Louis Roney: Gunning it

Soon after arriving in Cambridge, Mass., from Winter Park, I drove out to Concord and walked in solitude to the middle of Concord Bridge. In the placid woods around the stream, I imagined the sounds of the many British soldiers who had once fired upon the American “embattled farmers.” The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his great poem “Concord Hymn” engraved forever the deep portent of that historic moment.

Thank God our boys had guns, and knew how to use them. This was a crisis that our patriots did not let go to waste.

There has always been opposition to the American freedom that is the basis of your life and mine. Our Second Amendment guarantees us the right to bear arms in defense of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Let us never fail to have the courage to protect our Second Amendment — even with guns, if necessary.

This commentator was for four years a shipboard U.S. Navy gunnery officer after the Japanese had attacked and killed several thousand U.S. citizens in Pearl Harbor. Toward the end of the War, I was assigned to teach gunnery at Gunnery Officers Ordnance School in Anacostia, D.C. The U.S. didn’t start the fracas, but I imagine the Japanese will never forget how it ended.

Today, many of our neighbors may have guns for their own protection. This fact arouses no fear in me, because our neighbors are good Americans and we trust them. It is a truism that “guns do not kill people,” but that “people — evil or careless — do use guns to kill people.” A 12-gauge shotgun that one uses to hunt quail is a very deadly weapon if a human being is the target.

We imagine the U.S. has at least one more A-bomb hidden away somewhere undetonated, and it is doing no one any harm.

The recent maniacal murder of a score of innocent school children by an insane gunner in Massachusetts demonstrated the qualities of a mad sociopath — his bullets served to express his hideous urges. Quite early in my life, I witnessed the evil inherent in the human animal. When unleashed against us, the Japanese were evil personified. The best thing to stop an evil man with a gun is a good man with a gun. We exhibited the goodness of American morality at war’s-end when we treated the Japanese with great generosity, and put them back on their feet economically.

There are always among us in the U.S. a great number of gun-haters who at the drop of a hat, launch a tirade against guns rather than concentrate on the destruction that can be done in many other ways. I am always surprised that such rationale does not lead to the banning of automobiles, which kill a large multiple of those killed by guns. My experience in using and teaching gunnery led primarily to my increased consciousness of their danger, and the need for education of all those who may ever need to carry a gun.

Whatever guns may be needed in America’s daily life depends entirely upon circumstances. But one thing is sure: a cop without a gun cannot cope with a crook who has a gun.

At the end of every evil story is the evil thinking of an evil person. It is the evil in the person that kills, and not the weapon he carries. Let me know if you believe it possible to enact legislation to control the evil in the human spirit …

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)