So if it is a foreign terrorist who kills people in our nation, we fly into action, willing to spend ourselves into bankruptcy, violate moral and international law, disrupt the lives of thousands of citizen soldiers, and ruin the lives of millions of innocent people by turning their nations into war zones, all so that this will never happen again. While at home, day after day, angry men and boys stalk our schools (not to mention streets, bars, homes, and highways), murdering innocents, and all we can think to do is bemoan their mental instability. We can't muster the political will to make a single move to protect ourselves from these home grown terrorists because we don't have the will to put any but the simplest and most ineffective controls on the right to own a gun....a weapon of singular destruction.
I pray for the Amish Community, and for us all.
4 comments:
Christine, as clergy, you should be aware of the dilemma here more then most.
What do you do with the sick person who gives signs of threatening others. What do you do if those signs are subtle or just feelings about someone....
This is more a failure of our understanding of Mental Health and how to treat it, and how to balance that with a person's civil rights...
much more so then guns I think.
I find myself agreeing with Bill's comments (there's always a first time!).
What is it that you'd propose to do to protect ourselves, exactly? These are often people who show virtually no sign of having a tendency toward this sort of horrible action. Aside from arming our schoolhouses more than we already do, I'd have no idea what the possible solution is.
Oh, you two totally missed the point.
The mentally unhealthy of all nations we have with us always. The question is how do we protect ourselves and the point is that we are willing to wreak havoc on the world and ignore the basic human rights of millions, but we are not willing to take even a baby step against the supposed right to bear arms. And our children keep dying.
Funny how people who understand that prohibition doesn't work if the topic is alcohol or drugs suddenly believe that prohibition would work if it were a war on guns rather than a war on drugs. I'll believe that gun control would have stopped those school attacks the first time I hear a criminal say "Look- I'm willing to rape and murder children, but violate the Brady Bill? No, that would be wrong!"
Suppose that guns would magically disappear if outlawed- would that have stopped this tragedy? No. Let me remind you that Jack the Ripper did not use a gun, Ed Gein (the man the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is based on) did not use a gun. And this maniac attacked the Amish, who have no guns themselves- a machete or Ed's chainsaw would have been just as effective.
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