Dear Mr. Hogg,<\/p>\n
Let me begin by expressing my condolences for the losses that you and the members of your school community suffered on that infamous day\u2014the second St. Valentine\u2019s Day massacre, if you will, an event that was all that much more horrific than the original for both the scope of the bloodshed and, crucially, the fact that, this time, the victims were innocents and not members of a rival gang.<\/p>\n
Yet my heart goes out to you also for the sheer terror that you<\/em> personally must have experienced in that situation.\u00a0 No one, least of all a young school student, should be made to endure the agony that you and your peers doubtless endured.<\/p>\n As you know, while you\u2019ve achieved fame since that fateful day, you\u2019ve achieved infamy as well.\u00a0 Admittedly, though I find it impossible not to admire your determination to draw meaning from the carnage and the chaos that Nikolas Cruz left in his wake, I reject every bit as much as any of your harshest critics both the cause that you champion as well as some of the methods that you\u2019ve been employing for the sake of promoting that cause.<\/p>\n However, given your circumstances\u2014the mass shooting that you survived, the loss that you suffered, and your young age\u2014I\u2019d rather give you some food for thought than hurl accusations and invective at you.<\/p>\n Those of your conservative critics who haven\u2019t blasted you directly, particularly conservative media figures who, in order to avoid the treatment to which you and your leftist colleagues have recently subjected Laura Ingraham, have sought to excuse your words and deeds on the grounds that you\u2019re being \u201cused\u201d by adult ideologues are guilty of the worst condescension.<\/p>\n In the first place, this line of criticism\u2014and it is<\/em> a veiled criticism\u2014assumes that you and your peers are but brainless puppets without beliefs of your own. But surely, at nearly 18 years of age\u2014an age at which these same critics have no problems sending off Americans to die overseas in foreign wars and granting others the right to vote\u2014it should be assumed that the views you espouse are your own.<\/p>\n There is, however, another reason why this conservative critique is misplaced, and fundamentally so.<\/p>\n You are being used<\/em>.\u00a0 This, though, doesn\u2019t mean that there\u2019s anything morally objectionable about the arrangement that\u2019s been established between you and your backers.\u00a0 The great 18th<\/sup> century philosopher Immanuel Kant made explicit a distinction that can\u2019t fail to resonate with any human being that\u2019s been alive for more than a few years.\u00a0 Kant noted a difference between, on the one hand, treating a person as a means to an end and, on the other, treating a person merely <\/em>as a means.\u00a0 Generally speaking, the former is morally permissible. The latter, though, is never permissible.<\/p>\n When my car has problems, I use my mechanic as a means toward repairing it.\u00a0 He in turn uses my money as a means toward his income. Yet there is nothing objectionable about this relationship of ours as long as neither party treats the other merely <\/em>as a means via dishonesty, manipulation, etc.<\/p>\n To treat a person merely as a means is to objectify <\/em>that person.<\/p>\n So, Mr. Hogg, while you and your peers, because you are young, suburban, and mostly white, are indeed being used as props for the left\u2019s long-standing campaign against the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, as long as you have consented<\/em> to this arrangement and as long as you share the same end as that of your funders, you assume responsibility for your actions.<\/p>\n And it is precisely because you are<\/em> responsible for your views and actions that I am going to hold you responsible by posing the same challenges to you that I have posed to other Second Amendment-deniers.<\/p>\n Mr. Hogg, you and several of your peers now demand<\/em> what you refer to as \u201cgun-control.\u201d\u00a0 Evidently, Mr. Hogg, you believe that the tens of thousands of federal and state gun laws that already exist on the books are inadequate to the task of preventing violent actors from obtaining and using firearms to slaughter innocents.\u00a0 This being so, I have a question:<\/p>\n What heretofore non-existent \u201cgun\u201d law do you think would\u2019ve prevented Nikolas Cruz from rampaging through the halls of your high school?<\/p>\n To put it another way, what gun law do you think would\u2019ve saved the lives of 17 of your peers on February 14?<\/p>\n Neither you nor anyone else of whom I\u2019m aware, despite your incessant clamor for \u201cgun-control,\u201d has yet to specify the content of that miracle law that you assume will \u201ckeep our children safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, this being said, it\u2019s less inexcusable that you and your fellow teenaged Second Amendment-denying crusaders are silent on this score than are the adults who have educated you and those grown-ups who organize and fund your activities.\u00a0 They\u2019ve had more experience in the real world, so to speak, and should know that the brute fact of the matter is that in spite of the thousands upon thousands of restrictions on and regulations of the exercise of the Second Amendment that have existed for years, people who are determined to take innocent lives via firearms are still able to acquire them.<\/p>\n These adults, like yourself, demand\u2014you all always demand<\/em>\u2014that the federal government \u201cdo something\u201d about what you call \u201cgun violence.\u201d But, unavoidably, you never specify exactly what should be done in order to prevent that \u201cgun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n If you really want to prevent murder by firearm, why not demand that the government criminalize murder, and criminalize it by assuring for it the harshest of penalties\u2014maybe life in prison, or even capital punishment?<\/p>\n If you really want to prevent mass shootings, why not demand that the government make it illegal to commit a mass shooting?\u00a0 Or maybe you can demand that no one be permitted to take guns to school campuses?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t get the impression that you\u2019re an unintelligent young man, Mr. Hogg.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you see the point of these facetious questions:<\/p>\n If a person who is determined to commit murder is not going to be deterred from doing so by the threat of life behind bars and possibly execution, then he certainly won\u2019t be deterred by the fact that he may have to obtain his weapon of choice in the black market because he can\u2019t buy it legally at Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods.<\/p>\n \u201cGun-control\u201d has got to be among the most intellectually indefensible positions ever.\u00a0 You and your peers are young enough to recognize this now.\u00a0 Please give it some thought.<\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Mr. Hogg, Let me begin by expressing my condolences for the losses that you and the members of your school community suffered on that infamous day\u2014the second St. Valentine\u2019s Day massacre, if you will, an event that was all that much more horrific than the original for both the scope of the bloodshed and,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n