Time to get to root of problem in America
It has happened again. Some insane person has shot up a school and killed 17 students and staff. I grieve for the parents, friends and spouses of the dead. May the souls of the departed rest in peace.
But now the second tragedy is ramping up. Liberal opportunists are bleating again about blaming guns. They want to restrict, register, or ban guns or restrain good people from owning them. Passing more laws that won’t do any good because criminals and insane people don’t obey laws. And laws that don’t work keep law-abiding citizens from owning guns to protect themselves — from criminals and the criminally insane. Guns used in crimes are just a symptom of another, bigger, more complicated problem.
Instead of blaming the tool, how about looking at the root cause? Why are people, especially in big cities, so hell-bent on killing one another? Why are schools such soft targets? Why are kids becoming so alienated from society? Why are bullies so prominent? (I wish I knew the answer to that one 50 years ago). Why have people forgotten courtesy, empathy or compassion? What makes a teenager, someone who should be so full of life, ready to go out into the world, want to kill others or himself? What are parents doing now that is so different than in the past? Have we forgotten how to raise children? What about the state of mental health care in this country? Why is it so hard to get and horribly expensive? Are the current methods of mental health care really effective? And most importantly, why is life itself worth so little that it is now disposable?
I have a hunch as to why it is easier to blame an inanimate object than to answer the above questions. These problems are hard to grasp and hard to solve. We will have to, as a country, look deep within ourselves. All of us need to question what we are doing now, and what we have done in the past. A lot of it is just being human, but we as Americans judge ourselves by a higher standard.
The United States of America is still the last, best hope for humanity. But it we cannot find the real, root causes for all these problems, we too will fade into history. RICK RADEMACHER Yuma