Does common sense and logical thinking evaporate? Sublimate? Hibernate? If not, why is it so hard to find these days? And while we're out with our flashlights in the night looking for common sense maybe we can locate that elusive critter called dialogue and civil discussion. Heck, I'd settle for any discussion, civil or otherwise. Do we take our positions so personally that we can't risk actually listening to the other side? Or have we prejudged the "other side" so negatively that we can't even stand to hear it?
Newsflash. There are thoughtful, compassionate individuals who don't think "gun free" schools is the way to go in a country saturated with guns. Not offering an opinion on gun ownership here, just making an observation. We surround celebrities, public servants, politicians of every stripe with people trained in the use of firearms to protect their subjects from harm. Somehow, we have decided a cool-looking international symbol printed on a sign at the entrance of our children's schools is supposed to protect them. How could any gun-inflicted harm come to our children with such a solid line of defense right there at the school's entrance? If I may say, it doesn't seem to be working too well so far.
Given the reality that gun confiscation would be messy at best and against our Constitution , and would take years to try to enforce, (likely with little success), it does not offer us an effective solution to this rising problem. Left-leaning ideological thinkers pretending to state their more conservative counterpart's positions by these vague and far reaching "silly" statements isn't exactly interpretable as offering a meaningful solution either. It seems like with such an important subject we need to have a discussion, not a verbal bumper sticker convention.
By the way, if our children are the priority of our society (as they should be), maybe we should consider another shot at prohibition since drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death among young children. And don't forget that swimming pools claim far more innocent children's lives than guns. Guns are very powerful and need to be handled with the respect they deserve but honestly, fatal accidents involving guns are rare and these school shootings are not revealing a gun problem, they are revealing a society and culture problem.
"There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws; or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."
Alexis de Tocqueville
