A string of shootings in the U.S. in the last month alone has claimed the lives of 53 people:
—MARCH 10, SAMSON, Ala. — A gunman kills 10 people and commits suicide in a rampage that spanned two dozen miles across the southern Alabama countryside. Police say Michael McLendon had struggled to keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he believed had wronged him.
—MARCH 22, OAKLAND, Calif. — A man pulled over in a routine traffic stop fatally shoots two officers and then kills two more in a gunfight in which the suspect was also killed. Relatives say Lovelle Mixon, 26, had been frustrated about not finding work and feared returning to jail.
—MARCH 29, SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A man shoots and kills his two children and three other relatives, then kills himself at a family housewarming party in an upscale neighborhood. Investigators don't yet know the motive of Devan Kalathat, a 42-year-old engineer at Yahoo.
—MARCH 29, CARTHAGE, N.C. — A man opens fire in a nursing home and kills seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them. Investigators say Robert Stewart, 45, apparently had targeted an estranged wife, a nurse's assistant who escaped by hiding in a bathroom.
—APRIL 3, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A gunman bursts into an immigrant center and kills 13 people before killing himself. Police say Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, was apparently upset about losing his job and about people picking on him for his limited English.
—APRIL 4, PITTSBURGH — A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opens fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
—APRIL 4, GRAHAM, Wash. — A man fatally shoots his five children in their mobile home and then takes his own life in his car miles away. Relatives identified the father as James Harrison. A motive was not yet known.
- Every one of these incidents is a tragedy.
- Every one of these incidents leaves survivors, families, and respondents shattered and forever changed.
- Every one of these incidents adds another sad statistic to the list of people felled by gunfire
It's not the guns. A 9mm handgun doesn't shoot people on its own. It's not the availability of guns. Some of the people in the above list were prohibited persons. It's not the economy. We see shootings like these even when times are good. I don't know why some mutants feel they need to go out in the proverbial blaze of glory, taking as many innocents with them as possible. I wish it weren't so; I don't think any caring, rational human likes seeing these stories. I wish there were an easy answer, something we could do to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.
Banning guns isn't the answer. There are shootings around the world in nations with gun control much stricter than here in the United States. And while I love my 3% brethren, more people being armed isn't the answer either - most of these shootings happened either in a family setting or were losers ambushing cops. Don't get much more armed than that. I don't know what we can do; what I fear is that we're going to do something rash, drastic, and foolish that will neither address the issue nor make a damn bit of different.
Except to hurt only those that obey the laws already - yet again, the good, honest, non-violent gun owners paying the price for an unstable, insignificant minority. Those of us that work hard to follow the ever-increasing amounts of rules and regulations will have more red tape thrown in our paths; more hurdles to overcome simply to advance our sport.
I'll wager we'll see even less dialogue and more demagogue than usual in the coming days.
That is all.
2 comments:
..... The MSM would have use believe that all the vics would be less dead, or at least the stories would be less horrifying if they were killed with automobiles, ball bats, samurai swords, or explosives.....
The incidents are not tragedies, they are atrocities. Tragedies promote antigun laws; atrocities argue for increased civil rights to self defense.
In a tragedy, it is some flaw inherent in the individual, which he or she cannot correct, which the gods manipulate to cause the downfall of an otherwise good person. In other words, tragedies are caused by victims of a higher power and the perpetrators, who are really just like all the rest of us, are not really responsible for their behavior. We can all be the author of our own tragedies, due to our faults.
In an atrocity, an individual knowingly violates a societal standard of behavior in such an egregious fashion as to cause severe damage to others. In an atrocity, the perpetrator is specifically identified as the cause of the whole problem, which would not have occurred without their evil intent. In an atrocity, the perpetrator gets punished and the rest of us return to our virtuous lives.
Atrocities are a call to action - against the instigator. Tragedies are a call to introspection - against our own faults.
In an atrocity, we punish the guilty. In a tragedy, we see ourselves as likely to have a similar problem. A gun atrocity deserves punishment; a gun tragedy means we are all potentially guilty of the same thing.
I will not accept any portion of blame, or even admit to any similarity of my thoughts with theirs, based on the actions of the evil people who performed these atrocities.
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