My thoughts on Tom’s post

By Rick Blechta

I read Tom’s horrible account yesterday of gun violence that took the lives of two of his friends. Then, before I could even write a comment to his post, a gunman once again took the lives of ten people in Boulder, Colorado. I originally planned to continue last week’s post today, but I’m just too numb to write much of anything.

The United States leads the world in mass killings such as the one we saw yesterday as well as the week before. There is no doubt of that. The reason for this is easy to see and I don’t think I even need to mention it because I’m certainly no wiz in figuring these things out.

Can anything be done to stop it? To my despair I have to say no. Firearms are way too prevalent in the US. Basically, if you want a gun, you can get one. If you have mental issues, there’s still little to stop you. Because of American society, the government cannot take them away. The fallout to any politician seriously suggesting this would be too great. The Constitution even tells citizens that they have the right to bear arms — even if the original intent was to provide a “well-regulated militia” to defend the country, rather than a standing army. That idea lasted only to the War of 1812. 

The really terrible end game to this state of affairs is that there is no way to stop mass shootings from happening again. The people of the US just have to live with that. And that’s not to say other countries are immune from the same thing happening.

Life can be so grim sometimes.