When the blind lead the blind…

Helen & Harry Espy, 1947

My grandmother was blind – beyond “legally blind,” but she was able to distinguish light from dark – mostly.  One of my early memories is of sitting on the floor with her next to the oil stove one dark, early morning, as she lit match after match letting it drop into the opening and onto the liquid pooling at the bottom.  “Tell me when it lights,” she would say.  And I remember watching as each flame went out, hoping for the next one to “catch” so we could get started with the day.

She never had household help.  She managed to make the meals for herself and my grandfather, cooking on the old woodstove and “washing up” at the sink by feel, rather than sight.  Every week or so, she would receive a “talking book” in the mail – a brown box of 78 rpm records from the Library of Congress. Each afternoon, while Papa snoozed, she would “read.”  She was the best-informed, literate member of our family.

Package of “Talking Books”

I thought about that wonderful Books-for-the-Blind program yesterday when I read about another government perk (if you can possibly call it that) for those cannot see.  This time it is state governments who are, with some sort of convoluted thinking, issuing handgun licenses to the blind.  It was Iowa that was in the news, although it turns out that blind people in several states can own handguns legally.

According to USA Today:  Private gun ownership — even hunting — by visually impaired Iowans is nothing new. But the practice of visually impaired residents legally carrying firearms in public became widely possible thanks to gun permit changes that took effect in Iowa in 2011.  The article went on:    Polk County officials say they’ve issued weapons permits to at least three people who can’t legally drive and were unable to read the application forms or had difficulty doing so because of visual impairments.

Most amazing to me:  this is not new news!  That particular article was written in 2013.  Apparently, proponents of Disability Rights backed the bill – right up there with the usual gun lobby folks.   …Jane Hudson, executive director of Disability Rights Iowa, who says blocking visually impaired people from the right to obtain weapon permits would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. That federal law generally prohibits different treatment based on disabilities.

From “Family Guy”

But that wasn’t the headline news yesterday.  This was:  Never too young: Iowa house passes bill to let children of all ages handle guns.  Well… I guess that will end any controversy about teachers packin’ in the schools of Iowa!  Now the kids can do it.  Even the blind kids.

Sometimes there is simply no more to say…

One Response to “When the blind lead the blind…”

  1. Bruce jones says:

    Anytime I ask “why” the immediate response is to get all charged up huffy. Lots of emotion but no sense comes out of it.

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