who go on killing sprees made possible by the second amendment which makes it easier to get firearms.

It staggers the imagination to think that ownership of firearms is still legal in the U.S without background checks, in spite of the mass murders that make negative headlines on major news network frequently.
Seems like the Second Amendment, members of Congress and the people are great in their ways but little out of their ways because the argument that the ban on owning guns would put guns in the hands of criminals and increase the rate of murder has been proved wrong by these senseless murders by people who aren’t tykes and rowdies. President Barack Obama’s call for common sense and for America to delay handing firearms to applicants, so as to carry out a proper background check on criminal, mental health record, before such is issued is in order, but he is getting the flak from members of the NRA.

As far as I can remember, presidents in the U.S always bow to the pressures of NRA lobbyists. George Bush the 41st president of the United State vowed to veto the ‘Brady Bill,’ which was passed by both the House and Senate at that time. What was the Brady Bill and why the name Brady? A bill sponsored to order a five-day national waiting period, so as to carry a background check on purchasers of firearms. Can you beat that? Isn’t it common sense to do background check on purchasers of guns, owing to harsh realities in the U.S? Jim Brady was shot on the same day as Ronald Reagan.
That necessitated the push for a Brady Bill. The President then said no. The American people still say no and the effect is deaths we see on our screens and read about on broadsheets and many more deaths because of a so-called policy to advance the cause of a second amendment.

Hunting and sports, it would appear, have taken over the importance placed on human lives. The U.S banned the importation of fully automatic AK47s during the George Bush Snr. Presidency but same are produced massively in-country as well as the production of semi-automatic weapons that can be bought by citizens without check. It’s all about rights. Common sense made George Bush like Barry Goldwater withdraw his support for NRA. Remember Bush’s resignation as a life member of the NRA on May 3, 1995 in his letter to the NRA president Thomas L. Washington (…you have not repudiated Mr. La Pierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a life member of the NRA. The said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list).

This was in response to the statement credited to Wayne La Pierre, the executive president of NRA, who called federal agents, “jack-booted thugs,”(even after deaths recorded), when on April 19, 1995,a truck bomb exploded outside a federal office in Oklahoma killing 168 enforcement agencies. Many policy flaws in the U.S continue. For instance, I wonder –
if the U.S was right to spearhead the move about Saddam and Gaddafi? As dictatorial as they were, many still say (despite mass graves during their reign) that their countries were ‘somewhat stable’ under their leadership, and the reign of terror in these countries today couldn’t have been
imagined while they lived.

It is on record that before they were deracinated from their seats of power, citizens were proud of their countries and never left in droves to seek asylum in European countries, pathetically, seeking food, shelter and a safe haven.

The U.S, many pundits have said, does not seem to be able to figure out the Arab. They are always quick to back one idea—“overthrow the dictator”— and every time they seem to get an even worse situation. They keep trying to overthrow Syria’s despot by backing the rebels without learning from Iraq that democracy does not work well there, and from Libya that the deposition of a dictator brings about anarchy, the rise of insurgency and many splinter extremists groups.

The Middle East state of affairs is that of Shia vs. Sunnis. Theirs is a rule by a dictatorship of royal families versus secular/military dictatorships. All are stable dictatorships. But the West insists on democracy. Democracy cannot work well in the Middle East.

But she insists on a democratic philosophy. The U.S must learn to treat all Middle Eastern states with an equal measure of respect. They are scared of Iran, apprehensive about Egypt and applaud Jordan— while turning a blind eye to the human right abuses in Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, the war launched and the abetting of wars in the Arab world has not brought democracy to Iraq, Libya and may not do so in Syria. The United States insists and demands that President Assad has to relinquish power as an alternative to peace. Russia insists that the U.S
doesn’t have the right to ask for the removal of President Assad and that the country is in Syria to strengthen the Syrian Army, which has suffered severe military setbacks, provide air support for troops and rehabilitate same without providing ground troops to fight ISIS.

But wouldn’t the ouster of Assad complicate the situation in Syria? It is clear though, that Assad controls only about twenty-five per cent of Syria, hence he is not in control of Syria as many assume.

In the main, no one is talking about a moderate opposition that will take over after Assad. Subsequently, mention is not made as to how Western ideologies fit in with and to Arab ideologies.

I am snowed under these days with the gory pictures of refugees on cable television fleeing Syria and Iraq, desperately begging for the chance to be admitted into Western and Eastern European countries and it makes my skin crawl with revulsion.

Observers have concluded that the coalition spearheaded in Syria by the U.S. cannot guarantee political freedom to Syria but chaos.

Aba, a teacher, speaker, writer, campaigner, consultant lives in Port Harcourt.
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