What in the world are we doing to ourselves? Another school shooting – this time in New Mexico. Where will the next one be? Webster Groves? Glendale? Kirkwood? Another theater shooting. This time the villain was a retired law enforcement officer who lost his temper and killed the father of a three year old girl. That little girl will have to grow up without her father because a man who was a “law abiding citizen” and had a gun became a murderer in a moment’s rage.
A man in Florida killed a teenager in the car next to his because he thought the kids were playing their music too loud. A gunman kills two people in a supermarket in Indiana. What are we doing to our society when this type of behavior starts to become accepted as normal?
It used to be that men who lost their temper punched each other, rolled on the ground and basically made fools of themselves. Now they shoot each other. A black eye or broken jaw can heal. A broken family will never be the same.
Small towns are having to change their zoning laws to allow gun stores because they “can’t afford a lawsuit.” When the elected officials are afraid to protect their citizens, something is really, really wrong. When we make it even more dangerous for our police officers to do their job, something is really, really wrong. Grocery stores are allowing magazines with photos of assault weapons displayed along with the other magazines. Stores won’t feature hard core porn, but hard core violence is okay. What’s wrong with this picture?
Now that Illinois has a concealed carry law, businesses are having to decide whether to permit customers to roam the aisles carrying loaded weapons. This is crazy. Who wants to stand in line at the check-out with someone who might lose his temper and shoot the cashier? Some business owners say they are afraid to ban guns in their stores. There’s that word again – afraid. If foreign agents were terrorizing us like this, we’d send the Navy Seals, the CIA and the whole U.S. Army to ferret them out and bring them to justice. We are becoming no better than those disastrously uncivilized countries where members of armed militias ride around in open trucks shooting anyone who looks like an enemy.
But, to quote Shakespeare’s Cassius: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Who is the tyrant now, and why do we allow ourselves to be underlings?