I wanted to use the last shooting incident in which ten people died at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon in the United States as the background for this epistle, but refrained from doing so for fear that by the time I am done writing these few lines some other shooting incident may have taken its place in the media.
An average of thirty-six people die by the gun daily in the states if statistics by the Huffington Post are anything to go by, yet Americans are looking at all solutions but "the one" in tackling the issue. Obama in his press conference appeared exasperated in expressing how the routineness of his pressers after another shooting, indicate how the American society have become benumbed by the gun violence situation it has found itself in in recent times.
As with other times both sides of the divide (of the pro- and anti-gun lobby groups) have further dug in their trenches, for and against the further tightening of gun control legislature. What the last incident (as well as some of the ones before it) showed is profound, in that it highlighted the fact that most of the weapons and ammunition used by most of these rampaging gunmen, were legally obtained, for which it is becoming increasing pertinent amongst the discerning to begin to consider a limiting of gun possession to very few individuals and for strictly stated reasons, beyond a series of tests that people can easily pass and/or walk their way over, and still find themselves in possession of the arms with which they end the lives of some of their victims, maim others and alter the lives of those directly and indirectly affected by their actions, sometimes for life.
It is also interesting for many of us non-US citizens, to note how it is that the gun lobby has unalloyed support of the Christian right, that one would've thought would hold the tenets of peace, non-retaliation and dependent on the divine for defence physically and spiritually, prefer to argue heavily in support of gun ownership by the citizenry, even of children, than seek solace in those standards christian scripture especially of new testament theology requires of them.
It is my belief that until there is a radical shift in the thinking of all concerned in the gun control debate, in which no plausible reason can be found to put guns in the hands of any member of society that's not a member of the armed services in the main, then America is not ready to be rid of its unenviable position as A NATION UNDER GUNS.
'kovich
PICTURE CREDIT:
- http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
An average of thirty-six people die by the gun daily in the states if statistics by the Huffington Post are anything to go by, yet Americans are looking at all solutions but "the one" in tackling the issue. Obama in his press conference appeared exasperated in expressing how the routineness of his pressers after another shooting, indicate how the American society have become benumbed by the gun violence situation it has found itself in in recent times.
As with other times both sides of the divide (of the pro- and anti-gun lobby groups) have further dug in their trenches, for and against the further tightening of gun control legislature. What the last incident (as well as some of the ones before it) showed is profound, in that it highlighted the fact that most of the weapons and ammunition used by most of these rampaging gunmen, were legally obtained, for which it is becoming increasing pertinent amongst the discerning to begin to consider a limiting of gun possession to very few individuals and for strictly stated reasons, beyond a series of tests that people can easily pass and/or walk their way over, and still find themselves in possession of the arms with which they end the lives of some of their victims, maim others and alter the lives of those directly and indirectly affected by their actions, sometimes for life.
It is also interesting for many of us non-US citizens, to note how it is that the gun lobby has unalloyed support of the Christian right, that one would've thought would hold the tenets of peace, non-retaliation and dependent on the divine for defence physically and spiritually, prefer to argue heavily in support of gun ownership by the citizenry, even of children, than seek solace in those standards christian scripture especially of new testament theology requires of them.
It is my belief that until there is a radical shift in the thinking of all concerned in the gun control debate, in which no plausible reason can be found to put guns in the hands of any member of society that's not a member of the armed services in the main, then America is not ready to be rid of its unenviable position as A NATION UNDER GUNS.
'kovich
PICTURE CREDIT:
- http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
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