"Guns don't kill people, people do"
I don't know who first said this but I believe it is true. Having though about this some this weekend as I suspect most of us have, I have a few thoughts that I wanted to record in hopes that they might somehow help those who feel the need to regulate us some more.
- We have people in our society that have trouble
identifying right from wrong, controlling their emotions or tempers, dealing
with difficult issues in their life, etc. They need help but don't know it.
Even if they did, or if family members see the need, there is very little help
available that is either affordable or that does not result in permanent
stigma. This is an area that society can help. Mental illness today is so
closely linked to drug or substance abuse that there is little room for these
other mental issues. - I believe the statistics will show that there is
a dramatic increase in these incidents over the last four years. Reflecting on
this timeline, I believe our political discourse has been too much for many
with these mental issues to process properly. We have managed to elect a
President who spent over a year campaigning for the job and four years
governing using the tactics he learned on the south side of Chicago in his
community organizing role. He has demonized many different groups of people in
our nation. A short list would be "Rich People or millionaires and
billionaires" (defined as those making more than $200k a year (1/5th of a
million)), Banks and Bankers (there is a bank in every neighborhood), Wall
Street people?, Corporate executives who fly on private planes, Republicans
(who do you think a sick mind might include in this group), Insurance
companies, Non-Union workers, local incidents such as Travon Martin death in
Florida or the police arresting the black college professor. The news media then
picks this up, amplifies it and intensifies the discussion about how the
particular group is harming the country. I suspect sick minds may not be able
to deal with this very well. They may feel the need to right the wrong. - Video games and movies from Hollywood have
become extremely violent and realistic. People without a lot of real world
interaction are spending thousands of hours shooting realistic looking people
in these video games. Blood splatters everywhere, scores build up and you can
restart the game and those you killed come back to life. They become very
proficient at shooting the targets which are becoming more and more realistic
people looking. I am not sure sick minds can deal with this properly. - With all this going on, we have also taken
actions to remove or limit the foundational beliefs and moral rules of conduct
that free people require in order to interact and co-exist without resorting to
violence or other leveraged action. We have or are in the process of erasing
common references to religion in our public areas. Our prolific use of lawyers
and ever increasing complex laws, precedence, politicized legal rulings, etc.
have driven everyone to keep to themselves, keep their mouth shut (we are
adding listening devices to public transportation in several cities after
saturating the streets with video cameras), etc. We have stopped looking after
each other in favor of an ever expanding federal watchman. Sick minds may
decide to help right the wrongs that society is ignoring.
I suspect our solution
lies more in controlling our political discourse, news media toning down the rhetoric
and reducing hate speech, limiting or eliminating violent video and video games
and making help for those with troubled minds easier and more forgiving to
obtain. Continuing to lock and guard every place where those with troubled
minds have taken action and attempting to remove weapons from our society is
likely to add to our societal pressures and further limit personal liberties.
Remember the famous words of Ben Franklin "They who can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor
safety."
