IGNORANCE STILL PREVELANT IN SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political Activist
Am I the only one around here who sees what’s going on as wrong? Like in Virginia Tech, people are still calling for a small laundry list of things:
- Continued discrimination against the mentally-ill and troubled teens.
- Tougher gun laws that don’t do anything more than to further restrict people’s rights to bear arms–regardless of circumstance.
- Allow the states complete and total access to personal and medical records; not including the federal government.
- Ignorance of the root problems while suggesting outmoded “band-aid” solutions. All because of one young man’s rampage through a Northern Illinois University campus.
Let’s examine the above list:
The mentally-ill and our troubled teens have been singled out because of the problems borne out from society’s ignorance of their situation. We believe that by talking to them, holing them up in some mental institution and the like; doping them up with drugs and then shutting them out of sight or out of mind–will somehow make all our problems go away.
In all essence, it just makes incidences like Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois more common–while the ignorant public continues to rally for more stricter gun laws–than enforcing the ones already on the books.
Taking away our rights to own firearms because we ourselves are to blame for the continued degradation of our own society’s delicate fabric, underpinnings, and basic support foundations–doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
As a matter of public record, the United States has the highest gun crime incidences in the world–and the mentally-ill and troubled teens make up only a small fraction of the total deaths committed by them overall.
Most of the shootings involved these days are from gang-related violence, issues stemming from spousal abuse, and convicted criminals whom are repeat offenders.
Why not enforce laws or create new ones which address these problems? The mentally-ill are not a factor in this equation. Our troubled youths aren’t either.
The calls for complete and total access to our personal psych records and health records by all states–is just asking for trouble. We’ve already seen the flagrant abuse by the feds with regards to our rights to privacy, and the telecoms’ illegal actions involving turning over our personal records to fight terrorism to our own government.
And having unqualified or vindictive people poring through personal state medical records is just plain wrong.
Just because we have some high-profile murders on university campuses doesn’t give people the overall right to start a glorified witch hunt against the mentally ill or our troubled teens.
Not everyone should be treated like a criminal because of the acts of a few individuals.
This isn’t what the system is set up for. We–the people–still have rights to privacy. Nobody–including myself–wouldn’t like it if we had our whole histories open to public scrutiny because that in turn would lead to a whole host of abuse, harassment, discrimination, and further neglect.
As before, we have always ignored the root problems of these issues by professing ignorance and applying “band-aid” solutions in the form of stricter gun laws that do nothing to address the root problems facing our society.
So long as we continue to neglect those whom need help the most, incidences like Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Northern Illinois, will surely become a common place occurrence.
And we only have ourselves to blame for that.
Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1 at yahoo.com
Labels: Columbine, gun laws, mentally-ill, Northern Illinois, school shootings, troubled teens, Virginia Tech
posted by Schuyler Thorpe @ 5:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home