Tragedy!
We Live in a Sick Society
I had another topic that was going to start my blog this week, but that’s been preempted by the murders of children at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. This unspeakable tragedy is unfathomable to us, especially if we are parents. It’s impossible for us to know the grief that these parents and the community feel. The children who survived are scarred for life.
You know, those poor kids’ bodies weren’t even cold when the politicians started using their deaths as a cudgel to promote their political ends. Despicable. Even our President, elected as a unifier, chose this route.
Politicians immediately blame the gun. But the gun is no more responsible than the SUV that plowed into a Christmas parade In Waukesha Wisconsin last year, killing six people. Or the machete that killed a grandfather in Brooklyn. Or the airplanes used in 9/11 to kill thousands.
In Uvalde, the guns didn’t crash a truck and run into the school and kill children and teachers. A sick depraved individual did. That he was free to do this is the sin and the failing of his family and community, especially when he drove around at night shooting people with a BB gun, self-mutilated, stayed in his room hitting a punching bag, was bullied over social media and told a friend he wanted to join the Marines “so he could kill people.” Warning signs, much?
Mass shootings like Uvalde are not new:
March 28, 1891 a man fired a double-barreled shotgun into a crowd of students and faculty attending a school exhibition in Parson Hall School House in Liberty, Mississippi, wounding 14.
Other mass shootings occurred in 1891, 1903, 1913, 1936, 1940, 1948, 1949, 1956 and 1960.
The first “modern day” shooting occurred August 1, 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin. Charles Whitman killed his mother and wife and the next day took several weapons to the observation deck in the tower at the University. He randomly shot and killed 17 people, and wounded 30.
My point isn’t to excuse any shootings but to remind everyone that this is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the frequency of the attacks. We can debate what is causing these incidents, but we may never know for sure.
Folks will say “we need tougher gun laws.” Ok. But states with the strictest gun laws (California, Illinois and New York among them) still have mass shootings and much gun violence. Would enacting similar gun laws nationally have prevented Uvalde? I don’t know but I doubt it. And, let’s not forget last year 107,000 died by overdosing on illegal drugs last year. Drug laws didn’t stop that carnage, why do we think gun laws will stop shootings?
There’s one thing that has been missed by politicians and the media when they advocate stricter gun laws. The Uvalde shooter already broke one of man’s and God’s most important and basic laws. He committed murder. Would someone so inclined let a gun law stop them?
Here are some ideas that might just prevent deaths and tragedy in peoples’ lives:
Place strict laws around the people who commit crimes with illegal guns. For example, a mandatory 5-year prison sentence for possessing an illegal gun, or life sentence without parole for committing murder with an illegal gun?
Relax standards for mental illness treatment and commitment. Make it possible for a family member or physician with the proper authorization to have a person committed. This same rule would apply to the homeless population which itself impacts crime and violence.
Implement public information campaigns to alert citizens to some of the symptoms of mental illness. For example, Payton Gendron, the Buffalo supermarket shooter, once beheaded a cat for which he said he felt no remorse. Instead of getting him help, his mother gave him a box to bury the cat.
Perhaps laws like these and not the “catch and release” policies of some attorneys general would decrease crime in general and gun violence in particular? If the punishment was certain there may be a deterrent effect on violence?
Let’s do a better job of enforcing the laws we have today and increase the penalties for breaking those laws. And, before we pass “common sense gun reform,” let’s understand how those reforms would have stopped any of the recent school shootings or the senseless shooting of innocent bystanders that occur every day on the streets of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other large cities.
Finally, with whatever gun legislation that may come to pass, let’s not penalize the criminal at the expense of the law-abiding citizen.
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“History never repeats itself but it rhymes” – attributed to Mark Twain
I always try to include a fun or interesting video in each week’s blog. This week is different. It’s longer than those I like to use, but please watch this video. It’s a clip from a film that’s 46 years old. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. But, please watch this video now in the lens of today’s state of the world. I think this movie could have been produced today and the script would be almost identical.
So, are you mad yet?
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“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
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