Motivation

If Trayvon Martin had felt threatened by George Zimmerman following him, would it have been okay for him to stand his ground and shoot him with the gun he didn't have? If only the first graders at Sandy Hook had been packing heat when their classroom was invaded by a heavily armed nutjob. I remember reading this kind of crazed rhetoric a year ago, after another mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. It was suggested that if only the patrons of that movie theater had been carrying weapons to a midnight show about a masked vigilante who happens to pointedly eschew the use of firearms, then things would have ended much differently.
I think the same thing now that I thought a year ago: With all those extra bullets whizzing around, I just can't imagine that innocent bystanders won't be put in even more danger. The suggestion that we all start to defend ourselves with potential deadly force is disturbing in the extreme to me. And now for the grotesque data for the week: By 2015, it is anticipated that the number of gun deaths in the United States will exceed that of traffic fatalities. How could this be? It used to be that you could toss off any concern about guns by pointing at how dangerous it is to drive on our interstate highways. Well guess what? Those highways are getting safer. Our streets are not.
Gun rights advocates like to point at cities like Chicago that have strict gun control ordinances to try and curb the violence that plagues them and laugh: "How's that gun-free-zone workin' for ya?" They chortle. It does seem a little ineffective to tell bad guys who are breaking the law with guns to stop breaking the law about having guns. It's a place to start. Communities that function effectively can only do so based on the agreements that they keep. I live in one of those cities, by the way. Last week, an eight year old girl was shot through the front door of the apartment where she was spending the night. It was, no doubt, a mistake. Somebody with a gun went out to solve a problem and went out and made a bigger one. The fact that places like Oakland and Detroit have the number of homicides they do is a function of anger, fear and available weapons. These are the tools our young people are using to solve the problems they see in their world. It is at this point that the notion of universal background checks breaks down. On one of the message boards I read recently it was suggested that a "motivated killer" would find a way to get themselves a gun if they were determined to do harm. It made me terribly sad to think that the phrase "motivated killer" could so easily slip into our lexicon. Is there another kind?
That old saw about how if somebody really wants to kill, they will use a car or a knife or a pressure cooker. Given the number of motivated killers out there in this great land of ours, I would just as soon not make it any easier for them.