Filed under: Politics
You have undoubtedly noticed that whenever there is a major shooting incident, the talk immediately turns to banning guns, It is not the guns that are the problem. Guns are inanimate objects. Can be replaced by clubs, knives, axes, swords, or any number of blunt objects from a stick of firewood on up. I could probably do somebody in by attacking them with my keyboard, or my desk lamp. The problem is not the object used to attack, it is the person doing the attacking. How come we always get off on these lengthy discussions about getting rid of guns? It is not the inanimate object used to kill, it’s the deranged person doing the killing.
Obviously, we talk about the guns because they are killing tools easy to focus on. Supposedly removing the killing tool would solve the problem? Is that why the problem never gets solved? We don’t know what to do with people who turn into killers. We have laws and punishments that must stop many people who become angry from going further. But they accomplish little, and the killer is either executed or sent away for a very long period. So have we accomplished anything? I’m, of course talking about the school shootings, that sort of thing, not just the person who kills another person. And I suppose I’m not talking about the person who in the throes of a big fight or argument just gets too angry. There is undoubtedly a fight in some bar somewhere. or even at a worksite that has the potential to escalate.
There are classes in anger management, aren’t there? The right people never take them. I’m just an ordinary bystander, reading the news online or in the paper. We hire police departments to protect us and to deal with the wrong people. As in the case of the latest school shooting, it’s the police who mostly get blamed for not acting fast enough, or strongly enough, or…?
Gets more interesting when we start to examine our own prejudices and insights and understandings.. Our first reactions are usually wrong, and we don’t know what we are talking about, and by the time we actually learn something, it’s long past anyway. And I don’t know that I have said anything actually useful here anyway.
It is, of course, a much bigger deal when it is kids who are the victims. We expect adults to work at solving the problems. It’s just the kids that are the victims and so unfair. Looking at a list online, I came up with 73 in the past two years. but I may have counted wrong.
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