ANOTHER VIEW: Weapons do not solve problems. They cause them.

By Raleigh Perry

BUFORD, Ga.  |  I guess I am a bit old-fashioned.  I grew up listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio and then when we got television, we switched to seeing the Masked Man on the tube.  The same scenario is true for Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and a mass of other kids shows.  Guns were not so much violent weapons in those days. They winged the bad guy(s) and brought them in for a “fair and square trial.”  There were a lot of shows like that, but no malicious, killing with automatic weapons.

Perry

Over the years, however, television and movies have changed, aside from the silly situational comedies.  Many of  today’s television shows are all guns and mayhem, outrageous effects, with a lot of people getting killed with weapons.  I can record movies with my cable system, but when you scan them they, also, are nothing more than shootings and killings.  Vicious! You have to look for shows on the two public television stations to get away from that.  

The shows that people watch these days are driving the gun markets. People are buying at an absurd level.  I heard a news announcer say that there were three  million guns in the United States.  All are not guns for killing people, such as hunting rifles and shotguns. That is what I have. 

I see no reason whatsoever for anyone to have a clip or magazine that holds 30 rounds, like the AR-15 look-alike.  Those are made for killing during a war. However, the problem today is that those guns are far too plentiful to the common man, and are in the hands of people whose minds have been screwed up by television shows. 

Another thing today is that offspring of single parent families are not taught how to be good boys and girls, come home from school, throw their books on the dining room table and get the devil out of the house.  If the nuclear family exists, raising the children is not done, or done right, as mom and dad have a vehicle each.  Some have a motor home, a house in the mountains, and other unnecessary things that they fool with all the time while they are not paying attention to the children.

There was an article in a recent New York Times about gun thefts from parked cars in Nashville.  Two days after the article, a 28 year old woman killed three elementary school students and three adults in Nashville. Too many guns are out there and stupid people are leaving them in their cars.  

In one mass shooting, a teenaged boy’s parents bought him a AR-15 type of weapon and he went through shooting people in a grocery store in Michigan.   Since then there have been at least four who have died and more are in critical condition in Louisville, Ky.

In January alone there were 1.6 persons killed every day.  We have to look at governors who are allowing guns to be sold to people without background investigations.  This is only one way to solve the problem. 

If you are a pro-gun person, I am not the man you want to encounter.  No, you will not get shot, but you will get an ear full.  I have seen bodies in body bags stacked six feet high in preparation for a flight to the U.S. There are too many guns and too many people who have been disenfranchised from our society.

Share