Saturday, January 12, 2013

Gun Control

 Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted. I didn't realize just how long it had been until I opened up the blog and read my last post. That's ok no one reads my posts anyway. I've been see'ing and reading alot about this gun control issue. I really don't understand how any laws could prevent any of the terrible things that have happened in the last few years. People say, "If we could just get these guns off the street.". The U.S. doesn't have a good track record of getting anything off the street. How many millions have been spent fighting drugs? I think we need to live in the real world and not in a fairy tale. Number one I believe that we need to look at what is our nations real issue. Are the guns themselves getting up walking out the door and killing people?  Of course not. So it can't be the guns fault. Taking the gun out of the equation does not solve the problem.

 I think we need to look at our society and find out what it is that makes someone do something like this. With religion being taken out of everyday life in so many ways, it has also taken away a value system with it. I'm not going to go into what's right or wrong about religion only that when it was more prevalent in American's daily lives there was more of a sense of right and wrong. People seemed to have more feelings of hope. Faith and hope can be very powerful things for many people struggling in tough situations.

 We also need to look at how our society has become so desensitized to death. We've all know the usual TV shows and video games. And yes those things I believe do play a huge role. Honestly though I believe that the news media may have more to do with it. Most people and even children understand the difference between a video game or TV show and real life. When you watch a news cast and hear about this and that person getting shot every single day. It desensitizes you to real life, death and murder. I live in a medium size metropolitan area and hear about a new murder on the news almost daily. There comes a point when it's just not news anymore. It's not something that I honestly need to be informed of to that level of detail. The occasional "There were 10 murders last month in the Dayton area." Ok, but seeing the details of each one every night. Way to much. For some reason most humans strive to be normal. When killing people seems normal, bad things happen.

 I think we also need to invest more in to gun owner education. Many times the guns used not only in mass shootings but also the large number of other crimes across the nation, are stolen. Either by a child or family member. I believe that we need to keep guns locked up better than they have been. Owning a firearm is a responsibility. Gun owners need to treat it as one. In my opinion, if you leave a gun unlocked and someone takes it and uses it to harm someone else. You share the responsibility for what happened.

  When we as a nation can improve how our society views one another and handles stresses and setbacks. When we can instill in our children the difference between right and wrong. Then and only then will we start to see real difference.