Our government justifies murder every single day.
We’ve been at war my entire life. We’ve been at war for the majority of my father’s life. We’ve been at war for the majority of the existence of this country. This country doesn’t just co-exist with violence, it promotes it. It profits off of it. It uses it as a tool, not just politically, but economically. If you haven’t heard the term “broken window policy”, look it up. It’s the notion that if something is destroyed, there will be an economic gain from rebuilding it. That’s Keynesianism and Keynesianism is the main economic philosophy that runs this country and the economies of many of the other western countries.
It is a violent philosophy in nature and through it we justify military spending and military raiding. It’s what we do and it’s what we teach kids. Falsely attributing economic recovery and prosperity to war time. I learned that in the 4th grade. “What got us out of the Great Depression, kids?” “WORLD WAR II!!!!” The class would answer unanimously.
If you teach kids that war is profitable and that money is the key to happiness, people will support war so long as they perceive it as a means to make their life wealthier and happier.
And it works. When I was young, I bought that message hook, line and sinker. I’m not brilliant but I’m no idiot. Yet it sounded reasonable to me, the correlation was there and the logic made sense, at least to a child it did. But it was all a lie. I won’t get into it here, go read Bastiat.
Through the propaganda of pushing war, we also justify murder and violence.
How many protests and outcries do you hear when we drone an entire village of children in Pakistan or Yemen? Or when we drop a few bombs on a wedding or a funeral in the Middle East? It happens all the time and we just shrug our shoulders and move on. It’s acceptable violence and through that acceptance we become numb.
Then there’s the ultimate propaganda wing for violence; the media. News, movies, video games and even toys profit off of violence. News channels can’t get enough coverage of murder, war, school shootings, hostage situations. Just watch the news and count how many serious positive stories they tell and how many violent stories they tell.
Then go to the movies or watch a television show. Violence is everywhere. Just look at the list of biggest movie blockbusters. Look at that list, almost every one of the Top 10 movies center around violence or war. Think of some of the most famous actors or characters in American cinema history; James Bond, Rambo, Terminator, Darth Vader, all hyper-violent murderers.
Then go to Toys-R-Us and take a stroll through the toy section. Soldiers, guns, fighting toys, it’s like a plastic military bunker in there. Whatever happened to building blocks and engineering toys? Even Legos have added guns and lasers and swords to every set. Then walk into the video game section. Modern Warfare, Battlefield, Halo. “Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder.”
And we wonder why we have a violent society?
People want to blame inanimate objects. But that’s what we like to do in America, blame others. We blame guns for murder just like we blame role models for our lack of parenting, we blame the successful for our own shortcomings. The problem is our own society and how we shift the blame from the responsible party to their choice of weapon.
I own 5 guns myself, never had to use one. We keep one at the family store where we’ve been robbed at gun point 6 times over the last 10 years, once with shots being fired. Luckily, never once when a family member was there. Not sure how I would have reacted if I was but I do feel safer knowing that if I or someone from my family is there, they have some sort of defense against the criminals.
There are hundreds of millions of guns in this country and tens of millions of gun owners. The majority of which go their entire lives without using the gun for crime let alone thinking about doing so. If guns were truly to blame, we’d have 80 million murderers living within our own borders. The law abiding citizens have guns and want to keep owning guns because violent people have guns. Criminals have guns. Governments have guns. Police have guns. The 2nd amendment is there to level the playing field. We have these rights and they are defended in the Constitution to allow law abiding citizens the ability to defend, deter and defeat violence, criminals and tyrants.
Children are dead and that’s the worst kind of tragedy. However, the gun isn’t responsible, the gunman is. 22 children were stabbed in China by a man this week, while none of them died, 15 children have been killed since 2010 in that country. Evil people will do evil things. Murderers don’t need guns to kill just like terrorists don’t need guns to kill just like drunk drivers don’t need guns to kill. Someone woke up this morning and decided they want to kill children. If you don’t see some sort of physiological issue there than I’ve wasted my time with this post. Someone who is willing to kill children is willing to do a lot of inhumane things, even in the absence of guns. There is a problem with his morality and his mentality.
Guns and gun owners aren’t the problem, it’s how they are used and more importantly who they are used by that’s the problem. Dig deeper than that and you’ll find that the real problem is how the American society promotes the same behaviors through war and media which end up causing us the greatest anguish.
We are violent and irresponsible and more importantly we are delusional and unwilling to get to the root of our problems, the morality of this country.
You can’t legislate violence out of a society by outlawing objects or even actions. If that worked, we’d have won the “War on Drugs” 50 years ago. Just as how prohibition didn’t work in the 1920 and it actually increased usage along with illegal activities and violence, gun bans won’t work. You can’t change the morality of people through the passage of laws, if that worked, we’d have empty prisons and a Utopian society. But clearly that doesn’t work seeing how we have the highest prison population rate in the world and we still can’t end the violent culture of this country.
We have some serious mental health issues in this country and no one is willing to do a thing about it. The mental capacity to justify killing children, whether it be a citizen or our government, is a serious issue that goes beyond the existence of the gun. When we see issues arise in a person, we are afraid to talk to them, get them help or confront them, just like we are afraid to parent our own children. We see the all the signs that a person isn’t right and most of us choose to walk away from the problem instead of resolving it. If you see someone who needs help, help them or get them help. It’s that simple. Don’t walk away thinking they become someone else’s problem. Society’s problem is everyone’s problem. You can’t walk away from these things and how that they disappear.
This morality problem is an issue that is at the very base of our societal roots and it’s one we have failed to address. Change can’t come by force or by legislation. The people have to be willing to accept that change. It has to be an intellectual change. We need to teach our children, hope that the learn to become moral citizens. We must condemn violence regardless if it’s perpetrated by a local crook or by our military and government. There are no exceptions to morality, violence is violence. Murder is murder. Don’t try to justify it and don’t teach others to ignore it.
America has a decision to make, especially with the rise of mass shootings and the call for gun bans across the country, are we going to finally solve our morality problem or are we going to deffer the blame and ban guns?
Thanks for reading.
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