EVERYONE IS WRONG
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Events in the news horrify us until we get used to them, and then they become the routine, part of the new reality. Even then, occasionally, people become outraged about the reality. A case in point is the most recent horrific mass school shooting in the United States – so as to differentiate that event from too many mass shootings that have become routine nightly news coverage worldwide. The U.S. gets most of the bad press, deservedly so, but they are not alone. Not a week passes that someone isn’t killing a bunch of folks in a rage …
But this is different; it’s a bunch of school children. Yes, the shooter is dead. Yes, the news coverage is rife with important elected people and ordinary folks in the street too – all saying how horrible it is, and it’s time to take away all those guns. Parents are devastated and will never recover.
To counter, softly at first, and then less softly, are the gun-folk from manufacturers to NRA members to any Republican you gets asked – they’ve reminded us that crazy folks bent on killing will do it with a different weapon than a gun.
Everyone is wrong.
They say guns don’t kill people; people kill people.
Our American friends don’t see the problem as 350 million people being too many people, or some number means too many guns – they see it as a right being granted by their 2nd amendment to their constitution in 1791 as a substitute for thinking and self-preservation today. They’ll also argue that the rates of gun deaths in the U.S. are low compared to central and South America – and they are right.
Everyone is wrong.
Anger and hate and crime and gangs kill people. Cars kill people. Diseases kill people. Natural disasters kill people. Old age kills people. Murder kills people. Suicide kills people. And more than any other causes, heart disease and strokes and their cousins - lung diseases and cancers - kill so many people too. If they could talk, the statistics would argue that all the energy spent on guns and stopping guns should be diverted to dealing with heart, stroke, diabetes and cancer issues. And infant mortality in third world countries.
Everyone is wrong.
Bullets kill people. Sure, let’s make it harder to buy a gun, to buy any kind of gun, for anyone – but let’s also make it harder to bullets. Couldn’t that be easily monitored, or improved, to require customers prove before they buy ammunition or supplies to re-load ammunition – a) that they are a legal gun owner; b) that they’ve proven within at least as often as you have to renew a driver’s license that they are sane, can see, and are not psychotic?
How tough is that?