Tuesday, April 24, 2007

WHY NOT SOCIALISE GUN CONTROL? Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes These are my reflections in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech Massacre. All gun purchases should be a public record accessible on the internet. In the case of Seung-Hui Cho who was a stalker with a police record, if the women could have looked up his name on the internet they may have taken his nuisance more seriously, and authorities may have insisted on more serious council for Cho at an earlier stage. I suppose it was illegal to have guns on campus, so this would also have been a red flag for school authorities. If the information that he purchased a gun, 2 guns, was instantly posted on the web, perhaps a system of checks and balances might have come to bear in time. If you had certified gun clubs in charge, and the director needed to study psychology before being certified, you would have more restraint, more responsibility. Then if federal regulations apply and no one is admitted to a gun club if they are mentally ill or have a violent police record, that would be one more step to divert criminals from running to the gun supermarket every time they want a new pair of sneakers, a new girlfriend. We need a system of incentives to cure this problem. If we added penalties and fines if the gun club bends the rules, and you needed several sponsors to be accepted as a candidate you would spread the burden and the PRIVILEGE of responsibility. We need a larger safety net here, and we need one with less gaping holes. If profit was an incentive to gun control, you would see more eager solutions. Community service could be part of the process. That could further integrate gun owners into society. The process of getting a gun would then become an asset to the community instead of a threat. This way no decent person would be excluded from earning the right to have a gun, but some hothead could not pop into a store and settle his vendettas the same day. Look to this gun salesman for the symptoms of the problem, not the excuse to turn your head. The comments the gun dealer made which the media shared with us were only examples of how his actions follow the norm and how he can not imagine doing anything differently. But, the man is not a lawyer, not a psychologist, not a mindreader, not Mother Teresa....he is someone who has something to benefit directly by selling a gun. I may sympathise with his sense of feeling powerless but that just isn't good enough. Look at the controls on doctors and drugs. They have to go through expensive and rigorous training before they have their position of responsibility over life and death. So do morticians for that matter. Gun dealers, no qualifications or education necessary, buy a license and BANG, you're in business. I don't blame the gun dealer, I blame society for letting buffoon's like him think he is adequately prepared to prevent this kind of tragedy by smelling somebody's breath and looking at his haircut. I would want to know if my neighbor had a gun, especially if I had kids. A misfired bullet can easily kill anybody. If I was buying a house, if I saw that all the people in the town had guns, I would think twice about living there, or I would ask questions about the crime in the neighborhood. It would be useful information. We should have the right to know about who owns guns because bullets don't respect boundaries, there is no such thing as a smart bullet. Laws and regulations are not a magic wand. Psychological awareness has to start a early. Children should learn about psychology, non-violence, stress management, and not accepting violence in the home. Why wait and save it for specialists? People need to hone their skills to nurture their own sanity just like it is good for them to know about nutrition to have a healthy body. As a society, they need to care a little more for each other too. The internet could be a useful tool here, it is our collective brain we are not putting to use fully. We should look for developing peacekeeping jobs which are not lethal too. Making gun procurement more like becoming a doctor would say a lot about our committment to law and order and respect for human life. America is still a leader in lifestyle trendsetting, so why not set some non-violence trends? Why not make it cool not to punch somebody in the nose when you don't agree with him or her? Look at all the dead canaries in the coalmine. The Collumbine Massacre was a canary in the coalmine. So is this latest tragedy in Virginia. But lets look at this upside-down for a moment. How about Guantanamo Bay as an example of our own potential for corruption and barbary, it may throw the crazy killing spree of a young student in a different light. Many people, given the circumstance, could find themselves on either side of the gun, either side of the cattle prod. We have to get out of these vicious cycles somehow. I think we have to look at our incorporation of violence in our social fabric like giving up smoking. We need to find a patch and ween ourselves off it. For some who are lucky enough to do things in true moderation, a smoke now and then, if it is not soaked in toxic chemicals by our friendly tobacco salesman....can be beneficial to digestion, pleasant, part of a balance. But, uncontrolled and in the hand of many otherwise decent people, it is a killer to them and those around them. If we could start brainwashing ourselves with the mantra, "sorry, no excuses, violence is out of the question" maybe we could fix this problem from the inside -out instead of from the outside- in. Then we have to extend that to cover our leaders too, because I don't think it is honest to profess belief in democracy while we are killing thousands with "smart bombs" and shooting our own tails off in friendly fire. Otherwise, we should just sew a big skull and cross-bones over the stars and stripes and change the slogan on the dollar bill from "In God We Trust" to "SHIT HAPPENS". Having a good excuse to commit violence does not make it less sick. Violence is an illness whether it is against an individual, a group, or a nation. Violence makes a healthy person feel sick. Ask anybody who has committed an act of violence. If they feel good about it, than they are probably nuts. That's my rule of thumb anyway. A few times when I engaged in violence to defend myself, I felt sickened by the experience and realised too late that I did not feel better afterwards, I felt sullied. I regretted giving in to the violent reaction. I was not as cornered as I thought, I only resorted to a violent act partly because I wanted to prove through an act that I believed in my point of view, and I wanted to test my ability to protect myself. Neither of these reasons were a comfort after the act. I learned how to avoid the escallation of a situation into violence after that, because I knew that violence was not rewarding, not even when you may be "right". That is a false distraction....right and wrong......FORGET ABOUT IT! We make our youth ill by training them to become killers in the military. Look at all the post-trauma problems of soldiers. Those are probably the "normal" ones, not the sick ones. Why wouldn't they suffer? Do we have a right as a nation to brainwash our youth to become killing machines? I know I am sounding like Pollyanna here, but I see this all as a vicious circle with too many excuses by society to find middle-men to commit barbaric acts while they (we) hide behind deniability and find a scapegoat or a fall-guy. Sometimes it is not possible to stop a determined, methodical killer. Cho apparently had his massacre worked out for months...but if there were more checks and balances to the process and more people had responsibilty, it could only help. We need to look at the reality of how we function as a people and put our strengths to better use. These suggestions I have outlined, a www database of arms owners, sponsorship and community service and training for people who want to own a gun, and trained professionals to issue guns and weapons, this would improve the fabric of social responsibility and it would give society and the individual more participation in the solution. 7:53 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove