"We have a deficit of love and compassion, and a surplus of selfishness and sometimes just plain evil. Time to change back to the way we once were America. I don't think this is what our Founders had in mind for us."
Somehow, somewhere in the past 50 years or so, the trolley has really gone off the tracks. What do I mean by that? When I was a teenager, should a dispute erupt between two young people, the worse case outcome would have been fists to cuffs. However to be truthful, the high school crowd which I ran with chose not to even have it go that far. Most disputes were just handled verbally.
Earlier this week, we had a homicide in the sleepy little town in which I live. Pretty rare to have a crime of that magnitude here. What made this crime particularly bothersome however, is the victim, the perp(s), and the motive. A young man, not even 20 yet, was intentionally run over by one very young adult and two juveniles. Why? They wanted to steal his bag of "weed". So they killed him. Just like that.
Not thinking of course, that (at a minimum) three families would be ruined or severely damaged by this outcome. Not only do we have a young life snuffed out before it could really get going, we have three young people who are going to face some very serious charges. Life changing charges. Where was the thinking? Where was the moral compass? Is this what they learned at home? In school? In church?
It gets worse, much worse. Yes, I am going to talk about Chicago once again. As of today (thanks to one of the best, most informative sites on the internet - Hey Jackass!), the city of Chicago has had 604 homicides with 564 of them by shooting. And because Hey Jackass! goes into the details of each murder, we know this much - most were young, and most were black on black. And what are the two things that Mayor Rahm is most concerned with? Having his police force more restrained, and fighting Donald Trump on immigration. What does Rahm think about his city leading the nation in murders? Not much. Just stay out of that part of town, and you will be fine.
I don't care if it is one young person being killed in the town I live in, or over 600 killed in Chicago. We have become savages. And please - don't give me that whole gun control crap again. The statistics on members of the NRA who commit gun violence are so small, they look like fly poop in pepper. The gun violence in Chicago on the other hand (for the most part), comes from illegally obtained guns. Bottom line? If you are going to live outside the law, and become an outlaw, then laws will not matter to you. If you want to kill someone, you will use a knife, a baseball bat, a car or an illegally obtained gun.
One thing I have never heard explained is the following - why is it today that disputes can escalate faster than a Roman candle going off on the 4th of July? How we can go from dialogue to gun play in a matter of mere seconds? Have we collectively forgotten that killing is not only against our laws, but also against God's law? Is it the number of broken homes we have? Taking God out of the schools? Violence on TV and in the movies? What?
All I know is this. I am sick and tired of losing our "seed corn" to both abortion and violent murder. What does that say about us as a society? Well it says this to me. We don't have a gun problem, we have a heart problem. We have a deficit of love and compassion, and a surplus of selfishness and sometimes just plain evil. It is time for us to change America back to the way it once was. I don't think this is what our Founders had in mind.
A few comments about gun violence..............
ReplyDelete1 The current rate of firearm violence is far lower than in 1990's, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016. The high rate in the early 1990s was linked to the emergence of a large and violent market for crack cocaine.
2 The federal Brady Law, which mandates background checks for firearm sales but exempts sales by private parties, has not been strong enough to reduce homicide rates.
3 Only an estimated 4 percent of violence against others is caused by the symptoms of serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Impulsivity, gang violence, anger, traumatic life events such as job loss or divorce, and problematic alcohol use are all stronger risk factors for gun violence.
4 Armed civilians are rarely able to deter or interrupt crimes or even mass shootings.
5 Most mass shootings are directed at a specific person, group or institution against which the perpetrator has a grievance.
Give these, where lies the answer?
Remove the guns from the entire country and revert to your time honored method of fisticuffs.
The second amendment is irrelevant in this day and age.
The Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state's right to self-defense, not give individuals the right to own firearms in perpetuity.
NRA and GOP have bastardized the Constitution to meet their purpose.
Have a great day,
David Gjerdingen