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#Post#: 45--------------------------------------------------
Public Shootings Should Trigger More than Just Bullets
By: SSingal Date: August 22, 2012, 10:37 pm
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For the purpose of this article, please allow me to persuade you
to shelve your loyalties and beliefs for just a minute. You
don’t belong to any particular race, political philosophy, or
religion. You are, by its simplest definition, a person like any
other. Once you’ve successfully acquired that temporary mindset,
please envision the following two scenarios.
Scenario one. It’s Friday night. You don’t have much to do. So
you call up some friends and head out to the movies. After
arriving, you’ve situated yourself in a reasonably clean theater
seat with popcorn in one hand and soda in the other. Rotten
Tomatoes gave the film that you’re about to watch a rating of
87%, so you know you’re in for a good time with your friends.
Then, without warning, the action you were promised by film
director Christopher Nolan turns real, bullets start flying
through the air, and people start falling all around you. The
simple night out that you had originally planned for has quickly
turned into the most devastating day of your life.
Scenario two. You haven’t observed your faith in a while, and
things aren’t going as smoothly as you had hoped for in life.
So, on a day like any other, you set out to find some closure
and security in a higher authority. You arrive at your church,
temple, synagogue, or mosque. You close your eyes to pray, to
find salvation, to release your grievances. And then, some
ignorant being enters your sanctuary and fires at the person
sitting next to you in cold blood. In that very instance, a
place that you had considered a second home, a place where you
had always felt safe, a place where you had felt at peace and
protected, has turned into an unimaginable nightmare where death
seems inescapable.
Now, snap back to reality. Unfortunately, the two aforementioned
scenarios were real. In a single summer, the country bore
witness to two public shootings. Perhaps the only thing more
disconcerting than either of these events is the ease with which
such events can repeat themselves if action is not taken.
On July 20, 2012, avid fans of the famous Batman comics piled
in to a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, for the midnight
premiere of the highly-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises. The
moviegoers were quickly caught under fire by shooter James Eagan
Holmes, a Ph. D student in neuroscience at the University of
Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Using tear gas grenades and a
recently purchased handgun, Holmes opened fire on the audience,
killing 12 people and injuring 58 others.
Although Holmes’ defense attorneys are making the case that
Holmes was a “psychiatric patient” that needed more serious
medical attention, the bigger issue is the fact that such a
unstable individual managed to acquire his hands on a lethal
weapon. Granted, the right to bear arms is codified in the
Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, and many
will make the argument that it is unconstitutional to deny
anyone of such an unalienable right. Interestingly, these same
individuals may not realize that the Second Amendment was
ratified on December 15, 1791. A simple mathematical calculation
will show that that event dates back 220 years from today and 47
years before the first local modern police department was
established in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1838. Translation? The
Second Amendment guaranteed individualized protection for rural
America, a time when law enforcement was unheard of. Today,
young males and females spend tireless years in law enforcement
and are entrusted with the right to carry a firearm. Why then,
is it necessary to still empower the likes of James Eagan Holmes
with that same right?
James Holmes acquired the weapon that he fired on the movie
audience illegally. Today, some gun shop owners make the claim
that a person is screened before they are allowed to walk out
with a gun.
Unfortunately, it took an equally tragic incident in Oak Creek,
Wisconsin, for this claim to be disproven as a complete and
utter fallacy.
On August 5, 2012, Sikh followers at the Sikh Temple of
Wisconsin were observing their faith when Wade Michael Page, a
white supremacist and an involuntarily discharged US Army
veteran, opened fire in their house of worship. Page managed to
kill six people and wound four others before fatally shooting
himself in the head. According to US Attorney General Eric
Holder, while Page’s motivation for the act “died with him”
after his suicide, it is speculated that Page was racially
motivated and sought to achieve “an act of terrorism, and act of
hatred, [and] a hate crime.”
Perhaps the only distinction that can be made between Holmes and
Page is the following; whereas Holmes had illegally purchased
his weapon of choice, Page had legally acquired his gun at a gun
shop in Wisconsin. But what about those “screenings” that
supposedly guaranteed people like Page would not be supplied
with a gun? According to the owner of the gun shop that made the
transaction in Wisconsin, Page’s demeanor “"raised no eyebrows
whatsoever" and was therefore able to purchase a gun without any
questions asked.
There’s a reason why I asked you to shelve your loyalties before
reading this article. The issue of senseless shootings is
omnipresent; a simple observation of the two massacres in
Colorado and Wisconsin indicates that it affects people of all
races, political philosophies, and religions. Perhaps it is time
for the federal government to enforce tighter gun laws, or maybe
it's time to simply reflect on our nation’s history and see how
aspects of it are incompatible with our nation’s future. And
while doing so might seem unrealistic, it preludes the beginning
of a better tomorrow for a progressive America. After all, how
many more shootings, lost lives, and broken families will it
take before we respond to the inexorable need to act?
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