Last Week's Gun Violence Only Inspires Wacky Gun Advocates

It is deeply unfortunate the way that last week's outrageous episodes of gun violence, first at Virginia Tech, then at the Johnson Space Center in Houston only seem to be inspiring wacky and irresponsible thoughts by right wing gun advocates which seem to only prove why some persons should not own guns. Some of these wackos are now promoting the reckless notion that guns should be allowed on college campuses, claiming this would have prevented the situation.

First of all, the situation in Virginia was extremely rare and the college missed many critical opportunities to call police and get Cho the mental health help that he required, and even professors in the English department in which Cho majored were given little more than a little help from campus security in response to the weird and violent leanings of Cho, instead of expulsion as a dangerous and unfit person from the campus.

Now some tough talking chicken-hawks, who worship guns like some religious item are arguing that more guns on campus would have prevented the Cho incident. But the Cho incident was a total breakdown of both community and college responsibility to use legal resources to provide community security. Increasing the number of guns around young people whose brains are often not completely matured who may use a gun in an argument, fight, or in a fit of depression or in suicide are simply too great to ignore. And more guns on campus could be even used in conflicts with a professor or a bad grade for example. The absurd Pandora's Box of problems that this notion to put more guns on college campuses would create should be obvious to anyone with any common sense.

If anything expulsion from school of anyone who brings a gun is a good notion. Possiby some gun detection devices if a campus feels that this is necessary, with permanent expulsion from school the result of those who defy such a common safety goal.

College life often is the first experience of many young people with binge drinking or serious drug use at parties or in the dorm rooms. Adding guns to this mixture wouldn't serve any good purposes.

Many gun advocates also call into question their own mental health or judgement to own a gun. There are many minor incidents of property theft in which using a gun would only land the person in prison, sometimes for up to life. In the Oregon prison system a 84 year old man is serving a life sentence because he pushed the abusive husband of his daughter down a flight of steps, killing him, instead of calling the police. A gun could have just as well played a role in this incident. Many gun owners are currently in jail or prison all across the U.S. for firing off bullets when the situation did not call for it, and their lives were not in any real danger, only some item of property was at risk, and the far safer and legal option of calling the police was ignored.

If anything the Virginia Tech incident should inspire new calls to better fund local mental health services and to more seriously take campus security threats with either expulsion or police involvement. But more guns on the street would no better provide more safety than putting more cars on the street would not result in more accidents.

Each year, guns account for 33,000 deaths in the U.S. including suicide, domestic violence or more rarely murder by some stranger. In fact, guns are far more likely to take the life of persons known to each other than some violence from a stranger, because once a gun is in the house, it is often pulled out during some episiode of family turmoil or conflict, or else small children find these guns and accidently kill themselves or the other children. In the African-American community guns are the major and leading cause of death among 18-34 year old males, where instead of resolving problems, guns only hurt this community and cause many long prison sentences for some argument they should have simply walked away from.

Dr. Ben Carson, is the leading surgeon who has expertise in seperating siamese twins who are joined at the head. Dr. Carson is an African American who flies all over the world to perform complex 18 hour operations that often end in great success. But he nearly threw this all away as a young man when in a fight he stabbed a man with knife that fortunately did not go in because of a big metal belt buckle his opponent was wearing. Carson got a second chance to become one of the world's greatest surgeons.

Using your head, not pulling for some gun or knife will often leave you with far less regrets. Once you pull some trigger you can't call those bullets back if you are on the firm legal grounds to fire them in the first place. As a general rule, guns will cause more more problems than they will ever resolve.