How many more times do we have to go through this? Are we ever going to learn anything from these annual (bi-annual, monthly, etc.) mass shootings? No, you can't stop someone hell-bent on causing destruction, I suppose, but this kind of thing seems to happen 'way more often now than back in the Whitman-shooting-from-the-Texas-Tower days. And, yeah, this happens once in a while someplace else besides the United States, but we must set some kind of record for killing off school kids or folks sitting in a restaurant enjoying a family meal. I cannot even imagine the grief of the families affected by the Virginia Tech shootings.
So what gives? Everyone seems to have an opinion, and yet, we never seriously work at solutions. Everyone prays and leaves flowers and teddy bears, then - unless directly affected - moves on. Then it happens again - bigger, more shocking. More prayers and teddy bears. No dialogue or solutions, though. At what point does God reach down, grab us by the necks and say "Stop praying and get to work fixin' this thing! I was hoping your brains would've evolved better than this by now!"
At the risk of sounding flippant (and I certainly don't mean to be, but sometimes humor helps), I will leave you with two quotes from the great Eddie Izzard (in or out of drag - your choice):
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too (if they have a gun).”
“And the National Rifle Association says that, 'Guns don't kill people, people do,' but I think the gun helps, you know? I think it helps. I just think just standing there going, 'Bang!' That's not going to kill too many people, is it?"
So what gives? Everyone seems to have an opinion, and yet, we never seriously work at solutions. Everyone prays and leaves flowers and teddy bears, then - unless directly affected - moves on. Then it happens again - bigger, more shocking. More prayers and teddy bears. No dialogue or solutions, though. At what point does God reach down, grab us by the necks and say "Stop praying and get to work fixin' this thing! I was hoping your brains would've evolved better than this by now!"
At the risk of sounding flippant (and I certainly don't mean to be, but sometimes humor helps), I will leave you with two quotes from the great Eddie Izzard (in or out of drag - your choice):
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too (if they have a gun).”
“And the National Rifle Association says that, 'Guns don't kill people, people do,' but I think the gun helps, you know? I think it helps. I just think just standing there going, 'Bang!' That's not going to kill too many people, is it?"
4 comments:
You're so right, mary.
On a phone-in over here someone said that if the college students had been allowed to carry guns, this wouldn't have happened as someone would have shot the gunman sooner.
I prefer Eddie's logic.
I don't have a solution, Mary. Wish someone did. Guns suck.
I thought of those Eddie quotes when I heard the news. At the moment the news here seems to be rife with young young people (12 - 17 years old) being shot or stabbed in gang related incidents. So even though we've "banned" guns and had a "knife amnesty" it still continues. Its a shocking world at the moment - and it just doesn't seem to be getting better.
Yes, all of this is hard to figure out. It seems to be more and more common for people to take out their rage on the general population - where did that come from? And yet, it seems so hopeless and silly to sit around waiting for yet another (bigger) massacre to happen. do we not have ANY answers to this? Ah, me.
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