Such is the case for this horrific crisis that way too often ends in an argument over what is the right way to go about dealing with terror. Some will tell you that we should be ready to shoot back instead of being at the total mercy of a deranged shooter, while others have concluded that nothing, and they repeat, nothing can be done about the issue of lunatics who kill people in mass.
So let me ask the question in another fashion to see if I am clear. You mean there is nothing that we can do to stop these things, or there is nothing that we should do? I'm not sure if we want to make Tim McVeigh the father of American terrorism or if we would share that crown between Dylann Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine killers. What I do know is that the model is not incredibly new, nor is the problem.
Since we really didn't start to address the potential for these crimes until Columbine happened, I will give Klebold and Harris the nod. Since back when they disrupted the conscience of the state I was born and love, to date, the states that have passed comprehensive gun legislation have also benefited from the compromise. Thanks to the vast number of states that have refrained from change, America remains the most violent civilized nation on the planet.
4.4% of the people on this planet live in the United States along with 42% of the worlds guns. People occasionally buy guns for the sport of killing animals or for the memorabilia value that old guns often bring, however, those gun user's don't make up the bulk of that 42% of guns in America. Hunting for sport can be very expensive if you aren't also a fairly good butcher who can process a carcass down to its functionally edible parts and not too many Americans can afford to make up that 42% of guns in America.
Those who hunt for sport typically find a couple of really good killing guns and they keep them until they upgrade to something better. Unless you are an wealthy, avid collector of guns, there is no sense having 14 different "very expensive" animal killing guns with no way to carry or shoot them all unless you hunt so many variety of wild animals that you are probably some rich dentist who killed Cecil the Lion.
Stock piling weapons for that eventual day of doom that seems destined in a world so full of guns is somewhat normal behavior in America, yet few of my social media gun nuts share pictures of 14 guns. Doesn't this form of gun stock piling point to the mind of a person who is not intent on sport hunting, but on someone preparing to kill before they are killed themselves.
The point is, guns are made for killing. Killing gang rivals- as so many black and brown boys do to each other during their violent 20's- or for killing arrested gang members who get out of line, as well as an occasional innocent person who just so happens to resemble a gang member or God forbid, runs away from police.
Guns are also for killing combatants on the battlefield or innocent students and teachers in a classroom, and maybe even for killing yourself when times get tough or your killing spree at a school gets halted by law enforcement.
Gun free zones were familiar and expected follow ups to the drug free zones that schools adopted to add strong punishments for average Dick and Jane's that would dare think of threatening the health and safety of an area in which our school kids go to be safe and to learn.
Come to think of it, how come we never have had a female lunatic shoot up places that make us feel afraid and vulnerable? We also rarely have adults over 30 years of age that go into psychotic rages of terror. We have had a couple of teenage killers, but teens don't have easy access to the kind of weapons that killers typically need for these kind of rampages.
Minus a couple of exceptions to this rule, mostly we are dealing with twenty-something white young men with a love for guns and a mentally disturbed level of hate for society. Even Black Lives Matters isn't fighting to resolve that black on black crime issue, so neither will I other than to say that their skin color doesn't invalidate the other aspects of this murderous pattern. Most of our killers are twenty something men.
We know that most of these young men acquired their weapons legally and lawfully, which is no solace to the families that lose loved ones. It's not even sufficient enough for Ian Mercer the father of the Umpqua Community College killer. Mercer was shocked and confused at how his son could get so many guns without impediment or red flag.
Determined to comfort the pain of all the victims, including himself, Ian Mercer has bonded his energy with that of Andy Parker the father of slain television journalist Alison Parker, who, alongside other gun restriction advocates, refuse to stop until something finally gives on this issue.
And as I mentioned in the lead, something finally gave a little. The opposition hasn't backed all of the way up, but they moved an inch- which is all that was needed for the clarifying questions to begin.
I will repeat.
Saying that there is nothing we CAN do doesn't actually go to the extreme that Jeb Bush went when he said that there is nothing we SHOULD do about this, insinuating that doing something could make for more problems.
If you are among the Jeb crowd that says doing something will make things worse, then I won't try hard to persuade you of anything since you will probably be working hard to insure that nothing does get done, and your gun stays at your hip and not just hidden in your sock, back or glove box.
Those of you who've backed up an inch from Jeb and them, but still believe strongly that we SHOULD do nothing, are now more apt to say, there's nothing we CAN do to fix this problem, basically conceding that you are not personally hopeful for the potential of mankind to address its issues, or to collectively work together- or both.
Ye who are downtrodden, despondent and doubtful that anything CAN be done about this- even though statistics in other civilized countries contradicts this point- have taken a posture that demands I ask the really important question that I've been leading up to all along, and here it goes.
If you simply don't believe anything CAN be done, can you get the heck out of the way and allow the rest of us to deliberate and decide on a direction of hope that doesn't include sending our kids off to school complete with directions on how to play dead or pull off a head shot (domestic terrorist wear body armor) in the event of a mass shooting?
Stuff does happen Jeb, but when that stuff disrupts the sanctity of our schools and the kids that fill them, stuff grows to become more than just stuff. This is a nasty case of mold which grows like all mold- whenever and wherever there is darkness. Teaching our teachers and students to pull off a head shot under stress alongside Common Core math (I repeat, domestic terrorist wear body armor) is not exactly shining a light.
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| Do we only hear our athletes when they are explaining away a crime or a misdeed? Our answer is not as far as it seems. |
http://thebrandonmarshall.com/landscape.htmlThe problem with Women's Liberation is women didn't have the problem in the first place.
Maybe the real need for the Women's Movement was the presence of mentally ill macho men who should have been a key part of the focus of women's equality all along?
Men don't talk about mental illness and are not naturally pre-disposed to share their pain and weakness. The unfortunate aspect of any person who lives too long without being able to properly vent themselves is that they are always on the edge of screaming out loud, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.
Some men scream through misogyny or date rape drugs even though you are Bill Cosby and shouldn't need drugs to get sex, while others play video games and troll people a lot.
These murderous acts of terror are a different kind of scream from young men in pain, yet we keep hearing them yell through the mouths of the other victims that they include in their deadly acts.
The killers, like it or not, are our kids too, and thus our problem too. Much like the Women's Movement might have created more angry women than it did sensitive men, there is a potential to do too much of what feels like the right thing and not exactly fix the problem.Sure we can address the data that says 4.4% of the world should never possess close to half of the world's guns. But at the end of the day, if we spend more time on the guns that need people to make, want and use them instead of the broken people who keep wanting and eventually using guns, then the gun folks will win an argument that they won't even be a part of anymore (since I just dismissed them all), as more deranged, 20 something, probably white boys, kill a bunch of people with a few bombs (no guns) in the middle of a marathon in Boston.
Too late?
Sounds like the gun people already get to say they told US so.
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