Crazy People and Guns

[IanDempsey]

So I was just skimming through some of the threads and I saw something about gun laws that caught my eye. So I wanted to talk about it a bit.

In my opinion, there's only so much gun laws will help our situation. I know this may seem interesting coming from the guy who lives in Colorado and is no stranger to gun violence. Our state has seen some of the worst gun violence cases in the country with Columbine and the Aurora shooting. Our school went on lock down several times for gun scares in the area along with guns found on school grounds, we were even evacuated once due to a bomb threat. I don't think that simply making it harder to get a gun is the answer. Take the Aurora shooting for example, I don't know what everyone heard, but the guy also had his apartment rigged to explode if someone tried to open the door. Crazy people are terrifyingly smart. You take a crazy persons gun away, and he will kill someone with a weed-wacker. I think more effort should go into providing help to at-risk individuals. The people who do these terrible things obviously aren't stable, and something happened in their past that they have a hard time dealing with. We did a very serious play for Day Without Hate last year called, Bang Bang, You're Dead. And it was about a Freshmen who shot 5 classmates one day. And throughout the whole play the 5 spirits of the kids haunt him and want to know why he did it. It was all because they laughed at him. So if we understand that it's people that kill people, then we will learn how to fix the issue the right way.

 

[tampa24]

In my opinion, there's only so much gun laws will help our situation. So if we understand that it's people that kill people, then we will learn how to fix the issue the right way.

Hey Ian!

I applaud you for bringing up a controversial issue for discussion. When you get into that territory there will always be strong or at least differing opinions on several angles of the issue. So please don't get your feelings hurt if not everyone agrees with your views. I'm following you and agree with you when you say that cutting back on access to guns will not in itself stop people from murdering other people if that is their intention. There are obviously other methods which I will not send my mind down that road to list.

The problem with guns are that they are the perfect coward's way out of taking someone else's life. They can be used to do the job from an emotional distance as well as a geographical one. There's no need to touch the intended target or hear them beg for any mercy. I dare say that many murderers today would not have the courage or sometimes even the physical strength to walk up to someone and end their life. Much like bombs, guns are a cowardly way to take someone's life.

Even if we focus solely on the fact that people with guns kill people rather than the guns themselves, where does that leave us? There is only so much we can do in a free society to find or incarcerate people who "might" have a tendency to violence. Whenever some whack job goes out and kills people, everyone looks to others in that person's life for someone to blame. Whether it be the parents, the family, the neighbors or the local police department. They should have "done more" we lament, to warn people. But of course what they should have done or could have done realistically, is murky and vague. In a society of 300 million + people there are plenty who suffer from one mental illness or another.

In the case of the play you mention the protagonist is not mentally ill to start with. But he is bullied to a breaking point where he feels justified in his actions. Granted, some people who murder are not mentally ill per se. They're just mean and nasty as hell. We may have some guy who writes journals of conspiracy theories or veiled threats against the government. Yet that person will never resort to violence whereas another one will. There may be someone who is schizophrenic and walks around having conversations with the voices in his head. With medication he's fine. But as soon as he goes off his meds, he's loony tunes again. Sometimes the voices are only telling a person to paint their ceiling black and cover everything in their home with aluminum foil. Sometimes voices in another person's head are telling him to do harm to others. Whether they will act on those prompts we can never be sure. We can't incarcerate, institutionalize or have police officers following all of them. It's only after the fact that we want to blame the people in that person's life for not seeing or reporting "the signs".

I'm afraid though that this is not a problem that is going to get fixed right away. There is the mental health component of the gun violence problem as well as the law enforcement angle. Eliminating more guns would not stop murder. That much is certain. But it would make it more difficult to commit murder for most everyone but the meanest, mentally unbalanced and/or most physically violent people out there.

 

[Beth]

As a mom, a teacher, a wife, a human being...I just don't know what the answer is. I am a person who respects another person's freedoms and rights and I try to understand that if you want to fill your house with guns, that's your business. I also understand that we all live here together, so, when you are with other people, out in public, we all have to agree on "a few rules;" I won't run a red light, you won't shoot another person.
I can't help but think, it all comes down to parenting, or how we are raised. I say that, but my childhood was far from fun, and I understand what was done to me as a child should not effect the way I interact with others; I hear myself many times say, 'although that happened to me, I would never to that to another human being.' But somehow, doing the right thing became natural to me and felt more comfortable than "acting out."
The answer is not taking away the guns, "they" are not the ones that kill. Maybe it starts with treating one another as individuals and human beings. As a society, we do have rules and guidelines; if we can help one another using those as a foundation, maybe that would be a start.

 

[juanjo]

I appreciate your position Ian. This is a subject which tends to raise emotions among people. I grew up around firearms and own firearms now. But I have no issue with gun control laws and gun registration laws. I agree that it is the motive of the person holding the firearm which is important. But I can assure you from certain training I had when I was younger and we were fighting a war in a certain Asian country, that it is a lot more efficient to use a firearm to kill a lot of people in a short period of time than to use a weed whacker.

I have a serious issue with people who think that somehow it makes us a tyranny of we do not allow felons or mentally disturbed people to own firearms. I have an issue with people who think they should be allowed to walk around with a firearm on their hip anywhere they wish. I have a serious problem with people who go out and buy firearms for other people they know or should know are not supposed to have one.