Thursday, January 10, 2013

It won't make a bit of difference to the criminals anyway


I watched the interview, if you can call it that, of Alex Jones by Piers Morgan on CNN. I respect the effort that Jones puts in to defend our constitutional rights and the fight against the big banks, but I was a bit disappointed that he lost his cool, and the opportunity, to make some really strong points.

When Jones pushed the issue of the sky rocketing violent crime rate in the UK since their gun band versus the steady decline of violent crime in the US Morgan wanted to talk numbers. He asked, "how many murders with guns were committed in the UK last year"? Jones not knowing the answer off hand was informed by Piers that only 34 people had been killed by gun in the UK last year.

Jones then went off on a rant about manipulating numbers and such and it was kind of hard to follow at times. A better response have been to point out that violent crime in the UK, including murders, were up and have been climbing every since their gun ban. Taking the guns from law abiding citizens only empowered the criminals to commit MORE crimes since no one could defend themselves, they simply switched away from guns to more convenient weapons.

A recent story from the UK noted that emergency room doctors were seeing a sharp rise in stabbings with a particular size of kitchen knife. what was their suggestion, ban that size of kitchen knife, like someone bent on violence won't simply grab the next available weapon or knife.

The frustration over mast killings is understandable and looking for an answer is certainly appropriate. Anyone with trouble shooting skills knows when addressing a problem you don't so much address the result of the problem but look one step in front of it and look into what caused the issue. Some people, with more level heads, are trying this approach to this problem by looking into the mental health issues involved, violent video games and movies,  and other things possibly "outside the box" of our usual approaches. 
  
The approach that troubles me most, and should everyone, is the approach that has failed in every case. That is to simply look past the causes and try to take away as many options as possible from the criminal mind. This simply denies law abiding, and mentally stable, people their rights to these items. I'm not prepared to give one single constitutional right to appease these irrational people that I believe are simply exploiting these tragedies the promote their own agenda, especially since it won't make a bit of deference to the criminals anyway. 



3 comments:

  1. How do violent video games make people violent? Isn't a human being that made the first violent video game in the first place? If people weren't ALREADY interested in that sort of stuff violent video games would have never caught on. Before violent video games there were the "comic books", before that there was the "horror movie", before that there were "violent books", now it's not longer "violent video games" as much as it is "mental sickness". What are they going to come up with next? Spontaneous chemical reactions in the brain? How about we start out with one little step, stop making b.s excuses for people that need to live up to their actions.Guns, knives, even pencils don't kill people, people kill people. Not video games, not comic books, not horror films, and not violent books, PEOPLE do. that video game, comic book, book, movie, or song can't just grow hands and pick up a gun, hand it to them and say, "Here little Johnny let's play a game!". Every human being has a God given right to choice and free will. So instead of trying to find out why, focus on the fact that it happened and the best way to take care of it. And you know, from where I'm standing empowering criminals by making innocent people vulnerable DOES NOT sound like a very POSITIVE way or PLAUSIBLE way on fixing anything.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GREAT points! I was pointing out that at least some people were looking at causes outside of the weapon its self, the gun. I know that I LOVE violent action movies and crazy zombie killing movies and I have yet to personally feel the need to kill or shoot anyone. Thanks for commenting!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, I love you blogs! And this one is one of my favorites :)

      Delete