Guns aren’t the problem. The society’s culture is the problem. It sounds almost cliché but guns do not kill people; people do. The American society is based on the idea of dumping one’s problems on someone or something else, an institution like an elderly care home or asylum. We spend too much time making excuses as to why we cannot take responsibility for our actions and finding easy solutions to solve them, like drugs and PR. These solutions solve nothing. The problem resurfaces. They are quick fixes that dissolve when the money runs out or the “high” runs out.
Guns and drugs are tools. Used appropriately, they can be useful tools. Used incorrectly, they can have tragic ends. There is no question to that. These problems happen because people are searching for easy solutions to their problems. Or they feel that there is no resolution coming through any means from the current society. You cannot deflate anger or depression by removing certain guns.
The solution to many problems with violence is compassion, understanding and respect. You cannot regulate these things. The government cannot enforce these things. In a free society, these things have to be culturally fixed. The media cannot wag its finger at the citizens. You cannot burden churches, synagogues and other religious institutions to fix it for everyone. It has to be a voluntary group effort. Otherwise, it is not freedom; it is conformity through fear.
In a free speech society, anything and everything goes. Even with the FCC’s attempt to ban certain “unethical items” from TV, violence and language surfaces in these shows, even through innuendo and suggestive means. It is not the programs fault. It is your fault for not turning it off or being able to understand the violence within context; your failure to take the information and not askew it to justify bad behavior. Controlling these things will not alter the fabric of society. There will always be a Human drive to learn and experience these things.
There was no TV during the Wild West of 1800s. There were no video games to teach violence. Even in the early 1900s, shotguns were hung in the back cab of peoples’ trucks, but rarely did people seek out to mass murder. The society accepted certain habits and they became common place. The same goes for violence. When it becomes part of society, it is justified by an apathetic waving of the hand.
People like to have simple solutions to problems, so they blame guns or the random “mentally ill” person. Identifying the person as mentally ill allows people to deconstruct them into a category, disconnect from their actions, make an excuse for anything learned from the actions, set them aside to pretend there is something wrong with “them” and therefore are not conducive to live in a civilized society.
What people do not understand: how we treat each other causes the general suffering of other people. Or more importantly how we ignore each other. They are subtle attacks, usually passive aggressive (maybe another overused set of words). These subtle attacks are meant to harm each other and empower ourselves. Then we go to church to wash away our sins and return to the streets to do it all over again.
The other way we harm each other is to ignore people until they completely fall apart. We can wash our hands, saying that we had nothing to do with it because we saw something that we didn’t like and ran away. Anything that puts a buffer between us and them is a satisfactory solution. That way, we absolve ourselves of responsibility.
Another ugly sign is that we justify our behavior by emulating other peoples’ behavior. We see someone get ahead by hurting someone else; then we decide that emulating that behavior can help us do the same. We’ve created a cycle of bad behavior. This behavior creates a self-centered, egotistical society that we beg the government to save us from. But we forget that the government is made up of people who are just as self-centered and driven to excel at the expense of others. After all, they are Human as well; like the “mentally ill”.
Very slowly, we are finding ways to suffocate one another, sometimes through silence, even if we dump the problem on someone or something else. We strip rights from each other one by one, trying to find a quick fix solution to the violent outcomes from a free society. This cascade of apathy and over-sensationalized drama has led to the very faltering problem that we are trying to resolve. We cannot blame a random group of people for having problems, box them in and then store them away. That solves nothing. We are victimizing victims for the umpteenth time.
Arming more people will not solve the problem. If you are not paying attention, the police are not immune from DUIs, violent attacks or apathetic responses to crime. They are Human too. They make mistakes. You don’t like it that they make mistakes, but they do. That’s why we have the Internal Affairs.
Arming teachers isn’t the solution. They are Human too. They develop problems in their lives like everyone else, and they can lose control. How many hebaphile or pedophile issues have cropped up in your neighborhood? What extreme measure do you want to pursue that arms the teachers who can use their power of the gun as well as their authority to get what they want?
Completely disarming society will not resolve the issue. Do you really trust a society that centralizes the weapons in the hands of those “deemed” as the select few? In a free society, there is a great responsibility. And we have become complacent to hard work, and are searching for easy solutions to complex problems. The complacency and dramatization has to stop first before a mature conversation can be made to solve serious problems.
The best “checks and balances” is each other. Not the government, not your local church, not someone else. Each other. We have to help one another out and not find excuses to abandon, ignore, put into a box, toss aside… any obstruction that inhibits compassion, tolerance and respect. There are eccentric, strange, and even weird people out there. And sometimes they are the most fascinating people if you get to know them. Sometimes they are scary because they are scared of you. Sometimes they just need someone to talk to. These are Humans that can, will or may have made mistakes; not checkmarks on a census form. (But be careful nonetheless. There are some bad people out there but that should not be an excuse to be a recluse in the world.)
Sometimes compassion goes farther than a random regulation. That is the only true way to dissuade and disarm people who feel lost, suffocating or generally forgotten by the “masses”. You can take away the guns but what will be offered as a substitute?
No comments:
Post a Comment