FACT: After the shooting of innocent people in a theatre in Colorado, gun sales went up. (CBC)
FACT: After the shooting of young school children in Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA, gun sales went up.(Washington Post)
Every time there is a person who uses a weapon that is capable of great destruction, such as rapid fire guns to kill many people at once in a peaceful setting, people are awoken. However, when they are newly awake, they scream, "How could this happen?!" "It's an act of a mad person!" "How could this awful thing happen here where things are so peaceful?" "This has never happened quite like THIS before!"
This seems to happen every time. Mass killings have occurred enough - 61 times in the United States since 1999 - for us to know better than to think that somehow each time it is unique.
The latest media frenzy over the killings in the school in Newtown Pennsylvania has been a focal point for debate and outrage because this time the 'unique' factor was the extreme youth and innocence of the victims in a school setting. But does the fact that they were young children matter? What about the Breivik killings in Norway? They were also young people. Were they less 'innocent' because they were at a political meeting? Was their slightly older age (probably 6-12 years older) a meaningful difference?
Was it the fact that the killing happened in a school? Yet there have been school killings before, so is the setting really critical? Should a person who goes to a movie theater be more on guard against being shot (and be considered 'less innocent') than a child at a school?
I do recognize that the latent visceral fear that parents feel when they leave their small children with a caregiver in a school setting - perhaps for the first time - is the key factor here. It is the latent anxiety for one's children, which most people feel in the most peaceful societies, which has been awoken. It is a powerful motivator and hopefully one that stimulates useful debate and action.
However we cannot think that these killings are unique simply because they shock us at a deeper level. They have a common element - the use of weapons capable of killing many people quickly. These killings have become more normal, and the accessibility of tools used by the killers is what makes them possible. It is the fact that a weapon can kill so many people so easily, that allows for devastating physical manifestations of emotional and spiritual violence.
We need to be able to recognize people who are emotionally and spiritually violent (Dawson College shooting) in order to deal with the source of disruption. That is of course often left out of the debate because it is a politically difficult discussion to have, and perhaps not very interesting to people.
However the issue I want to deal with in this post is the role of fear, and whether it contributes to peace and freedom.
The United States is called the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave". Yet all we hear is fear-motivated action that limits the actual individual freedom of people to live without an expectation of violence in their lives. People are afraid - they buy more guns. People are afraid - they create gated communities. People are afraid - they shoot at innocent people they don't trust. Society gets more violent and people then get more afraid.
Is this freedom?
Does this make sense?
Does a gun create any sense of spiritual or physical or emotional freedom in a society?
No.
A gun lobbyist would say that it is up to the person to create that sense of peace in themselves, and a gun is a neutral element.
But that is disingenuous and ignores the fact that many people buy guns because they fear for their own personal security and they fear other people with guns. And it ignores the fact that a gun is a significant magnifier of violence. As such, it is a magnifier of fear and social dysfunction.. It is a tool of great destruction.
Does buying a gun buy peace? No. It creates false security. It creates peace of mind based on a fantasy. It contributes to a broad societal siege mentality and volatility.
There is only peace of mind until the next mass killing.
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