CmdrSlander
Member
Mass shootings are among the most horrifying forms of terrorism employed by the mental and emotional underbelly of society. Following the Sandy Hook tragedy, the gun control debate, a competition for America's hearts and minds rivaled only by the battle over abortion, was reignited with a new passion. This debate is both dangerous and counterproductive.
America and her children are caught between two extremes, on one side dwells academics, lobbyists, and self proclaimed men and women of peace who demonize civilian gun ownership and wage a highly effective propaganda war against the hated National Rifle Association and its members, as well as the arms the organization defends and promotes. On the other side dwells the civilian gun owner, and the organizations that represent him, organizations that have created a situation that allows the average person access to a wide array of useful, but powerful firearms that can be very damaging - physically and emotionally - when used against innocents. The dangerous situation in this country is created not by any one of these groups, but by the fact that neither is winning.
America remains divided more or less in half on the issue of gun rights, a situation that mirrors our partisan split. While the anti gun forces in this country demonize gun owners and convince large swaths of the population that they will never need a gun and that no one else should have one either, the pro gun forces continue to loosen restrictions on firearms at the state level and block Federal level legislation. The anti gun forces cannot convince a majority of people to hand in their weapons and the pro gun legions cannot convince a majority of people to be armed to the degree that is necessary to survive in the gun-saturated society they helped to create. Total disarmament, including disarmament of the criminal element accompanied by an overall reduction in crime, would decrease mass shooting incidents to a large degree, as would high levels of concealed and open gun carrying and armed officials in high risk facilities such as schools and theaters. Since neither can be achieved, the gun debate creates a situation wherein half the population believes in being well armed and the other half believes in being an easy target. Unfortunately, it is the disarmament-leaning half that controls most public institutions, leaving them vulnerable by shunning all attempts to tap the vast defensive resource that is the armed, trained, and sane American gun owner. All it takes is one madman from the armed half (though madmen are not the norm in either half) to finally lose his grip on humanity and walk into one of the other half's entirely imagined, entirely unarmed mock-utopias to bloodily remind us all of the dangerous reality of America.
In a nation where 20 dead elementary school children barely shifted the polls on gun rights in either direction, one must accept that both sides of the issue are deeply entrenched. The solution then, is not to fight out the gun control debate one more time, which never leads to a resolution as both sides see it as a matter of moral principle, making compromise near impossible, but to circumvent the debate and improve public safety by making policies we can all agree on. Policies such as improving care for the mentally ill, improving the system through which parents seek care for their mentally ill children, reducing the side effects and increasing the efficacy of drugs which treat mental illness, improving police response times to shooting incidents, and physically hardening schools against attacks. Whether or not the solution to the overall problem is more or less guns is something that we will never agree on as a nation, so it must be made individually. If you choose to arm yourself, be a responsible gun owner, and by all means be well equipped, if you choose to shun firearms, learn other forms of self defense and make plans for violent encounters that may save your life and the lives of others. As a nation we must table the gun issue to address violence, as individual citizens we must make our decisions regarding firearms and act accordingly if we hope to survive in this divided land.
Thoughts?
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