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No One Answer Works......But...
By lindamuralidharan on 2014-12-19 23:31:23
I really hesitated to start talking about guns again. How repetitious is this or could it be? Nonetheless, the various bad
events and then some interesting slightly positive developments of recent weeks suggest it is important to keep the topic
fresh in our minds. How soon will we forget the man, Bradley William Stone, who knifed and shot six people in
Pennsylvania not too many weeks after Eric Frein shot a state police officer dead and wounded another in a deliberate
ambush? A month? six months? a year? Let us not. Let us not forget. This is the USA. We have a right to be safe in our
homes and on our streets and so do our peace officers. Both of these white men...and one a former member of our armed
forces...clearly thought guns were good and useful possessions and at some point put them to a use they deemed helpful to
themselves. Frein needed, for some reason not quite clear yet, to act on his own hatred of law enforcement personnel.
Stone was fed up with fighting in the courts for custody of his children apparently since he was divorced from their mother
and even had another child with a subsequent wife. His deceased former wife stated before the killing spree that she did fear
for her life at the hands of Stone. [caption id="attachment_6503" align="alignleft" width="600"]
American family alive and
well[/caption] There have been abusive husbands around since time immemorial. In our own age, there have been abusive
husbands, unmarried significant others, and former partners of either type with people (and this can all be said of same sex
relationships also) hurting and threatening people, very often women, to the point that we have tried really hard to upgrade
and improve our police training regarding domestic violence and also our mechanisms for obtaining "restraining orders" or
"orders of protection". Different terminology may be used in different states or locales. We have also learned that people,
women in particular, may be most at risk when they have left the relationship or are in the process of leaving. In any case,
Stone's ex-wife is dead and so are five members of her family. Since the predominant means of committing these murders
are guns, I think we absolutely have to address gun safety and the proliferation of guns as making it all too easy and perhaps
even suggestive for people to kill people they are angry with or don't like. And not too long before that another man in a
southern state used his gun to kill a business partner, a rival tow truck driver operator, himself and a number of other people.
How many people in this country remember 17 year old Claire Davis? I do because I left her photo on my desk top after
writing about her death at the hands of suicidal shooter 18 year old Karl Pierson in 2013. Claire's photo appears at the head
of this post on the main blog page. Karl's father spoke out to memorialize his son this past week as he stated the murder was
not the only thing the young man did in his life. He also exhibited a good side at other times. It is interesting to note that
Karl Pierson had threatened people before and had actually acted out some violence in his young life, and the school
essentially took note of all this but otherwise ignored the danger he posed. [caption id="attachment_6504"
align="alignright" width="600"]
_ Alive and well in America.
[/caption] I also keep the photo of Aaron Ybarra who killed a college student before being disarmed by other (gun free)
students and is now someplace in a jail or prison. He is a victim, too, albeit one guilty of a horrible crime. He had a very
dysfunctional family life and was encouraged to collect and love guns. Since we know that states that have better gun safety
laws almost always have fewer gun deaths, and since it is clear even anecdotally, that if you have a very convenient and
perhaps suggestive weapon ready to hand, the chance of your acting out your built up rage by using that weapon is
increased. We can kill people by poison, disabling their car mechanisms (or is this only on TV dramas?), explosions, fire,
beatings, and knives as well as guns. Somebody did just that (use a knife for murder) in Cairns, Australia where at least 8
children have been slaughtered. These are horrible modus operandi for those with murderous intent, and they also require
some effort to plan and then obtain the means. All too often, the gun is right there...or easily purchased with short or non-
existent waiting periods. Except for target shooting, guns pretty much have only one purpose. That is not the case with
many poisons (at least most are not limited in primary purpose to the killing of humans), knives, explosions, fire, etc. You
can certainly kill with a baseball bat or tire iron but that is not the primary purpose of either. [caption id="attachment_6506"
align="alignright" width="262"] Aaron Ybarra[/caption] Yes, it's complicated. I
maintain that guns ought to be harder to use....have to get it from its locked place at the gun club, be sure the process of
buying a firearm is slow and requires accurate documentation of the buyers' mental and law abiding stability. I maintain that
we need to change the thinking about guns. We need to work for thinking adults to shift their attitudes and for children to be
taught great respect for guns and the ease with which they can be misused. Also, of course, we need to teach the children
much better ways of handling adversity, personal stress, loss, and disappointment. A couple of positive things are going on
right now. Here in Hawaii a man with recent criminal charges and a diagnosis of mental illness was robbing a woman's
home. She arrived home in the middle of his crime so he stabbed her. She disarmed him, and then he tackled her and tried
to choke or smother her. She broke away and he ran away in a stolen vehicle. (There were witnesses among the neighbors
so police caught him within an hour). She is recovering in the hospital. It is positive that he did not have a gun since either
one might have been shot dead in the struggle...at least it is a little more likely than with a knife alone. It is also positive that
there is now a big outcry about the failure of the system that .... after he was convicted of property damage for which he
spent 10 days in jail...he was released to the streets to be homeless, in no way supervised by any form of mental health case
management or probation. He had actually been declared unfit to stand trial on the charge until he had spent a period of
time in the state mental hospital. And....he also had a bench warrant from failure to appear several months ago to answer for
another infraction. Thus even one of our Republican legislators...who would generally speaking not likely support tax
dollars being spent for social programs. ... is clamoring for more and better mental health services. We are woefully behind
times in this state in providing timely care for the actual numbers who need state of the art help to maintain mental health
and keep in remission any symptoms them may have experienced in their life times. Austerity does not work when it comes
to keeping citizens safe. Another positive and hopeful event just these past few days was the announcement that a number
of families of people killed or wounded in Sandy Hook are filing a law suit against a gun manufacturer saying one of the
guns used in Adam Lanza's killing spree ought never have been made available to the civilians population as it is an assault
type firearm needed perhaps by military personnel on a battle field. We may see the law suit won by these parents or not.
We may see more schools become more proactive and prevention oriented as Karl Pierce and Claire Davis' school was not.
We may or may not get counties, states, and the Federal Government on board to provide better health services for the
indigent and to hold insurance companies accountable for providing the required mental health services. [caption
id="attachment_6505" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Will they be safe in their
homes and on the streets[/caption] I think the important effect of these efforts is the continuing raising of the consciousness
of the public regarding both the problems and the complicated solutions. The more we raise these issues and lobby for many
of the complicated, interwoven approaches to solving the problem of so many unnecessary gun deaths, the more people's
attitudes will change. Sometimes the goal is not achieved but the process makes inroads. The public does shift in opinion
on many issues when the time is right and the activists never give up. No, not any one single answer to all this but many
strands that need to be woven together to get results. To save lives.
