It has been just one week since Newtown, CT was in the headlines and all the various media outlets were covering the loss of so many innocent young lives and those of the teachers/school staff that tried to intervene.
It was pretty clear, up front, that the gunman had some serious mental health issues and generally the initial discussion was about how does our society deal/help those who have mental health issues.
Now, one week later, our elected officials and the media has done the expected U-TURN and now focused not on the those with mental health issues that are the ones holding the guns that are involved in such incidents … but.. the guns themselves and those with mental health issues have been pushed back into the shadows. I guess that it is cheaper to focus on a inanimate object (gun) as opposed to providing appropriate funding to help those with mental health issue.
Pretty soon, we will no longer be discussing the 36K that are killed and commit suicide with guns and the media will be once again talking about the tens of thousands that use drugs to commit suicide or who accidentally die from a overdose.
IMO.. it is pathetic that the “talking points” of our society seems to be on a perpetual loop… just moving from one subject to another.. only to have the same talking points to reappear time after time.
Filed under: General Problems
The knee-jerk reaction to a tradegy like the CT shootings is a focus on gun control legislation. The problem with that narrow minded view is that it ignores the root problems that contribute to this kind of violence.
CT already had an assault weapons ban in place at the time of this mass shooting. It is a little disingenuous to think that a national ban on assault weapons will do anything to prevent future events from happening.
I’m personally saddened by our country’s fixation on guns as the root of all evil. If this man had used a car to run over children in a park, would we be demonizing the auto industry in the same manner? Why is the method to a person’s madness only a focus when that method happens to be a gun?
You can’t legislate what is in someone’s heart. If a person is evil, they are capable of bad things. If a person is capable of violating the basic right of life of other individuals, why wouldn’t they hesitate to break any gun control legislation you could dream to implement?
We’ve got to ask some difficult questions about the state of our mental health treatment in this country. We need to look at who is at risk for hurting themselves or others and more importantly WHY they are at risk.
To me, this story is an indictment on the U.S. mental health system, not our gun control legislation. Focusing on the weapon of choice of a killer only deflects attention away from the fact that the killer exists in the first place.
If you want to find ways to prevent these events from happening, look way beyond what weapon is in the hands of those that commit these crimes. Look at who these people are and why they are driven to do such terrible acts.
If you don’t think citizens should be allowed to carry assault weapons or large magazine clips, that’s fine. Just don’t expect that by taking those items away from law-abiding citizens with no mental health history you will do anything to make our world a safer place.