Insanity is Believing that Assault Weapons Should be Used for Psychological Therapy
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Within the space of weeks, twenty elementary school children, their teachers, and others have died because two so-called "sane" people believed that they could use assault rifles to cure insanity. The mother of Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, often took her son, who suffered from violent fantasies, to a shooting range, so that he could hone his skill at using assault weapons. And now we have the case of America's most dangerous sniper being gunned down with an assault rifle. Chris Kyle had taken his alleged killer, Eddie Ray Routh to a gun range in hopes of "working off" the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder the young veteran had developed while a soldier in Iraq.
I do not wish to trivialize the deaths of Chris Kyle and Nancy Lanza. But I do hope that we can all gain a few insights into America's "gun culture." The term represents a belief system, or more to the point, "a religion," held by many in this country, that almost all of society's problems can be solved with guns. The inherent unpredictability of life itself can be mitigated with guns. Evil can be banished from the earth with guns. Innocence can be protected with guns. Courage and manliness can be expressed through the use of guns. Hated presidents and the kind of oppressive governments that make us pay income taxes can be blotted out with guns. This mentality, writ large, is what pushed America into Iraq, in the first place, believing that our superior fire power could show those Middle Easterners "who's boss."
It does not take a crystal ball to see that America will continue to kill its children, bystanders, and others until it gains a grip on the mindset that underlies the guns-as-God mentality.
Within the space of weeks, twenty elementary school children, their teachers, and others have died because two so-called "sane" people believed that they could use assault rifles to cure insanity. The mother of Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, often took her son, who suffered from violent fantasies, to a shooting range, so that he could hone his skill at using assault weapons. And now we have the case of America's most dangerous sniper being gunned down with an assault rifle. Chris Kyle had taken his alleged killer, Eddie Ray Routh to a gun range in hopes of "working off" the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder the young veteran had developed while a soldier in Iraq.
I do not wish to trivialize the deaths of Chris Kyle and Nancy Lanza. But I do hope that we can all gain a few insights into America's "gun culture." The term represents a belief system, or more to the point, "a religion," held by many in this country, that almost all of society's problems can be solved with guns. The inherent unpredictability of life itself can be mitigated with guns. Evil can be banished from the earth with guns. Innocence can be protected with guns. Courage and manliness can be expressed through the use of guns. Hated presidents and the kind of oppressive governments that make us pay income taxes can be blotted out with guns. This mentality, writ large, is what pushed America into Iraq, in the first place, believing that our superior fire power could show those Middle Easterners "who's boss."
It does not take a crystal ball to see that America will continue to kill its children, bystanders, and others until it gains a grip on the mindset that underlies the guns-as-God mentality.
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