The Insanity of Doing the Same Thing

The shooting at the Umpqua Community College falls too close to my sphere to be viewed with the sympathetic detachment that generally accompanies these oft-repeated tragedies.   Since I don’t live there, it is much easier for me to dismiss the carnage committed on a weekly basis on the streets of Chicago (and meticulously side-stepped by our ever politically motivated Asterisk-in-Chief).  But this school, in a community I know and close to which I have family, is impossible to ignore.  

But today’s news has an obnoxious repetition that frustrates me beyond words. 

1.       The killer was emotionally unstable with a history of small but escalating violent episodes.

2.      The mother is an enabler and strongly in denial.

3.      Diagnosis of dysfunction has been made but ignored (including any possible prescription of medication). 

4.      There will be frequent use of violent games and anti-social, isolating activities—a computer in a closed room is this guy’s best friend.

People, I have had it!

 

A gun allows you to commit damage disproportionate to your will to do so.  With a gun you get to kill from a distance.  Less explosive weapons require proximity that gives the potential victim a chance to escape, evade or strike back.  A gun shooter is too cowardly to use skin.

 

We must have gun laws in this country that make it harder for crazy people to get the weapons they need for this mass destruction.  My father was a champion marksman.  Two of my son-in-laws are hunters.  I’m fine with all of that.  But Canada has lots of hunters and lots of marksmen and they don’t have the nauseating repetition of semi-automatic weapons being sold to mass murderers, drive-by gangsters and terrorist inspired lone wolves.  It is time—long since time—that we shut off the damn tap!

But it isn’t enough to have tough gun laws.  People can and do slip through the cracks, abetted by wing nuts who think guns are the right of any fool with the cash to buy.   We need a ban on the guns designed to kill people, not animals.  We need to identify the dangerously maladjusted.   These people do not appear out of thin air.  The first victim of sociopaths and the few violently inclined schizophrenics are the families who cover for them and excuse their increasingly heinous acts.  It is time for them to speak out.  We need to make it easier for families to seek help for the emotionally dysfunctional.

For all of you who are worried about violating the rights of the mentally ill I will tell you that I just don’t care!  There are 9 dead students whose rights have been permanently abrogated.  If a person needs watching, medication or institutionalization I insist that they get it.

Finally, for the wing nuts out there, the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution is short and specific: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  Look at the words, “A well regulated…” regulations are laws.  If you don’t believe in laws to govern the right to keep and bear arms you are not a Constitutionalist.  It only takes a brief count of the body bags to realize that the laws we currently have are insufficient to the task. 

How strongly do I feel about this?  I will not vote for, or give financial support to, any legislative candidate who is not willing to work for more restrictive gun ownership in this country.  The price of doing nothing is too painfully high.

I am going to keep the faith by strictly interpreting the Constitution.