Quote of the Day

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 9th, 2012 in News and weather | 3 comments

“Some say a gun is a killing instrument. Man is a killing instrument. The gun is only a tool, from which we have the pure mechanical force which can keep one alive or take a life. As a tool it is as weak or as strong as he or she who hold its, as good or as bad as the collective soul that keeps it in working order. ”

- Brigid, Home on the Range



3 Responses to “Quote of the Day”

1. Glenn Bartley says:

   February 10, 2012 at 9:01 am

   She can be ever so heavy in her thoughts but, with all due respect, I believe very wrong in this instance. A gun is the or an instrument as far as I see it. A person is not an INSTRUMENT unless being used and controlled by another person such as can be someone in military service or in civil service or in any organization where they can be ordered or directed to do something. Heck, it could even be when one person is controlled by another, such as a weaker willed person doing the bidding of a controlling person.

   Now you may think I am playing a semantics game here but it is not a game as far as I see it. This is important – so much so that I think I will use semantics here, as an instrument to make a point, because that word instrument is so important to the quotation. I like to think, to believe, of myself as being intelligent enough, freedom loving enough, and gutsy enough to refuse to be used as an instrument (especially of the government) when such manipulation of me would violate our Constitution or the rights of the citizenry. I was that way on my job in 32 years of government service, sometimes surprising my coworkers, who thought me the guy who would arrest my own mother (or at least my grandmother), when I would work to release a prisoner because I thought we had screwed up. I simply astounded them when I reported major wrong doing by another LEO (such as one beating a prisoner or possibly stealing from a prisoner). I suppose in that regard I may still have been an instrument, one of our rights and our Constitution but at least I was not one of wrongdoing and was not a brain-dead one of the regime in power at the time. Yes, I sometimes was an instrument of government, the guy who got things done for the government, but as I said, I was independent enough to know when I had to step out of the box and make sure things were getting done right, they did not so much manipulate me to get things done as I chose to do them within the law.

   No, the word instrument is not what you should call a living, breathing, FREE thinking, intelligent (to a normal degree, I am not saying you have to be an Einstein), gutsy, people who are willing to self sacrifice for the good, at least not in the context that it was used in the quoted material. On the other hand, the word instrument is used to describe a device that is used or manipulated by people to achieve a certain end, thus a gun is indeed an instrument, even a killing one if that is what it used for by they who do the manipulating, just as are their puppets who hold the guns. As for me, in effect, I am not an instrument unless I choose to be or allow myself to be one. I will do so, so long as such supports our rights and the law, when it violates the law, I will uphold the law even if it means I must oppose those in charge. What does that then make me? It makes me a free man because I choose to do what it is that I do, and I do so of my own free will after intelligently having gone over the options!

   All the best,
   Glenn B
2. Greybeard says:

   February 10, 2012 at 11:17 am

   Thanks for your comment Glenn, you make a compelling argument. The term “instrument” as applied in B.’s quote,
   -did- seem a little off the mark.
3. Greybeard says:

   February 10, 2012 at 11:53 am

   Glenn,
   Would it sound better if Brigid appended her quote with this statement”

   “Man, Can be a killing instrument”.