The Mall Shooting

So here we have another example of where our culture fails to recognize the incredible importance of mental health and not letting people who have health needs slip through the cracks. What I find so incredibly tiring about these situations, which are becoming more and more frequent it seems, is that there are signs that seem to be ignored by those around these unfortunate shooters. This one actually spent time in mental health facilities, and put out messages to friends about his health problems and eventual crime. Where were these friends when he needed their support? More than that, where were they when they received what must have been disturbing messages about what he'd do?

I'm not sure how much responsibility should be placed on the shooter when he actually reached out whether for help or attention to those who should have taken notice, and they did nothing. At the very least they should have turned the messages in to police and perhaps this would have prevented a tragedy. I was watching footage on my local news station and it showed authorities removing rifles from the place where the teenager was living, multiple rifles. The report also said that he managed to fire off thirty rounds in what must have been only a short few minutes, meaning it wasn't a hunting shotgun but some sort of semi-automatic rifle.

Is it so impossible for people, especially the gun lobby, to see the connection between automated weapons and violent crimes? Is it that hard to understand why there should be further restrictions on who can acquire such weapons, where they can purchase them and how long they have to wait while a background check is being processed to insure that they are legally able to purchase the weapon and licensed to do so?

Weapons are designed for one thing only: to kill things. That is the simple truth and has been since the beginning of time. People with mental health problems shouldn't be able to get their hands on guns of any kind, much less semi-automatic military style rifles, and much less multiple guns of that type.

While the boy who committed the crime shouldn't be thought of as a victim and while he bears most of the responsibility for his actions, we can't completely absolve those people around him who he reached out to specifically and our culture more generally of its responsibility in this horrible, and terrifyingly more frequent, crime.

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Gun Control

The issue of gun control is one of the less controversial of the divisive issues in politics at the present. Gun control has been a political issue since the creation of guns, as were the sale and ownership of weapons in general since the dawn of time. It is a simple concept, weapons equal power, at least military power and that is the force by which most cultures have governed their people since the inception of governing. That is why the constitutional amendment guarantees the right to bare arms, it's the government control and the attempt to subvert the building revolution that had instigated the outlow of private gun ownership by the British in the first place. Too many people use the simple fact of a constitutional ammendment to assert their own right as a legitimate American right, but it was never the intention of the founders to provide weapons to criminals. At that time handguns were pistols with a single shot and took time to reload just like the rifles. They didn't have the six shooter and certainly not automatics. So why are people so insistent that they have the right to own guns? Possibly it is for the same reason that the amendment was included, it represented the power fo the government over private citizens.

An alternative to the disempowerment of individuals by the government might be the desire for personal safety. The home owner wants to defend their home against intruders, a person wants to feel safe walking down the street in their neighborhood. Neither of those situations are helped by the rights of others to own guns. It actually makes us less safe when a person intent on committing a crime has access to handguns, and aside from denying felons the right to own guns, it is impossible to discriminate against one group versus another on a constitutional right.

Notice that this isn't an argument against hunting or against hunting rifles. Hunting rifles and handguns are very different things, just as automatic weapons are from hunting rifles. If hunting is a sport, than it is poor sportsmanship to use an automatic weapon just because the hunter can't shoot straight or because he wants to hit more targets. Also, it is cruelty to the animals hunted to be subjected to increased injuries from stray rounds, especially if they aren't downed and it inhibits their ability to participate in their flock or herd. Men shouldn't be allowed to own military style weaponry just to satisfy their feelings of penile inadequacy.

One final issue that seems relevant to gun control is the right to life. This phrase gets thrown around too often, especially by anti-abortionists, but it is a concept that is too important to lve as the narrow-minded and flawed political vehicle they have made it into. Right to Life is a very broad reaching idea of respecting the lives of others as sacred. 'Thou shalt not kill' is the commandment and although there can be many interpretations of exactly what that applies to, there is one obvious meaning, killing is a crime above all other crimes. But how is that served by ownership of an item that by definition is made to kill? When statistics show handguns in particular as the cause of most violent deaths in this country, how is that honoring that commandment? If statistics show that the ownership of handguns made no significant reduction in the occurrence of violent crimes during home invasions, how does that justify owning one? Does it counteract the number of accidental shootings by children living in a home with a handgun? Or justify the statistics on school shootings where teenagers had access to guns in the home and used them to commit violence in their schools? If we truly had a respect for life, shouldn't we do everything we could, everything that seemed necessary, to guarantee to our best ability the safety and health of all of our citizens?

The framers of the constitution may or may not have had criminal activity in their minds when they debated that amendment, but as most of the troupes in the militias and armies during the Revolutionary Period were required to provide all their own equipment, it would be naivety to think that the right to bear arms had its spirit purely in the desire to guarantee hunters continued to have rifles available, much less foresee and not have acted on the rising number of violent crimes committed between young people in their own schools.

Cycle of Violence: Gun Control and Victim's Rights

The subject is a twelve year old girl who was shot in the head and put into the hospital in early September. She is still unresponsive but has been taken off the respirator and is breathing on her own as her family maintains full faith that she'll come home as the girl that they knew. The girl is poor and black living in a major city.

So this is the crossroads of two important political issues - gun control and victim's rights. The victim's family is holding a party as a fundraiser for the girl to cover medical expenses that have continued to accumulate in the time that she's been hospitalized, and which will continue to accumulate. As a victim, one who has no financial independence of her own and who obviously has a very long recovery ahead of her if she does come out of her coma, how is she ever going to be able to pay down medical expenses not covered by the state? If her family is working class or poorer, how would they be able to cover it? When long term care is required that would carry a person over the caps of whatever health insurance they may already possess, what responsibility do we have as a society to care for that person?

As a society we are struggling with the issue of gun control, and that seems to be a particularly relevant issue in this case. How many fewer cases of these violent crimes would occur if handguns were controlled with the strictness with which we control explosive substances? aren't they as deadly? Yet we are allowed to hold licenses for private ownership of handguns that we would never be allowed for some controlled substances. Even propane requires certain permits to possess in large quantities, like the licenses and permits farmers have to use propane in large scale heating systems for barns. Why is it inconceivable then that we as private citizens wouldn't have to have a permit demonstrating a necessity for using a handgun before we are allowed to own one?

If we accept the ownership of weapons as a constitutional right and do not put very clear and discriminating limits on ownership of weapons when they are responsible for the majority of violent deaths in this country, we as a society have to take responsibility for the victims of crimes perpetrated largely by use of those weapons. That means that we owe victims of gun violence every type of care necessary for them to recover. If we don't owe them that because of our common humanity than we owe them because we have given permission to those individuals committing the crime by our purposeful and self-interested ignorance of the fact that guns only have one purpose, they kill.