Unnecessary Conflict Part 2

Gentle readers, be prepared. This opinion piece is going to get a little heated. Just to be clear, I pray that every last gun on our Earth melts into a useless heap of slag. Sadly, that hasn't happened yet. If it had, I wouldn't be writing in response to Another public shooting! This time, a young man working at a veterinary clinic was shot to death in a dispute over a vet bill?! WTF!!! His mother, who also worked at the clinic, held him until EMTs arrived. He died later in the hospital, on Mother's Day.

Before you offer any justification for the shooter's behavior, consider this. This woman walked into a veterinary clinic armed and willing. Not only willing to shoot but shoot to kill. In a place of business where no one is expected to be armed. This woman is clearly a menace to society in that she used lethal force with insufficient provocation.

There is no reasonable argument here for self defense if she is the only one armed with a lethal weapon. The fact that she arrived at the clinic with a gun in her purse spewing verbal abuse shows clear intent to commit bodily harm. She initiated the physical violence by attacking another employee. All because she didn't want to pay her vet bill?? That's ridiculous!! The veterinary industry writes off hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid vet bills every year. There are plenty of pet owners out there who seek services and then don't pay the bill. Some of them even get verbally abusive because, as a society, we reward this behavior. This is the first time in over 30 years I have heard this dispute escalate to a fatality. Again WTF!!

I am damn tired of reading about Another public shooting! And I am sick of people shrugging like this is something we all just have to adjust to. In a supposedly peaceful society, I have to fear gun wielders shooting me down at work, or the grocery store, or at church!?! WHY? Because our national obsession with guns is insane.

I began this diatribe last spring in support of assault weapons bans after the outbreak of public shootings that started with the elementary school in Uvalde Texas. Guns have only one purpose, to injure or kill. You can try to justify them as protection but that doesn't change the results.

How many children have to die at their school desks before we decide, as a nation, that military style assault weapons do not belong in the hands of private citizens? To claim that such an extreme weapon is justifiable as personal protection is absurd. The entire purpose of such weaponry is to kill large numbers of people in a very short period of time. Literally overkill in anything less than a war!

The United States is the only nation in the world that experiences so much gun violence amongst their own citizenry whilst being at peace. We consider ourselves leaders in the world while tolerating insane amounts of violence at home. How many children must die before we stop shrugging our shoulders? How many people must be killed in grocery stores and churches and event venues before we stop passively accepting the possibility that all of us could die tomorrow at the hands of mentally unstable individuals with easy access to guns?

Are we really going to continue to let the NRA dictate how we regulate gun ownership in this country? The NRAs extreme position fuels the disgruntled and enables them to fulfill their darkest fantasies. Maybe the NRA needs to be paying reparations to families directly impacted by senseless gun violence!

How can we consider ourselves civilized whilst fostering mistrust of one's neighbors? How can we consider ourselves civilized whilst encouraging division instead of understanding? When will our elected officials decide to act in the best interests of the people they're supposed to be serving? It's time for the politicians we vote for to do something productive instead of merely being obstructive!

Regardless of which way any Congress men or women lean politically, to continue to ignore this domestic crisis, thus allowing it to escalate, is a violation of the trust of your constituency.