Mass Shootings and Gun Control
As you most probably know by now, another school shooting has taken place yesterday in the United States, claiming the lives of 20 children and 7 adults, including the shooter, who appears to have also killed his mother before driving to the school. The result of this is, as always, an emotional reaction demanding stricter gun control laws to be enacted while people are still in shock and unable to think properly because, you know, guns are the biggest threat to the lives of those living in developed countries, having a mind of their own with which they decide to kill people without being operated by anybody.
I wonder, did the people who demand such stricter controls ever take a moment to compare the number of deaths caused over there this year by such shooting sprees with the number of people who died during 2012 as a result of the food they ate, the air they breathed, the water they drank, the stress heaped upon them by society, the medical attention they needed but didn’t receive or the one they did receive but was flawed? Or what about the people who were killed, whether intentionally or by accident, with knives or other potential slashing weapons, ropes or other potential choking devices, baseball bats or other potential blunt weapons, bare hands or other body parts, or even those killed by firearms obtained illegally, the number of which will only increase if it becomes harder to obtain them legally? Or what about the deaths caused by traffic or other transportation-related accidents, workplace accidents, or even bathroom accidents or other accidents taking place at home? Or did any of those people even notice that, also yesterday, 22 children and an adult were injured in China by an attacker wielding nothing but a knife?
I have written about such issues before, both after Breivik’s attack and after the Virginia Tech massacre, so I won’t repeat myself here. In both of those posts you’ll find my opinion about gun control, and about more control in general, and also my view that the fact that some risks will continue to exist can’t and shouldn’t be changed. In addition, particularly in the second of those posts, you will also see my views regarding some of the potential causes for such tragedies and some solutions which should definitely be implemented before running off and demanding to take away the means of self-defense from perhaps millions of responsible individuals for the crimes of a handful who snapped.
What I do want to state here is that those of us who live in stable parts of the world, whether we’re talking about the United States, the countries that are members of the European Union, Japan, Australia or any other place not, or not yet, plagued by insurgents or violent criminal cartels, have enough serious problems to worry about without creating an additional one that doesn’t, in itself, exist. We should be focusing on the environment, on building a society that will readily welcome the tremendous majority of individuals exactly as they are, creating contentment and greatly reducing stress, on moving towards a resource-based economy, on making healthy food readily available for all, on providing good healthcare and education… We have enough things, good and meaningful things, to do to keep us busy for several lifetimes, yet we constantly seem set on finding reasons to keep our eyes focused in the wrong direction.
