It was probably Benjamin Franklin who first said, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.” That warning has been quoted and misquoted by so many people since, applied to every medium from the Bible to Facebook, and extended to include those things that we see and hear as well, that we no longer are certain of its origin. No matter what the medium of communication, I’m becoming more cynical each time I look to television for information.
As much as I love the written word and appreciate newspapers, I have to admit that it takes more time to print and distribute the written word than it takes radio and television to broadcast timely information. Newspapers, however, do have more time to verify information and to delve deeper into issues, thus giving us more complete and accurate accounts of current events. No matter how the information reaches me, I find myself with more questions than answers.
People claim to want more gun control, for instance, yet they seem to want it for others but not for themselves and a few of their friends and like-minded others for protection against “them” who should not be allowed to possess guns. Some say we don’t need more laws but better enforcement of the laws we already have. I’m sure better enforcement would help, but it would be a lot easier if the arms we supposedly have a “right to bear” were comparable to the ordinary rifles and handguns our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote those words.
We generally agree that laws are, and should be, changed to deal with the realities of changing times, and we tend to approve of those necessary changes in most areas. We no longer require a man bearing a red lantern to run ahead of motor vehicles driving through a town as we did when automobiles were a new hazard to horses and pedestrians. Women have access to bars and other places once exclusively the domain of men, and smokers can no longer defile the air and impair the health of others in public places. We readily change tax laws as the need for public revenues changes, and we accept new regulations regarding marriage, medical practice, liability, banking, immigration and dozens of other areas. Yet we cling to outdated laws that allow people to possess and use weapons that were designed for trained military and law enforcement use and have no practical purpose for the procurement of food or defense of personal property.
Our crime rate and incidents of mass shootings rises at an appalling rate, yet we refuse to acknowledge that, while “guns don’t kill, people do,” many of those people would not kill if the guns were not so readily available and so easily used to kill maximum numbers of people in a minimum amount of time.
I have sometimes considered the measures we are forced to take to protect innocent people in schools, churches, shopping centers and entertainment venues, and ask myself if maybe we are becoming paranoid and overdoing the precautions – or are more of us becoming criminals because it has become easier to do, a way of dealing with personal problems that seem to have no other solution, or proof that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was an impossible dream to begin with and we are only just now finding out that it was all a Utopian illusion.
I concede that there is a certain logic and merit to the argument that one of the causes of the rise in violence in the world is that some people with mental and emotional problems are not getting the help they need. Perhaps, if those people had received timely help and care they would not have resorted to unreasonable violence. The facts, though, are that they did not get help and they did do those horrendous things and they did use assault weapons designed for nothing short of mass killing. The argument that they should have had help earlier does not undo the tragic results. Preventing them from obtaining those weapons could have saved innocent lives.
Are we more paranoid or more criminal?
May 25, 2023