With the recent mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Aurora, Colo. movie theater, the American public has gone into a frenzy of complaints, cries for help and ideas. Everyone has their own opinion and we can seemingly only reach a general consensus on one belief: the events are tragic. How to go about preventing future shootings, what to blame for the past ones and what’s best for the country as a whole are all extremely controversial issues that nobody has been able to nail down.
With each new horrific shooting, the anti-gun population points out that stricter gun laws could have potentially decreased the severity of the incident, if not prevented it entirely. But what about Iraq War veteran Eddie Ray Routh’s murder of ex-Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle? If anyone deserves access to guns, its members of the military. If there’s any place that’s appropriate for them to shoot, it’s on a shooting range. Yet a deadly shooting still happened.
Although Routh had been going through a period of shaky mental health, he was nevertheless an active member of the Marine Corps Reserves and could’ve been deployed any minute prior to the shooting. Depending on his particular duty at the time, he may or may not be using guns. But he’d definitely have access to them.
Unless you want to keep guns from even the military, I don’t see stricter gun laws helping much. The problem is the people themselves. As a society, we need to take responsibility and make an influential change instead of continuing to blame the weapons. A potential solution would be further emphasizing the dangers of weapons and the horrors of violence. I’m not talking about once-a-month assemblies for middle schoolers or campaigns around the community. Society needs to be consistent with its values; all the anti-violence ideas instilled in people are completely negated by violence that appears regularly in video games, movies and the media. We become desensitized to violence. Instead of connecting violence with success in entertainment or heavy coverage in the media, America needs to eliminate the violence factor entirely.
Then, guns won’t be associated with evil and violence. They’ll be used practically, for hunting and security. And they’ll be used properly by the military.
Chris Kyle, who was murdered at 38, was the most dangerous sniper in American military history. Iraqi insurgents were terrorized throughout the Navy Seal’s four services there and they called him the “Devil of Ramadi.” He recounted his experiences in his best-seller, “American Sniper.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/chris-kyle-charity_n_2616090.html
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