An article appeared today in the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper, entitled "Media Urged to Join Drive for Gun Control", featuring the Kapatiran Party/ Gunless Society's statement through its secretary general Norman Cabrera that guns are to be blamed for the killing of journalists in the Philippines.
Disregarding journalism ethics, the Inquirer did not bother to get the opposing side's view, hence this Reply.
To begin, the Kapatiran / Gunless Society's focus on the gun and not the individual perpetrator of gun violence is a misplaced and incongruent argument. By analogy, blaming guns for the recent spate of violence against journalists is just as absurd as blaming cars for the illegal acts of drunk drivers. Being inanimate objects, guns cannot think, have no emotion, and much less can they act by themselves. Rather, the logical and proper remedy is to focus on the human actor and intervention as the cause, indentify and apprehend t7he perpetrators, and prosecute them. Kapatiran's statement is an indictment of our entire justice system as flawed, and not just guns.
Continue Reading
Tag: Gunless Society
PROGUN debates Kapatiran Gunless Society on GMA7 TV
Evangelium Vitae – The Stand of the Catholic Church on Self-Defense
Atty. Nandy Pacheco, self-proclaimed religious man and head of the gun control advocacy group, gunless society, frequently cites the “thou shall not kill” commandment as the basis for his anti-gun agenda arguments. He will have people believe that said commandment is absolute and that the taking of human life, under any circumstance, cannot be justified, specially in the eyes of God. What Nandy Pacheco fails to mention is that the Vatican already clarified this issue through the Evangelium Vitae issued by Pope John Paul II (Latin for "The Gospel of Life", it is the name of the encyclical written by Pope John Paul II which expresses the position of the Catholic Church regarding the value and inviolability of human life. The Pope issued the encyclical on March 25, 1995). Continue Reading