Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Las Vegas - How Many More Times?



It is hard to know what to think or say about the most recent random shooting/slaughter of people in the USA. One can make all of the usual sounds of sadness or empathy that are spouted out at these kinds of times; one can express the shock of hearing the news and the frustration that these events seems to happen without a rational (if the words random shooting and rational can be used in the same paragraph) reason or explanation. But these events happen with such frequency that the words have lost their value. How many times can you say you are sorry that some stranger was killed before one becomes numb to the events, the horror? How many time can you utter those platitudes before one is just saying words that no one, for good reason, is listening to?

The pundits roll out their all-too-well worn phrases that argue that we need to do more to stop these random types of killing but any suggestion that they make has been made both made and ignored before. Politicians will wring their hands, ask their God for blessings and support in these trying times, and then not use what few god-given brains they have to start to address the underlying problems. Only the most naive person would ever assume that any of these words would have any effect; even the least cynical among us will assume that it will happen again and again and again.

There will be, of course, a debate about  gun control. The anti- gun lobby will demand tighter controls on who buys guns, and what type of guns can be owned by citizens; the pro-gun lobby will argue that guns don't kill people - people do . The same lobby will argue that as criminals, who are by definition people who don't follow the laws - will ignore the laws and that therefore the best protection is for everyone to have a gun. At the end of this debate, if citizens of the USA are lucky nothing will have changed - if they are unlucky the laws will have changed - making it even easier to buy and carry a gun.

I understand that some of my neighbours to the south are committed to their belief that their constitution guarantees them the absolute right to own as many guns as they wish to. I do not understand that need - but I accept it as their reality. I am quite sure that the vast majority of gun owners in the USA - including those who own a large number of guns - are concerned and alarmed at the number of people who are being killed by solo gunmen acting out their own personal fantasies or nightmares. I am equally as sure that many of those gun owners deeply believe that they are not part of the problem. And for the most part they are not...except for the fact that they refuse to allow their communities, including their politicians, to have the debate as to how to resolve this ongoing issue of citizens killing other citizens for no apparent reason.

As long as the debate is framed by the issue of what is or is not guaranteed by the constitution, and that such rights can never be taken away -it will be impossible to talk about insuring that people who do not need guns, people who are struggling with mental health issues, people who are bound and determined to force their values on to others and people who are afraid of change do not have access to guns. The debate should not be framed as one where some people want to take away rights from some other people (although lord knows the USA does that fairly constantly), but rather ensuring that people are safe from those who do not have the capacity to act in a safe and rational fashion.

Owning a gun in the USA may be a constitutional right - but surely along with all rights comes the moral and legal obligation to not hurt other people. Gun owners need to get over their paranoia of being picked on by a few liberal democrats and start to worry about the safety of themselves and their children.  If they joined the debate - they might be surprised to find out that most in the anti-gun lobby could not care less about how many hunting guns their neighbour had - as long as they were locked up safely, but rather they just want to be sure that their neighbour does have weapons whose only function is to kill as many people in the shortest time possible or that that same neighbour harboured a deadly grudge against society.

That, at least to me, seems a reasonable

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