ban – Houghton STAR

As international delegates arrived in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday, January 21, doubts persisted concerning whether they would be able to bring an end to Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Courtesy of radioaustralia.net.au — Courtesy of
radioaustralia.net.au

Sponsored by the United States, Russia, and the United Nations, the peace accords, known as “Geneva 2,” will bring together officials from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government along with the Syrian National Council (SNC) an opposition bloc consisting of various groups seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. However, numerous groups engaged in the conflict have refused to attend, including many Islamist fighters who seek to turn Syria into an Islamic emirate. Complications further expanded as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, under the lobbying influence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, withdrew an invitation to Iran, one of Assad’s main financial and materials supporters.

According to Reuters, Ban faced immense pressure from both Washington and the SNC, the latter threatening to boycott the talks and further obstruct any chances of conflict resolution. Moreover, Iran rejected the caveat that it had to accept the guidelines of a previous peace conference held in Geneva in 2012 that called for President Assad to step down and allow a transitional administration to take over. These peace talks failed after the U.S. and Russia could not agree on Assad’s post-conflict, political role. Washington Post reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said excluding Iran is not a “catastrophe,” and said Russia and the other countries at the conference will still push for a productive dialogue between the warring factions.

Further complications arising as peace talks begin include the revelation of widespread torture and systematic killing committed by the Assad régime against 11,000 detainees in Syrian government custody. Al-Jazeera reports that thousands of photographs smuggled out of Syria and examined by a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts show emaciated bodies marked with signs of brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture. The photographs were taken by a photographer for the military police who had secretly defected to the opposition. While both sides of Syria’s civil war have been accused of war crimes, this evidence is the most definitive proof of large-scale killing on the part of the régime to date. According to U.S State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one reason “Geneva 2” needs to be fruitful is because “the situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place and…we need to get the Assad régime out of power.” Reuters reports that the former chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, Desmond de Silva, commented that “some of the images we saw were absolutely reminiscent of people who came out of Belsen and Auschwitz.” It is not yet known how the revelations of these photographs will influence the demands of other negotiators, such as Russia, or the SNC.

Meanwhile, as “Geneva 2” begins, warfare continues in Syria. It is estimated that 130,000 people have died along with 22 million being displaced. Spillover from the conflict has also affected neighboring countries. In Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a suicide bombing occurred in front of the headquarters of Hezbollah, a Shi’a group that actively assists Assad and militarily adheres to the Alawite offshoot of Shi’a Islam. Meanwhile, Iraq faces political strife as al-Qaeda-linked groups seek greater influence amongst the country’s Sunni population. Currently, Iraqi government forces and tribal fighters are trying to expel al-Qaeda fighters, staunchly opposed to Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government, from the Sunni enclave in the country’s west. Consequently, as the conflict between Sunni-backed rebels in Syria and the Alawite-majority government continues, sectarian divides deepen further throughout the Middle East.

Fear mongering is definitely what is happening in this country when it comes to gun control, but I will lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of gun rights activists. Some groups do seem to want to want us to live in fear of attack at any moment, but those groups are the firearms corporations and the NRA.

Guns are being advertised as self-defense weapons for people to protect themselves against home invaders and attackers. The NRA has suggested that school guards be armed in response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Proposals for gun control regulations are treated as propositions to remove the second amendment from the Constitution.

Courtesy of http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/

Conservative pundits blame violent movies and video games as well as poor mental health services for mass shootings, ignoring guns as a relevant factor. The phrase “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is tossed around on a daily basis.

Evan Selinger, associate professor of philosophy at RIT, wrote on “The Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun” for the Atlantic. He explains that many people have an instrumentalist conception of technology, believing that it is value-neutral. According to this view, Selinger writes that technology “is subservient to our beliefs and desires; it does not significantly constrain much less determine them.”

In a contrasting argument, Selinger quotes Don Ihde, a leading philosopher of technology, as saying that “the human-gun relation transforms the situation from any similar situation of a human without a gun.”
Selinger points out that, though guns could have many different possible uses, “such options are not practically viable because gun design itself embodies behavior-shaping values; its material composition indicates the preferred ends to which it ‘should’ be used.”

Guns lead to a “reduction in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as dangerous, and a concomitant amplification in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as calling for the subject to respond with violence,” Selinger wrote.
To carry this argument further, it seems to me that the preferred end to which assault weapons and large ammunition magazines are to be used is assaulting people.

Why then, I ask, is it so controversial that President Obama has proposed a renewal and strengthening of the assault weapons ban? Why then, is it so controversial that he has proposed limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds?

The President is not trying to take away Americans’ right to bear arms. Instead, he is pushing for universal background checks and research on gun violence. He is trying to make the country a safer place, and he is not stepping on the rights of hunters or pistol owners by doing so.

I recently read an interesting opinions editorial in the New York Times written by self-professed liberal gun owner Justin Cronin. To give you an idea of where he is coming from, Cronin wrote, “I have half a dozen pistols in my safe, all semiautomatics, the largest capable of holding 20 rounds. I go to the range at least once a week, have applied for a concealed carry license and am planning to take a tactical training course in the spring.”

Although Cronin admitted to being aware that, “statistically speaking, a gun in the home represents a far greater danger to its inhabitants than to an intruder,” he, like many people, owns guns in part to protect his family.

However, Cronin went on to write that, “the White House’s recommendations seem like a good starting point and nothing that would prevent me from protecting my family in a crisis. The AR-15 is a fascinating weapon, and, frankly, a gas to shoot. So is a tank, and I don’t need to own a tank.”

My question to you is whether you think it is right that a renewal and strengthening of the assault weapons ban may be blocked due to pressure from the NRA. Is an assault weapon really just a meaningless piece of technology that has no effect on its owner’s beliefs and desires whatsoever?

Or does an assault weapon have the power to transform situations, indicating to the owner its inherent purpose as a violent killing machine?