Oh boy, what a subject to bring up. But to be honest, I have to vent just a little bit about what I've been seeing and reading about in the news and would also love to get some feedback from you guys as well, whether it be the same point of view as mine or not. All I ask is to keep everything civil in the chat thread. I'm very open minded and respect everyone's opinions. I understand that this is a very touchy subject and has the potential to spawn heated debates which is fine, just as long as we keep everything civil.
Let me first start off by saying that my heart goes out to all the victims and everyone impacted by the recent school shooting in Florida. It's a damn shame that kids can't go to school anymore without having to worry about this kind of thing happening. When I was in school, the worse thing that we worried about was a fist fight and nothing else. At my school, we could smoke cigarettes in a designated area, carry pocket knives and it was not uncommon to see a hunting rifle hanging in the back glass of a pickup truck. You might be saying "Wow, you're old!" and to some I guess I am. But I went to high-school in the 1990's so it's not like it was that long ago, okay?
What has changed since then? Seriously? Well, apparently a whole damn lot has. Of course cutting out smoking is a no-brainer. But why has everything went to hell "recently"? It seems like everyone wants to blame it on the gun. That was the very first thing that I heard come out of someones mouth after the last shooting was gun control.
Sometimes I think we're focusing on the wrong things at the wrong times. The questions I had about this particular shooting was why was nothing done about this guy before this happened? It's obvious that he has an extensive past of mental issues, so why has no one taken any steps to get him help? I haven't seen or heard if this guy lived with his parents or not but I suspect that he did since he is still so young, so wouldn't the parents have picked up on some of his violent behavior? Several kids from that school have already said on camera how weird and crazy this guy was so I mean it's not like one of those cases where the suspect catches everyone off guard by acting out of character or anything. It sounds like this guy needed to be committed to a mental hospital for evaluation, so why wasn't he? Maybe he was and I just haven't heard about it on the news yet, if so, please let me know in the comments.
The YouTube comment he made about shooting up a school. The FBI said that they looked in to that when it was reported but couldn't identify or locate the person that made the comment. I call BS on that. I come from a law enforcement background so I have a little knowledge pertaining to this. In my "opinion" I think that either the FBI brushed it to the side and didn't take it seriously or they didn't feel like going through the hassle of finding out who the person was. I know that the FBI has a huge case load but this is something that can't be taken lightly. Over the years, law enforcement has been challenged with effectively doing their jobs because of their power being taken away. Ha! There's another touchy subject to get in to lol. But seriously, every year when we would have in-service training, there would be new laws that went in to effect prohibiting us from doing something. Don't get me wrong, I know there's bad police out there and some abuse the power that they have but I'm not talking about those pieces of trash right now, I'm talking about the normal officer trying to do his job. Whenever an officer performs an act, he/she has to think of all sorts of things trying to determine if he's violating someone's rights or not. It's like a chess match some times between the cop and the bad guy. Just the other day I saw someone criticizing a cop for not stopping a person that was walking on the sidewalk carrying another person that was intoxicated. Cops have been stripped of their authority in so many ways that sometimes they choose to just let it go rather than to push the envelope. I'm starting to drift off topic here but my point is that I think the FBI could have found out the location and identity of that guy if they really wanted to. Yes, it would have taken a lot of work but look at what it could have prevented. Again, this is only my opinion.
What is causing the recent shootings? I keep saying "recent" because this type of thing just didn't happen back in the day. Are people getting meaner or crazier? People are on more prescription drugs than ever before, do you think that has anything to do with it? What about mainstream media? Do you think that the media glamorizes shootings like this? It seems like every shooting has broken some type of record. Why is that important to mention? We just had a horrific incident to take place, who gives a damn where it ranks on the mass shooting list? The way it is these days with how these shootings are represented, someone out there is already thinking about how they want to beat that record, I promise you that!
Is there too many guns in circulation? Absolutely! What I mean by that is that there are too many guns floating around on the black market that are stolen and are easy for a criminal to get. I own several guns myself and think that you can never have too many. But, I'm also a responsible gun owner that takes the appropriate precautions to prevent my weapons from getting in to the wrong hands.
I fully support a "Gun Buy Back Program". This is an excellent way to get many guns off of the streets. I don't know why the government does not take advantage of this program more. I have only seen it happen one time in my area and it was a huge success! The local police department had a booth set up and they advertised on television that they would pay, it was either 100 or 200 dollars, for any type of gun, no questions asked and no paperwork to be filled out. You literally just gave them a gun, they paid you for it and you went on your merry way. I forgot how many stolen guns were recovered and just the number of guns in general that was brought in was staggering. But at the least, I think this would be a great place to start with "gun control".
Do I think that the belt should be tightened on background checks? Absolutely! Apparently we've got a major flaw in our system due to the recent events that have taken place.
So what's the answer? I have no idea, but I do know that there's no point in making pointless laws that will only effect law abiding citizens. Putting up a sign on the front door of your business saying that weapons are not allowed is only doing one thing, it's keeping a lawfully armed citizen from possibly saving someones life. A person with ill intent will care less about what that sign says.
Speaking of lawfully armed citizens or CCW permit holders. I would like to see permit applicants and current holders go through more training than what they do currently but that's another topic all together also.
I know there's no easy solution to this problem that we as American's are facing but I don't think that automatically blaming guns every time a shooting happens is the right way to go.
Approximately every 2 minutes someone is injured in the United States in an alcohol related car crash.
Every day, almost 29 people in the U.S. die in alcohol related crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes; according to NHTSA in 2016
Also according to NHTSA statistics. In 2010, the most recent year for which cost data is available, these deaths and damages contributed to a cost of 44 BILLION dollars per year!
Those alcohol related crash statistics are overwhelming, don't you think? But yet I don't see people on the news lobbying for alcohol control, car control or anything else related. Why is that? Is it because money and politics is more associated with guns?
I'm not trying to downplay shootings in general. By bringing up the alcohol stats, I wanted to show how many lives are impacted every year but you never hear about it like you do with a shooting and I don't understand that. Is it because shootings are more dramatic and make a better news story? I don't know and don't claim to have all the answers. I just hate hearing the same things over and over again whenever we have a tragic incident involving firearms. GUN CONTROL, GUN CONTROL, GUN CONTROL! That's all you hear and will continue to hear. What kind of gun control could have prevented yesterday's shooting? If a man is determined to kill, he will kill. If he can't obtain a firearm, he will use a different tool for the job. Perhaps he might would have learned how to make a bomb on a remote, timer or contact switch. Then he could have killed who knows how many people without even being there and who knows when he would have gotten caught?
Like I said before, I'm all for making the background checks more efficient and trying to keep guns out of the hands of people that don't need them. But instead of just screaming gun control all the damn time, I think we need to take a step back and see if we can figure out why this is even happening in the first place.
Hopefully everything I said made sense, if not please ask. Feel free to express your opinion on the matter, maybe together we can come up with an answer.
Thanks for taking the time to visit and read my blog. Feel free to follow along with me on this Steemit journey as I have many law enforcement related stories that I want to share with you! @bluelightbandit
