I love Sparks,Nevada. Rustic feelings and clean air and murder was available to you yesterday. A 12 year old boy murdered some classmates and a teacher-marine-hero.
He got the weapon at home.When he was finished,he killed himself.
This is not your usual anti-gun post. Chicago has very tough gun laws and more are killed there than in Afghanistan in one year.
A merchant in Iraq was asked how he was getting along after the Americans have left.Four thousand + have died after we left and the merchant was proud of the fact that after a mass killing in the morning,they could be open for business in the afternoon. The Religious war has been going on for hundreds of years. "You learn to live when death could be happening to you at any moment".
Six hundred thousand+ have died in Iraq since 1990.
Syria has lost over 200,000 since the uprising. The United Nations is just now getting around to Peace talks.Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands because of the drug wars.Earlier most adults have heard of "The Killing Fields". Two Million + died. No one on earth tried to save over two million people.Cambodia is a beautiful country and the people should have lived.
Drunk Driving laws in our state have become tough. Kill by car now and you can do some hard time. People will still drive drunk,but the person who did will be behind bars
for years.
When I was a boy,cigarette smoking was common on television.Even product placement could bring thousands to the shows. That was simply where you saw the brand while watching the show.You don"t see that now and smoking is down among young people.
Americans are numb to violence. television and movies and schools, Unless violence happens to you, large numbers of dead are just numbers. Anger is part of our mood.
Numb is an emotion in all of us. Watch people behind their computers in your coffee shop. Small talk is a lost art. Everyone is too important,I argue isolation is part of all of us.
To change violence in America,generations will come and go. Smoking was part of our life. Now not so much. Drinking is still with us but needs to change itsrules. Violence needs to not be the center of games and television and movies.Violence somehow needs to portrayed as something used only as a last resort.
A slow shift away from violence will show results slowly. We owe the dead a promise
to slowly change how life functions in our society.
"...the tragedy in life does not lie
in not reaching your goal. The tragedy
lies in having no goal to reach. It Isn"t
a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled,
but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not
a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal,
but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture,
It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars,
but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for."
_Benjamin E. Mays