For context, we can reflect upon a second tragedy that occurred during the past week. An ex-Marine in Pennsylvania shot and killed his wife and five members of her family, including children.
On the surface, the two incidents don't appear to be related. But they speak to a larger societal problem that has nothing to do with police or protests or grand jury decisions.
The United States is suffering from an epidemic of rage. Angry people with access to powerful handguns are slaughtering innocent civilians at an unprecedented rate.
In 1969, Charles Manson and his followers shocked the world when they killed six people in two separate incidents. The killings seemed to arbitrary, pointless, and cruel. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Manson killings still have never quite made our peace with what happened.
If the Manson killings happened today, they would be in the news for perhaps a week. And then another mass murder would occur. And then another and another and another.
Society is moving backward. An angry person with a gun can show up anywhere at any time and start killing indiscriminately. It happens in schools. It happens at universities. It happens in stores and shopping malls and movie theaters. It happens on military bases. It happens in churches. It happens in factories and offices and other places of work.
It happens all the time.
The ex-Marine who killed his wife and her family last week - angry person with a gun.
The Baltimore resident who killed two NYC police officers over the weekend - angry person with a gun.
The guy who killed his girlfriend while she earned extra money as a holiday retail clerk over the
Thanksgiving weekend - angry person with a gun.
Dozens of school shootings in the past year - angry people with guns.
Is the pattern unclear?
We have a mental health crisis in this country. Intersect our lack of will to address this problem with easy access to the most powerful firearms ever manufactured, and we have a mortal crisis on our hands.
Some argue that we would be safer if we were all armed. But that has now been clearly disproven. The victims of this weekend's shooting were armed and trained to use their weapons. Guns won't protect us from a society gone mad.
We as a nation need to come to grips with some serious issues before more police officers are ambushed, before more innocent people are massacred week after week after bloody week. We should have tackled these issues decades ago. Every year that we pretend that the problem is manageable or it's covered by existing regulations, more people will die senselessly.
Copyright © 2014 Daniel R. South
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