Today, on the 14th of Dec, United States of America experienced a new low. Today, a so called crazy guy shot dead twenty kids that had no clue what hit them or why! Twenty kids, who had still not reached ten years of age, were still forming opinions, building dreams about their lives. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time – just a week before Christmas and the start of the holiday season.
There will be several prayers, vigils all over the country, lot of tears ( I believe the president was teary eyed too). They will call some students or teachers heroes (why do we need heroes for every mishap??). Then there will be additional security enforced in schools all over the country, causing a further overburdening of an already fragile system. And then it will all be forgotten!! How many of us remember that two weeks back a NFL linebacker shot his girlfriend who was the mother of his three month old kid, before shooting himself. And of course, the recent mass shooting in the sikh gurudwara in Wisconsin or the infamous Columbine incident. Just like people have forgotten what is right and what is wrong.
And then, there will be a Glen Beck or a gun store owner who will stand up and say that this could have been prevented if we had the right guy on the spot with a gun to scare the incumbent. They will claim that guns are not the problem, but instead are the solution. It is so easy to just let the bullets fly – I wonder if they’d be open to putting action into place where their words are, if it was their own family in a similar situation.
Today’s incident is a new low in the western world where we rely on heroes and guns are a constitutional right. I find that last part ironical – it is not a constitutional right to have a job or to be able to marry the person one loves, but it is constitutionally allowed to carry a gun openly. Our politicians have allowed a lobby to browbeat and hold the entire country hostage to lousy gun control laws. The current gun control laws or the lack there off, are a sham. One can’t buy medicines without allowing the powers-that-be to sniff all over your body, but buying a firearm is a piece of cake.
So what is the solution? My suggestion is simple – ask every politician or person if they would like to see their kids in a similar situation either with a gun or on the side opposite a gun? Most likely, the answer will be No. So then, why allow guns to be openly carried by civilians. If someone is interested in guns, they have the option to join the armed forces or paramilitary forces or become a police office or just go to a shooting range which can be found easily in the US. So, why do we have to own guns and keep them at home? But at the same time, there are valid reason from the other side too. So how do we create a system that meets the need of both sides?
One of the other lows in today’s incident was the killing of the shooter’s mother along with 7 other adults. The very fact that a kid could even consider hurting a woman indicates that there were issues. The idea of hurting one’s mother is totally unheard of in any civil society. I remember my mother telling me a story of the amount of love a mother has for her kids and I will repeat it here – in the fit of rage and inebriation, a teenager stabbed his mother. As she lay bleeding, she asked him to run away telling him to stay safe and take care of himself. She also told him that she’d tell the cops that she had tried to commit suicide. What I learned from this was that a mother would go to any lengths to keep her kids out of trouble – whether it be the right thing to do or not. How can anyone think of hurting, let alone kill, some one that only wishes the best for you!!
I pray for the families of the injured, and for the remaining family of the shooter. And I pray that our leaders come to their senses and place the wellbeing of the public in front of the views put by a lobby.
There will be several prayers, vigils all over the country, lot of tears ( I believe the president was teary eyed too). They will call some students or teachers heroes (why do we need heroes for every mishap??). Then there will be additional security enforced in schools all over the country, causing a further overburdening of an already fragile system. And then it will all be forgotten!! How many of us remember that two weeks back a NFL linebacker shot his girlfriend who was the mother of his three month old kid, before shooting himself. And of course, the recent mass shooting in the sikh gurudwara in Wisconsin or the infamous Columbine incident. Just like people have forgotten what is right and what is wrong.
And then, there will be a Glen Beck or a gun store owner who will stand up and say that this could have been prevented if we had the right guy on the spot with a gun to scare the incumbent. They will claim that guns are not the problem, but instead are the solution. It is so easy to just let the bullets fly – I wonder if they’d be open to putting action into place where their words are, if it was their own family in a similar situation.
Today’s incident is a new low in the western world where we rely on heroes and guns are a constitutional right. I find that last part ironical – it is not a constitutional right to have a job or to be able to marry the person one loves, but it is constitutionally allowed to carry a gun openly. Our politicians have allowed a lobby to browbeat and hold the entire country hostage to lousy gun control laws. The current gun control laws or the lack there off, are a sham. One can’t buy medicines without allowing the powers-that-be to sniff all over your body, but buying a firearm is a piece of cake.
So what is the solution? My suggestion is simple – ask every politician or person if they would like to see their kids in a similar situation either with a gun or on the side opposite a gun? Most likely, the answer will be No. So then, why allow guns to be openly carried by civilians. If someone is interested in guns, they have the option to join the armed forces or paramilitary forces or become a police office or just go to a shooting range which can be found easily in the US. So, why do we have to own guns and keep them at home? But at the same time, there are valid reason from the other side too. So how do we create a system that meets the need of both sides?
One of the other lows in today’s incident was the killing of the shooter’s mother along with 7 other adults. The very fact that a kid could even consider hurting a woman indicates that there were issues. The idea of hurting one’s mother is totally unheard of in any civil society. I remember my mother telling me a story of the amount of love a mother has for her kids and I will repeat it here – in the fit of rage and inebriation, a teenager stabbed his mother. As she lay bleeding, she asked him to run away telling him to stay safe and take care of himself. She also told him that she’d tell the cops that she had tried to commit suicide. What I learned from this was that a mother would go to any lengths to keep her kids out of trouble – whether it be the right thing to do or not. How can anyone think of hurting, let alone kill, some one that only wishes the best for you!!
I pray for the families of the injured, and for the remaining family of the shooter. And I pray that our leaders come to their senses and place the wellbeing of the public in front of the views put by a lobby.
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