Here we go again. Twelve dead, three wounded and the NRA, National Retard Association (sorry for the politically incorrect reference) is already trying to blame everything under the sun except easy access to weapons for the latest tragedy involving guns. They will say it is exposure to violent video games. Japan has far more violent video games, result eleven murders by firearms. It must be the desensitization to violence because they see so much of it in the media; but so many of see the same violent images and themes, and a relatively few access firearms and become mass murderers. Then there is the ultimate argument there people are mentally ill. At last, the paranoids running the NRA have an argument I agree can accept.
But as paranoids often do they have reversed the logic of the solution, as it is easier for the mentally ill in this country to get fire arms than treatment.
Shall I point out once again, the inconvenient truth that owning a firearm makes you forty-seven time more likely to be the victim of gun violence. The reality is owning a firearm makes you less safe not more.
Wedged within the news today was another tragic story, a young, black, man was in a relatively sever car accident. It required him to climb through the back window to exit the car. He knocked on a strangers door for help, the homeowner not recognizing this person called the police. When the young man saw the police he ran toward them for help. The police person misinterpreted the situation fired on and killed the unarmed black man.
I am certain that race played at the very least unintentional part in the officer’s decision to fire. I am reasonably certain had it been a white man there is the possibility that the homeowner might not have been so reluctant to help, perhaps the officer would have not fired as quickly, would not feel as threatened. But there was another calculus at work, not only was the man black (and presumably large as he was a former football player), there was, I am sure the fear that the man running toward him was armed, it turned out he was not; but, the fact is that if access to weapons were rather difficult, with few people having access, and much tighter control on who those few owning weapons was, perhaps there would not be the assumption that the person was armed or that he and his fellow officers were in danger regardless of skin color, and perhaps one less man would be dead at the hands of the police, and one less officer will carry the knowledge that an innocent, unarmed man died as the result of a bad decision made in the blink of an eye.
I will say again, the inalienable right to life claimed in the Declaration of Independence, supersedes the created right to own a fire arm.