Sunday editorial: America’s anger and gun violence
Commentary by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — I asked an important question last week on Facebook, that no one seemed to really know how to answer:
Why is America so angry?
This week, America spent a good deal of time pointing fingers at one another in the wake of the tragedy that killed 49 innocent victims in a nightclub in Orlando.
While I can justify the anger of such a senseless slaughter, I am saddened by how little remorse there is for the victims, or the tragedy itself. For that matter, we don’t seem to have the ability to come up with any lasting solutions.
We continue to point fingers. That’s America in 2016.
But while there is no solution for America’s current surge of anger, people have resorted to a more palpable topic to explore – the issue of guns.
I try to steer clear of debating guns. It is an emotional topic for many people. I’m not a gun person, but I also couldn’t care less if you have guns, or an arsenal of ammunition. As long as you aren’t pointing those guns at me, that is your right as an American.
I also tend to side with gun advocates on issues like concealed carry – provided those carrying the weapons are well trained on the subject. I’d like to think if some S.O.B is shooting up a place, there is a good guy on my side with a gun ready to take this maniac down.
But, here is where I differ from some of my gun-loving friends:
I don’t quite understand the mentality that every American is entitled to every single gun ever manufactured.
The second amendment guarantees us the right to bear arms.
But there is nothing in that document that states you have the right to own any type of machine gun (a play on words by the way people).
Perhaps, there is a middle ground here. I suggest we as a nation take inventory on the guns that are manufactured and figure out which ones we need to protect ourselves and to legally hunt animals – and separate those from weapons that can kill people in mass quantities in schools, nightclubs, restaurants, and other places of public gathering.
Of course, I’m not so naive to think that even if we were to ban any type of gun, that won’t prevent these mass killings. Drunk driving laws haven’t prevented drunk driving fatalities. But it has most certainly helped.
Perhaps, the solution to these mass shootings is on the side of law enforcement and security. Obviously, we need to figure out a way to better protect ourselves – where it becomes nearly impossible for Joe Wacko to get his machine gun and cause massive amounts of human destruction. Surely, there is a way to make massacre shooting obsolete.
President assassination attempts, for example, is a problem we have most certainly done a better job over the past two decades. The last time we had a Presidential assassination attempt was over 25 years ago, when John Hinkley Jr. opened fire on President Ronald Reagan in 1980. In the 1960s and 1970s, the rage was to murder high-profile leaders in America: JFK, his brother, Martin Luther King. In the 1970s, President Gerald Ford was shot at twice within a month before Reagan survived a bullet wound in his first month of Presidency in Washington D.C.
What did we do? We made our leaders less assessable to the public while implementing more security procedures.
Will another President be shot and killed in the future? Heck, I don’t know. But our ability to fight the Presidential assassin has never been more effective.
The old cliche “prevention is the best medicine” is essential in the fight on terrorism and random mass killings.
I still believe more vigilant background checks and continual diligence of the distribution and tracking of guns is essential.
And, of course, I also keep waiting for people in the know with the newest technology to figure this out.
It is going to have to take leadership, compromise, and common sense – something America seems to be lacking at the moment.
Ultimately, if we truly want to end gun violence, we need to take away the rage, the anger, the venom.
That isn’t going to happen.
America prefers being angry.
