If I can refocus your attention from the devastating news that James Franco chatted online with a 17 year old girl, news which really should only be devastating to the gay community, I’d like to go way back to Wednesday’s real, actual devastating news. Remember that far back? Well to refresh your memory there was yet another mass shooting. This time at the Fort Hood military base. Three people were killed including the gunman who killed himself, 16 others were injured.
Immediately following the shooting we started to hear about guns on military bases and how it is not allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Of course the NRA and the gun loonies of America (their actual name) began screaming about how this could have been prevented if guns were allowed to be carried by all on the bases, even though most officials are against it. Once again their answer is more guns equals less gun violence. But wait….
All we have heard about is how good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. Now, there are MP’s on bases that carry guns, many more than we would ever have at, let’s say, an elementary school. They are better trained than any police officer or security guard at a school would be. Yet, this still happened, as it has before and unfortunately probably will again. You see gun violence is usually unpredictable and quick. The people who are shot don’t usually see it coming, that’s why they get shot. This is why the idea that if there were only others with guns to stop things, is a stupid, illogical “argument.” Will the “good guy” with the gun be at the exact spot where the sudden violence takes place? If so, will that person react properly and with the precision of a “Dirty Harry”? In the movies yes, but you see folks, this is real life. Gun loonies, because they are, well, loonies, don’t live in the real world. They live in the movie fantasy world where the good guys with the white hats are always in the right place at the right time, and kill the bad guys with the black hats.
What happened at Fort Hood was a supposed good guy with a gun, a soldier in the United States military, became a bad guy with a gun without warning. Nobody knew he was going to become a bad guy with a gun, but he did. But what he really was, in reality, was just a guy with a gun. And more U.S. gun violence ensued.
The talk should be about fewer guns period. We should also be talking about mental health. What made this good guy soldier snap and become a killer? We hear that they were “looking into” this soldiers issues with PTSD. They obviously didn’t look into it fast enough or just didn’t care enough. This is because we live in a country that is very quick to hand someone a gun or a badge and very slow to “look into” mental illness. What makes good people go bad?
Our answer is.. who cares? Just hand out more guns to people who we THINK are the good guys. If they end up being the bad guys, well, that’s just tough luck. For the most part we have given up in this country when it comes to curbing gun violence. We cheer when Piers Morgan, a smart, passionate man, who spoke out routinely against gun lunatics, loses his show. Hey, he’s just a foreigner who doesn’t love this country! USA USA USA!
Shooting after shooting, kids, soldiers, mothers, fathers, all dead. I can only imagine what they think of us in civilized nations when they see these horror stories happening day after day. All of those normal, sane people around the world must be thinking to themselves, “look at those animals, killing each other.” They don’t make any distinction between who might be a “good guy with a gun”, or a “bad guy with a gun.”
We are just Americans with guns. Those two words have become eerily and depressingly synonymous.