This is from Larimer Colorado County Justin Smith, an awesome post!
Watching the most recent series of senseless shootings in the headlines, I am again angered and frustrated by the apparent trend towards the use of unprovoked, deadly criminal violence to settle real or perceived conflicts.
I am left to wonder, what has changed? I grew up in an America where firearms were readably accessible, but young people didn’t consider settling their differences with guns.
At my high school, every pickup had a gun in the window rack, but they were used for target practice or hunting. No one thought of using guns to settle disagreements.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t have conflicts. A handful of times each year, there would be a fist fight in the parking lot, when one teenage boy decided that his honor had been tarnished. In the end, there would be bloody noses, black eyes and an occasional loose tooth, but it never went beyond that.
If we go down the rabbit hole of more gun control, we are solving nothing. For many lawmakers, it’s much easier to pass a gun control bill than to actually confront the culture of criminal violence that has been embraced by far too many in our society.
However, we should be prepared to hear that the last round of gun control measures just simply “didn’t go far enough” (despite the promises of the politicians at the time). If only we had a few more “common sense” gun control laws, “all this violence would cease.” Expect there to be another surge of gun control bills that mysteriously appear overnight, introduced into the public debate.
It’s all too predictable and too tragic.