The Newtown, CT shootings were a tragedy. something that should never ever happen in this world. Innocent children killed at the whim of someone who was obviously void of emotion, sympathy, compassion. We here at Sherrickworld are keeping all the victims of this tragedy in our hearts and prayers.
That said, I am none surprised that the gun control rhetoric has hit the media full steam ahead. some of the arguments you hear are, why do they even sell guns that shoot that many bullets, etc. Well, realistically, the answer is because we can! We sell cars that can go faster than the speed limit, why? Is it not the same since ‘speed kills’??!! We sell gasoline and matches that can do extremely large amount of violence and damage in a very short period of time. We have all kinds of weapons in this world, some not as powerful and some much more powerful – all have been used at one point or another in time. The problem as I see it is that the weapons, by themselves, do not do anything. They require a human being to bring out any good or evil that will come of their use. Why is it that we so quickly and easily blame the evil in this world on souless possessions and not on the evil being that made the item do the evil?
Then there is the hypocracy. what I mean by that is this – a gun is used to kill people and all the gun-haters want guns banned. What about when a car is used in an evil way where someone decides in a fit of rage to plow into a crowd of people (yes it happens more than you would suspect). I have never once heard anyone call for a ban on cars! Why? because most people use and rely on cars so they think that is an acceptable part of society. Not everyone uses guns so it would not inconvenience them at all if guns were banned.
Then there is the numbers game. If there is a gun tragedy where 20 kids are innocently killed by a gun then there is no need for a gun that shoots 30 rounds. Does that mean that those people have a magical number of deaths that is acceptable? Is it ok to shoot just 2 people without it being a big deal?! Is it a bigger tragedy when one person dies from a drunk driver than one person from a gunman – of course not, they are both a tragedy of the same magnitude but somehow the shooting is used by the media to be a bigger deal and that starts all kinds of laws and bans to be mentioned. Why again is their no talk of a ban on cars? In the case of the car, the driver is (rightfully) blamed and the car was just the means they used to do their evil. Hypocracy!!
Some would say that it is the ability to get guns that can shoot hundreds of rounds in mere seconds – they cause too much destruction and death too quickly so they need to be banned. What about gasoline then, why is it not banned? It can (and has been many times as well) used to start fires by arsonists that may kill literally hundreds of people at a time. Why no ban on gasoline? Matches?
In all these cases except the gun deaths, the media and general public thinks the crime is tragic but ultimately blame (and rightly so) the person doing the evil, not the method of their evil. In the case of guns it never seems to be the same though, there is a double standard when it comes to guns, too much hypocracy when it comes to guns yet we have many more dangerous ‘weapons’ that we use everyday. We do not want them banned because it would make life inconvenient for us – pure hypocracy!
The real issue is the human who is doing the evil, they are the ones that should be held 100% responsible no matter what method they use to do their evil. Make it hard for the evil doers to get any weapon of destruction because if they could not get guns I am sure they would find something else to use.
2009 Statistics from the CDC - Mortality
All injury deaths
Number of deaths: 177,154
Deaths per 100,000 population: 57.7
Motor vehicle traffic deaths
Number of deaths: 34,485
Deaths per 100,000 population: 11.2
All poisoning deaths
Number of deaths: 41,592
Deaths per 100,000 population: 13.5
All firearm deaths
Number of deaths: 31,347
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.2
As you can see firearm deaths are lower than both poison and cars for total deaths and deaths per 100,000 people. The epidemic is not handgun deaths based on statistics, yet we can readily get both poison and cars just as easy if not easier than we can get firearms. Stop blaming guns for the evil that people do, blame the people and hold them accountable and try to determine what caused them to do the evil. That is the only real solution – figure out why people do evil things and then stop them from doing the evil!
