Thursday, June 11, 2009

Guns in our children's bags

A school district here in Pittsburgh is surprised that a 7th grader showed up with a gun in her bag, by sheer accident. With the proliferation of guns here in the US on account of the Second Amendment, and the election of President Obama; who it appears many fear he may institute gun control laws, I am surprised that school official are surprised, that guns are creeping in "accidentally" into their corridors and class room.(Heard of assault weapons being found in a student locker at one of our universities in the city) The poor girl could explain how she came to possess the gun as investgations continue. As the appetite for gun spreads, one should expect to see more of them turning up on school property. Law makers have already inserted into a recent bill legislation that would allow for guns in the national parks. Recently a guy walked into a church and shot a doctor on account of abortion and yesterday another walked into the Holocaust Museum and started shooting, killing a security officer. Recently a young man in my neighborhood having lost his job and fearing "they' we going to take his guns, opened fire killing three police officers who had shown up for an apparent domestic dispute between him and his mother.

Unless we understand that children live what they learn, we will continue to be surprised when those lessons are really learned. Unless we learn that we are the curators of the next generation and that the prevalence of guns threaten to make this country and any where they are aplenty, ungovernable, we will be surprised. Many of those who today promote guns, run the risk of having unsettling retirements. We have been so self absorbed with our desires to have guns that we miss the greater good of making sure civility prevail. A man who spewed so much hatred in print and online should never have been given the opportunity to possess a gun far less to walk into a museum in plain sight of children and start shooting. It is the intention, the criminal mind one may argue but it is also the gun that creates the criminality.

It is the sustainability of civility in the face of armed citizens that bothers me most. It is the expansion of the gun laws and the stealth, the surreptitiousness with which it done that remains a threat to that continued civility as well.It is access to these guns that may be contributing to the criminalization of our children.

Somebody needs to stop the brooding Wild West mentality. It starts by refusing to buy that one gun and leaving our protection to the police and the armed forces. its star by accepting and believing in due process and in its outcomes. While the jury system in the US is hailed as one of best in jurisprudence, often I hear private citizen express dissatisfaction with its verdicts. There is also a due process for challenging these verdicts without being combative. If there is any lesson we can truly teach succeeding generations within our democracies, it's the importance of due process. It remains the core of civility. Relationship is its inner core

A right to bear arms, then does not mean, a prerogative to possess them. Besides, most people in the US do not now possess guns but should those who do pose a threat to those who do not, we run the risk of expanded possession and the law is already an accomplice. I fear our children will live that learned behavior - the right to bear arms. So for their sakes and our sakes, we need to lay down the arms - all of us.

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