With any senseless murder in the United States, naturally the whole gun control debate comes up.
Saying if guns were illegal it would end the violence. Yes, changing a law is really going to prevent people from having weapons. Yeah, probably not. How many drugs are illegal yet people still find ways to get them, grow them or sell them?
The gun debate goes sideways because firearms defenders say it's a mental health issue and that guns aren't killing people, people are killing people. (The counter to that is: all countries have mental health issues, so why doesn't it happen there?)
Any time there's a mass shooting, the politicians do the media circuit and compare the U.S. to other countries -- for instance, Canada. They talk about how no other country in the world has gun problems, even though it's legal to own firearms. Rarely do you hear those countries described as making guns part of their culture.
Having a Canadian boss, we often find ourselves engaging in conversations about how the two countries are different.
He told me: "I was born in Canada, lived in Canada for 30-some years. I know hundreds of people in the country but I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. The overall mentality of people in the country is that they don’t feel so unsafe that they need to have weapons."
It’s one thing to argue that it is your right to have them and then actually believing you need to be armed and on guard in your day-to-day life.
Odd that on TV, murders are considered entertainment. How many prime-time dramas revolve around homicide? I can’t even count the number.
Why when it actually happens in real life is it a bad thing? How is it fun to watch when it’s only pretend but then when it plays out in real life it’s disturbing?
Until society becomes less violent on TV, film, in video games and on the internet, how will the mentality of people ever change? It is socially acceptable when we see it everywhere we look. At the same time, production companies keep making the garbage because people want to see it. Will the cycle ever end?