We do NOT have a gun control problem in the USA.
We DO have a serious mental stability problem.
There are millions fo guns in the USA which have never done a thing wrong—either on their own (impossible) or in the hands of their owners. I was raised in a home where rifles and shotguns hung openly on the den wall. Even with the uberfights our parents had over the years, none of us 4 kids EVER thought either one of them would grab a gun. Lots of bad words—a knife a couple of times, but never the guns.
I would bet a prime rib dinner that almost everyone here on FR over the age of 40 has met someone or knows a family member—close or distant—or knows a family with a member who is more than “just a little quirky”.
Then there are those who are truly rubber room material and don’t belong on the streets and in the grocery aisles with the rest of us. None of these people are candidates for ‘out-patient’ status in any kind of treatment program. They cannot be depended upon to take their medication timely and continuously, and have to have supervision at all times. Instead, they are left alone to run amuck and to use guns to kill others in large numbers and guns get the blame.
There are millions of those loose in our society and their friends and family have blinders on until another day like today.
One neighbor of those 2 brothers summed them up in one word: TROUBLE. Since they re 20 and 24 years old, I would probably get a gold star for guessing tht they have been TROUBLE for some time & there was no legal way to remove them from the midst of the rest of us who just want to do our jobs, attend school, take care of ourselves in retirement and stay out of the way of these crazies as best we can.
There is a serious deficit in the USA about addressing the mentally unstable, and I would like to make it a crime if the family didn’t turn them in for treatment. IF the family member is wrong—then the person is turned loose, but how many of us truly know or knew at least ONE person in our lives who really didn’t belong in polite society?
I have—we all have.
When the dust settles in Connecticut, I think we will find that there were many warning signs about these 2 young men and NOTHING was done.
I have sympathy for the victims-—but not for the family members who didn’t do a thing to stop them.
I know the guns are NOT to blame. The person holding the gun and using it is to blame.
Well stated, ridethemiles. You said just what I’ve been thinking about this tragic day and several previous incidents. It should also be said that it was/is the liberals/progressives that abolished those full-time care programs that protected society and helped the serious mentals by housing them and taking care of them. Instead the social activists and many electeds back in the 70’s and 80’s felt that full-time institutions deprived them of their “rights” and they should be put on the streets with pharmaceuticals. The subsequent amount of crime, death, and tragedy is the result and it is both painful, and shameful.