I am as saddened by the school shootings as anyone else, but a lot of the talk of gun control is as usual pointing in the wrong direction. When we see what Adam Lanza did and conclude that gun control is the answer, we are looking through the wrong end of the microscope. We see the guns and demonize them. ADAM LANZA was the demon. He could have used a damned knife and fork and still killed a lot of kids and teachers.
I don't think that guns should be widely available, but there is a balance point for gun ownership that should be not at "everyone has one" and not at "nobody has one." Somewhere in the middle is the right answer. Taking away guns from everyone is the wrong answer.
Look to history or you will be doomed to repeat it. Hitler confiscated guns from the public at some point before 1938. When the pogroms started, nobody could defend themselves against a wrong-headed government. And yes, that IS what it sounds like. I don't like everything that graphic novelist Alan Moore has written, but one of his catch-phrases from "V for Vendetta" is absolutely true: A people should not fear their government; a government should fear their people. It is that fear that prevents government oppression.
We cannot forget that headlines were shown on CNN on the "crawl" under the main screen a the same time as the shootings about a whack-job from China who went into a school and slashed over 20 children. So in a more repressive regime where guns were not available, tragedy struck anyway and at the same time.
We have to remember that Adam Lanza didn't purchase the guns, he took them from someone who legally had them. A waiting period wouldn't have made a difference. Tighter permit laws wouldn't have made a difference. Making it harder to get ammunition for certain types of gun would not have made a difference. Banning assault rifles wouldn't have made a difference because the Bushmaster wasn't an assault rifle. It didn't have full-auto mode available. It was just a glorified hunting rifle adapted from a military assault rifle. Something else, however, WOULD have made a very big difference.
All too many people take the attitude of "it is not my problem" or "I don't want to get involved." When Adam was younger and started showing signs of being disturbed, someone should have done his mother a great kindness by telling her of her son's aberrant behavior. From the news articles I have read, she tried to be a good mother and to involve herself with her son's life. There is an old adage about "as the twig is bent, so grows the tree." If I may offer a corollary, "as the twig is straightened, so grows the tree." It is the attitude of society to ignore rather than intervene in youthful bad behavior. THAT is a social ill that needs to be fixed. I don't always agree with Hillary Clinton's ideas, but "It Takes a Village" correctly points out that it is not ONLY the parents who are responsible for children.
Yes, there are still going to be total sociopaths who can only be incarcerated or killed. But where the person isn't really a sociopath, just badly misguided or unguided, perhaps that can be helped.
In the final analysis, violence will spring up no matter what we do because we got to the top of the food chain by being relentless, violent, and persistent. It is in-bred. We are a savage breed. The moment we take our savagery away, we take away our chance of remaining at the top of the food chain. And then it is bye-bye, human race.
What we can hope to do is prevent things from reaching the point of fatal confrontations on a too-frequent basis. And the only way to do that is to resolve conflicts before they get out of hand, to catch nascent violence before it becomes another Columbine, Aurora, or Newtown. We have to get involved in assuring that bad kids aren't allowed to stay bad. We have to stop bullies. We have to teach kids that video games are GAMES, not reality. We have to teach kids that hurting others is not a good thing.
So let me ask this question: Are we our brother's keeper?
If your answer is no, then you are saying that it is OK to let mildly violent children go unscathed until they reach the boil-over point like Adam did. Forget the arguments about guns. They are a distraction. The argument is about societal involvement and societal responsibility.
