What's Happened to Us?

Yet another gun-related tragedy today. I think the last number I heard was 26 people, including children. I am sad and angry all at the same time. The America I grew up in was a safe place. My biggest childhood fear was that the Russians would drop a bomb on me. I had no way of knowing that they couldn't actually get to Ohio with a bomb without being intercepted.

Unfortunately, in my lifetime we've been attacked on our home turf, not by a foreign government but by a terrorist organization. But threats to our safety are not limited to terrorists. We have our own home grown nutcases to be afraid of. We've seen news reports of people shooting up malls, grocery stores, movie theatres, and today an elementary school. Add home invasions to that and it's hard to feel safe anywhere.

We keep hearing the mantra that "guns don't kill people - people kill people". Here's the problem, people with guns can kill more people than people who have no weapon other than their bare hands. In that sense, guns are weapons of mass destruction.

Look at it for a moment from the shooter's perspective. It's impersonal. They only have to fire. They don't have to look into the faces of their victims - they can do it with their eyes closed. Their victims are random, nameless, faceless - in other words killing with a gun doesn't require the killer to consider the humanity of the victim.

I'm not so naive as to think that people can't look into the face of a child and still kill. I know that they do. All too often we hear about mothers drowning their children and psychos abusing and killing children. But not dozens of children at a time. A gun makes it really easy. It's also easy for the shooter to claim that he was "temporarily insane" but miraculously better now. A harder sell if he's strangled 26 people.

At this point no one knows what motivated this shooting spree. Whatever it was, it won't matter to the families who've lost a child or a loved one. I don't care what kind of stress or strain this guy was supposedly dealing with. He didn't deal with it properly.

What's happened to us? Things like this didn't happen when I was growing up. Are people crazier or did we just lock them up back in the 50s and 60s? Why can't we lock them up now? When they catch them and put their pictures on TV they all look looney. But I suppose you need a better reason than "he looks insane" to lock somebody up and I'm sure there are lots of people who look a bit looney but are quite harmless.

Are guns more deadly or more easily available? I suspect they are, on both counts. When I was growing up my dad kept hunting rifles in the house. We didn't have any assault weapons. No matter what the NRA says, no one needs an assault rifle for home protection. I also know that we have "gun control" laws in place but they don't seem to have any teeth. I remember back in the 60s when my dad was buying a hunting rifle. The store clerk asked him what he intended to do with it. Really, if he'd intended to kill someone do you think he'd have told the store clerk? Here in Texas they have gun shows. I went to one once years ago with my ex-husband. You could buy any kind of weapon you wanted. And believe me, there were lots of looney-looking people hanging out there.

It's a complex issue. All too often, authorities make laws/rules that don't address the real problem. (Happens in clubs, corporations, and government all the time.) And in this case, I'm not at all sure what the "real" problem is. I don't have the answers. I do have a gun. I've never fired it at anything other than a paper target. I hope I never do.