How I am angry: Mass Murder Edition

    I am really mad about the elementary school shooting that occurred today in Connecticut. I am mostly mad at the man who committed this senseless, incomprehensibly evil act. But there is nothing I can do about him or say to him.

    I am also mad at the people who cry foul as soon as anyone tries to discuss gun control after incidents like this. Many say it's not the right time, and that the focus should be on the victims of today's tragedy. Well, I don't know of a better way to honor those victims and others like them than to contribute to a rational, long overdue discussion about the roots of the violence in this nation.

    Policy makers should have been trying to understand and discuss the roots of America's murder culture for... well, forever. When a news outlet posted online today, asking when the Obama administration should discuss gun laws, my immediate response was, "four years ago."

    The rate of death from violent crime in the United States is astronomical compared to other developed nations. Guns are not necessarily to blame. Other countries have gun ownership rates at least as high as the U.S.'s without even a fraction of the gun crime. However, there is evidence that American states with stricter gun control laws experience less gun crime than other states.

    Does this necessarily mean that gun control directly lowers gun crime? No. Am I saying gun control will necessarily prevent mass murders? No. But it has to be a part of the conversation.

    There is information available to us about a correlation between gun control in the U.S. and lower gun crime rates. That is a fact. To immediately refuse to consider that information in discussing how to combat America's culture of murder is, in a word, insane. In another, ignorant. In another, myopic.

    What I really wrote this to say is this:
All information is valuable, even if it has the potential to conflict with YOUR particular world view. In contrast, NO information is valuable unless is it used to seek WISDOM. In order to seek wisdom, all of the facts must be considered. In this case, facts about gun control must be discussed. To refuse to even entertain the thought of exploring the potential for safer gun laws in the wake of the year we just experienced is, in another word, asinine. And it is making me angry.

That is all.