You Missed The Point

My only comments and contribution, anywhere, to the incident on December 14. www.stephenbrayton.wordpress.com

Good job.

Stephen, loving one another is not a solution. Three of the members on this forum were brought up in loving families and turned out okay. The mothers of these members showed love in the most convoluted way. Trying to make people love one another the way that you love your family is not a solution because humanity is complex, and we all do things in our own individual way -- even when we are supposedly doing the same as one another.

The solution is law and order. It's the only thing that civilises us. Without it we are philistines.

More gun laws and stiffer penalties for violators aren't the solution. The guns already exist and sufficient numbers of people want them to make the laws unenforceable. Between 1920 and 1933 sale and consumption of booze was illegal in the US. We know how that turned out. When the president made his speech the other day about bans on certain kinds of weapons and high capacity magazines, the main effect was record sales of those items as people prepared to own what might become illegal.

Most illegal recreational drug consumption is done by otherwise law-abiding citizens.

In many states for many years certain sexual activities between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes were illegal. Guess what?

People refuse to obey laws that they think are wrong and particularly laws that take away what the prople want.

I didn't say that more gun laws and stiffer penalties provided a solution. I said that law and order did. That means updating/changing laws if necessary -- and it does seem necessary.

I can't offer a solution to the number of gun deaths in the United States every year. I could not have offered a solution to segregation in the southern states half a century ago -- but one was found. Who would want to go back to that heinous way of life? The same will happen with the present way of living and gun ownership. Forget the old; they will die and take their old fashioned ideas with them. Concentrate on the young. Allow them to set their own boundaries and live within laws of their making. When life changes and the old have passed away and taken their old ways with them, the new way of doing things will prevail and the old fogies won't be around to complain about it.

Thank you, Shelagh. The issue is old white men and their offspring that they indoctrinate from youth to believe in the power of weaponry, the primeval need to hunt and overpower another living creature. The issue is the existence of poverty that subjects inner city youth to lives of desperation that get filled with gang membership. The issue is gun manufacturing and related industry profits that are astronomical enabling lobbying and propaganda peddling at very sophisticated levels. The issue is a legal system that is barbaric and archaic and does not employ modern understanding of the brain and necessity and complexity of mental health. The issue is the breakdown in family and community bonds that lead to isolation and disassociation from humanity. The issue is the numbing effects of continued exposure to violence that can be turned on and off without feeling its heinous, emotional impact. The issue is an elephant that is going to require one bite at a time until new generations have at last rid themselves of the current beliefs and through education and desire for peace instead of profit, collaboration instead of ultimate power, and rational medical and legal systems the desire to kill sentient beings as a solution has diminished.