Pandora's box is open. There are millions upon uncounted millions of guns in the public's hands. There are billions upon uncounted billions of rounds of ammunition, and the capacity to make your own, in the public's hands. Every action (that I had time to read so far today) defines reactive behaviours. Nothing I've heard in the last 10 years comes close to actually preventing massacres. The gun industry will continue to use their NRA surrogates leveraged by the fanatical gun owners. The RNC will continue to fret about how libs want to rescind the second ammendment which will then immediately be followed by sharia socialism, blah blah blah. The DNC will wring their hands in sorrow and dismay, offering plattitudes, sympathy, and e-mail requests for donations for the gun control campagin to (not) follow.
The real problems?
Our culture. We tolerate debate on the surface and not the issue.
Our politics. We tolerate debate on the surface and not the issue.
Our media. We tolerate debate on the surface and not the issue.
Part of the soultion?
Change how we debate. Change the messages that the entirety of people hear. Boehner's been getting grief for only promoting his message to his choir via Fox and I'm very impressed by how the President is using his words. Perhaps there's a real opportunity, this time, to develop a true debate. But what has always happened is our long term memory sucks and today's tragedy will be replaced by tomorrows. Today's promise to work for better gun control will be demoted when the world doesn't end with the Mayan calendar, then the fiscal cliff nears and then eventually forgotten and ignored in the next campaign.
So we need to talk the issues, not stop gaps. We need to keep the pressure up, like we've done with Limbaugh. We need to forgo the urge for revenge by changing laws of punishment and fruitlessly pushing for controls on weaponry but finding soultions to some very basic problems:
- the causes that let people in our society deconstruct into savagery.
- the causes that lead people to be so interested in keeping guns (e.g. loss of faith in our societies systems to protect them, such as in Newtown)
We need to change the direction this society is headed and I know I don't have the answers. I'm sure there people out there that do.