Can't get away from the reality here--we are a society, for reasons to be discussed at a later date, that is simply LOADED THREE DEEP with Nutbags and broken people--Yet because this particular violently disturbed individual went on his rampage with a box cutter or some such perhaps ALL the victims will survive.---If he had been willing and able to use a bushmaster maybe we see another two dozen fatalities.
The kids in that school had their number come up and got lucky this time.
A very sad statistic is that since John Lennon was gunned down by a psycho what 32 years or so ago---OVER ONE MILLION americans have died from gun violence at the hands of their fellow citizens.
Irrespective of your opinion on gun laws and the second amendment one thing is crystal clear--Something very wrong, and very dark, is going on within the american psyche.
In many ways the GUN argument shields both sides from facing that reality---Right wingers claim people kill people not guns and that we all need the freedom to protect ourselves from the mania---Left wingers wallow in the proliferation of weapons of war, the lack of empathy by the gun toters and the simplistic concept that in a country with more guns then people we can somehow significantly MITIGATE the mania by gun laws.
Its a comforting merry-go round that shields both sides from facing the discouraging and perplexing reality that the american expereince , the american psyche , has grown very very sick--so sick we wage war on each other, and often in the most destructive manner possible.
IMHO its not guns or gun laws that we need--its a major dose of THERAPY and SELF-AWARENESS that address the particular anxt, isolation, hyper-individualism, & near total loss of the sense of comunity that seperates 21st century america from other developed societies, and even from most of our own past!
