I started this entry yesterday immediately after I read this story, and it was such a frothy rant I decided to sit on it until today, and I've been chewing on it since this morning. The fact of the matter is I'm barely rational when it comes to the issue of people legally being able to own guns in this country, and I'm aware of this. I don't consider it a personality flaw, though, and I'm proud of my stance on this issue.
Look, people are messy. We're passionate. We're ugly and we're unpredictable and we're prone to irrational behavior. We all have a dark side. All of us. And I think the potential to tap into that dark side is in all of us too.
Which is why we shouldn't be able to walk around with guns in our pockets or purses or our backpacks or our cars. The guy in this article was clearly unstable and suicidal. And yes, I know that the media can grab hold of this kind of story and splash it everywhere thus making it seem more insidious. Gun advocates would probably use that line of defense in their arguments to support their point. Hell, I used that same argument earlier this week.
Mental health is a right, but it's not a given. Life circumstances can turn on a dime that can cause the internal wiring to go short out. Why on earth would you tempt yourself with owning something that exists for the soul purpose of maming or killing another living being?
Ultimately it's a question of personal philosophy. I understand the sport of hunting and I'm not opposed to that, even though I don't think I would ever have any need to go out and stalk Bambi (and no, I'm not a vegeterian). I'm a pascifist, however, and I don't think handguns and semi-automatic weapons have any place in a civilized society.
I've just about lost all hope for our country to turn this issue around, though. The Supreme Court pretty much sealed the deal last year with their ruling on the DC case.
Some bullet points and numbers:
- A nifty animated map from a pro-gun site. He uses it as an illustration of the "progress" the gun lobbyists have made in our country since the mid 1980s. I just find it appalling. And scary.
- Wikipedia article on concealed weapon laws in the USA. It gets into the minutia, which is pretty interesting.
- The USA has 235,000,000 guns in private hands.
- In 2006, there were over 30,000 gun related deaths in the US.
- Suicide is still the number one way people die by firearms.
- An abused woman is 6 times more likely to be killed when there is a gun in the home as opposed to an abused woman who does not have a gun in the home.
- Gun deaths in other nations in 2004: New Zealand 5, Japan 19, Sweden 37, Australia 56, UK 73, Canada 184, United States 11,334.
Yeah.
We're really responsible with those guns, aren't we? ->
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tXCM/~3/QsTHic5vAFw/when-are-we-ever-going-to-learn.html
Posted
5 Aug 2009 5:23 PM
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Trench Warfare
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