The Senseless Murder of Schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary Reflect on All of Us. It's Time to Seriously Think About Reducing Violence in the US
If this is not a good time to pass serious gun control--after the massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school--I don't know when it'll be a better time. The gun lobby has lots of power, but it can't have more than the outraged people who say enough with gun violence in our country!
Along with mourning for the 20 schoolchildren and half a dozen adults who got sensibly murdered today, I'm angry that those who perpetrate a culture of violence and make it easy for anyone--yes, anyone--to obtain weapons.
Mike Hucκabee reached a new low today when he said, “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically
removed God from our schools. Should we be surprised that schools
would become places of carnage?” […] “Maybe we ought to let (God) in on
the front end, and we wouldn’t have to call Him up when it’s all said
and done at the back end.”
In times of crisis, idiots like Huckabee [just watch how many others like him will make similar statements] who point out how bad God must be to allow children to be murdered, because the liberals (who else?) removed the deity from schools! But, this is the kind of thinking that's preventing our country from progressing into a more peaceful, rational, and happier society.
The NRA is coming out as an equal asshole by blaming gun control advocates for the massacre, arguing that if everybody else had guns there wouldn't be so many victims. We had those days when almost everyone packed heat, but advanced societies decided to change that and gun violence, including gun accidents went down. I work on a university campus and I don't want to see everyone carrying any weapon, because not only it wouldn't be safer for all of us, but it would create a tense atmosphere--not nice!
As our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the little children who experienced this trauma, I hope that Obama indeed politicizes this event. When events unfold while public policy has something to do with them, then political decisions must be examined. We should allow a well-organized and financed minority to dictate bad policies to the rest of us. It's time to seriously restrict access to firearms and control who gets what. It's also time to revisit the 2nd Amendment...
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Update 12/15/12
I had an interesting debate last night on the topic of violence and ..creationism. Are we created faulty, say, with a bad seed in us, as conservative philosophers think of human nature? If you assume that God created us in our present form, then the designer should be blamed for a defective unit. Ah, free will, is the retort. But, then, what would that prove that free will results in the suffering of innocents? Take a look at the 20 little children in elementary school who have been murdered. They couldn't be that bad that deserved the death penalty. Therefore, why does God allow for such? Take a look at any cancer ward in a children's hospital also....This doesn't look the work or the care of a loving God, does it?
It's the small-mindedness of humans that results in most of the violence we've inflicted on each other and on our environment. A couple centuries after the Enlightenment, much of humanity is still in the dark in many more ways than lacking electricity....
Along with mourning for the 20 schoolchildren and half a dozen adults who got sensibly murdered today, I'm angry that those who perpetrate a culture of violence and make it easy for anyone--yes, anyone--to obtain weapons.
Mike Hucκabee reached a new low today when he said, “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically
removed God from our schools. Should we be surprised that schools
would become places of carnage?” […] “Maybe we ought to let (God) in on
the front end, and we wouldn’t have to call Him up when it’s all said
and done at the back end.”In times of crisis, idiots like Huckabee [just watch how many others like him will make similar statements] who point out how bad God must be to allow children to be murdered, because the liberals (who else?) removed the deity from schools! But, this is the kind of thinking that's preventing our country from progressing into a more peaceful, rational, and happier society.
The NRA is coming out as an equal asshole by blaming gun control advocates for the massacre, arguing that if everybody else had guns there wouldn't be so many victims. We had those days when almost everyone packed heat, but advanced societies decided to change that and gun violence, including gun accidents went down. I work on a university campus and I don't want to see everyone carrying any weapon, because not only it wouldn't be safer for all of us, but it would create a tense atmosphere--not nice!
As our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the little children who experienced this trauma, I hope that Obama indeed politicizes this event. When events unfold while public policy has something to do with them, then political decisions must be examined. We should allow a well-organized and financed minority to dictate bad policies to the rest of us. It's time to seriously restrict access to firearms and control who gets what. It's also time to revisit the 2nd Amendment...
------------------
Update 12/15/12
I had an interesting debate last night on the topic of violence and ..creationism. Are we created faulty, say, with a bad seed in us, as conservative philosophers think of human nature? If you assume that God created us in our present form, then the designer should be blamed for a defective unit. Ah, free will, is the retort. But, then, what would that prove that free will results in the suffering of innocents? Take a look at the 20 little children in elementary school who have been murdered. They couldn't be that bad that deserved the death penalty. Therefore, why does God allow for such? Take a look at any cancer ward in a children's hospital also....This doesn't look the work or the care of a loving God, does it?
It's the small-mindedness of humans that results in most of the violence we've inflicted on each other and on our environment. A couple centuries after the Enlightenment, much of humanity is still in the dark in many more ways than lacking electricity....
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