Some people have no stomach for war, even a necessary war against a totalitarian, theocratic enemy that murders civilians. Shut down the gun clubs and cut the army’s funding, they demand, and let’s hope for the best. Sorry about your loss, New York, but we’re sure they won’t come here—fingers crossed, anyway. This attitude—passive, pacifist, and optimistic to the point of fantasy—is no way for civilized people to face the world.
Michel Brassard’s arrest has led to a flurry of opinions on whether Hart House should keep its longstanding Revolver Club and Rifle Association. A faculty member, Dr. Bruce Kidd, was quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying, “The firing range was constructed during the First World War, at a time when educated masculinity included the ability to handle firearms in the context of the Great War. We’ve moved on—at least, I hope we have.”
Educated masculinity. Am I alone in thinking the loss of this concept is unfortunate, not something to be cheered? Since there are active factions on campus that loathe the masculine, naturally things like the gun clubs are attacked whenever the masses become aware they exist—no surprise there. But if we’ve banished educated masculinity as passé, what has replaced the consensus that it’s okay, even a good thing, for men to know how to use firearms? If we’re to judge by what we read in the Varsity, the new consensus on campus is a whiny conviction that guns are somehow icky and impolite. And while they may be worthy of impassioned discussion in a poli sci tutorial, they surely must not have a physical presence on campus, even if it’s hidden away under Hart House.
U of T’s public relations director, Sue Block-Nevitte, referred to the attacks of September 11 as part of the reason some people want to shut down the gun clubs, saying we now “think of the world differently.” What a strange sentiment—as though the horrific attacks (in which no guns were used) somehow suggest that the people of the West should lay down their guns. On the contrary, the attacks remind us how much we need men with guns to protect our civilization against the forces of terror (and it is mostly men, and will always be mostly men, doing the protecting). Sound melodramatic? Thousand of grieving families, and millions of frightened people, will tell you it is not. Despite this threat to our way of life, though, the same activists saying “shut down the gun club” won’t stop decrying the war on terrorism, since in their world view, a justified use of force must be just as impossible as a responsible and educated use of guns.
When Dr. Kidd says “we’ve moved on,” he’s reflecting the liberal academic’s dream that we can purge the world of violence—that guns have become irrelevant. Unfortunately, we can’t, and they haven’t. That’s why we still need men who know how to use guns, and that’s why it’s still appropriate to have the rifle and revolver clubs at the University—however much that dismays the editorial board of the Varsity.
