I promise to return to movie blogging soon. I have gotten quite lazy. Sorry
I've slept on it. I read most people preliminary facebook thoughts last night. Here goes:
There seems to be only two solutions presented to the problem of school shootings:
1. Gun Control - If the young man did not have easy access to four weapons designed to kill other human beings (i.e. not for hunting), he would not have been capable of pulling off his horrific deed (at least not to the same extent).
2. More guns in schools - If there had been a greater police presence already in the school or if the principal/teacher/etc. had been armed, then he would not have been capable of pulling off his horrific deed (at least not to the same extent).
I propose that there is a third solution: End the cultural idea that murdering another human being is an appropriate solution to a problem. How can we teach our children that killing their enemies is wrong when we passively support capital punishment and actively support our country's endless taste for war? In the past 10 years, our country has gone to war for revenge, retribution, and nation-building. How can we not expect or young people to follow our example and use the same strategy (killing others) to solve their problems? It simply is not logical that we can be so sad as a nation because 20 children died in Connecticut, but harbor no sympathy for the more than 1200 children killed by coalition forces in the Iraq war. It simply is not logical that our country's harshest domestic punishment is death, but it's citizens should not use it to solve their own problems.
As long as we have a society where murdering another human is acceptable to solve a problem, we have only ourselves to blame for the mentally unstable who are willing to take that same logic to the extreme.
