A Way Forward

Giving in to the urge to "do something" will produce bad results.

It is difficult to reconcile the idea that if only everything is normalized and nothing is considered aberrant, all we must do is put all the sharp objects up on the top shelf and life will be sweet.

That is the theory behind every firearm, knife, and pointy object ban in history.

The trans-shooter in Minneapolis was packing three different firearms – according to reports he had an AR style rifle, a shotgun and a handgun and somehow, only the AR seems to have caught the attention of the Minneapolis leftists – but the shotgun is a more appropriate – and deadly - close order weapon and the handgun is certainly far more concealable than a long gun.

It is faulty logic, because it does nothing to curb the urge to kill or the complete devaluation of human life, but man, does it ever make mental midgets worldwide feel good!

For years, the FBI murder statistics have shown that hands, fists, and feet are used more than long guns of every type to murder – but nobody is calling for amputations as far as I know.

If a man is determined to dig a hole, taking away all the shovels in the world won’t stop him. It will just make him less efficient at completing his task – if he is truly committed and driven, he will dig it with his hands if no other tools are available. If you want him to stop, you need to understand what is behind his motivation to dig in the first place, then you must satiate that urge some other way, but it doesn’t mean you give into it. What you absolutely cannot do is express sorrow that something is preventing him from digging because that paints you as his ally and strengthens his confidence, he is right.

There is one precept of Western civilization that is the primary basis for a modern civil society – it is even one of the biblical Ten Commandments – thou shall not kill. Exceptions have been made, of course, for self-defense and just war, but generally if a murder occurred, the murderer was punished by life in prison or the forfeit of their own life.

So, society saw murder as kind of a big deal.

Now social and other mitigating factors are considered – sometimes even race is considered – in the decision to charge someone, what that charge is going to be, and if convicted, what the sentence might be.

Even in law, we recognize that some behaviors are more heinous than others.

Simply put, we cannot continue to use the “who are we to judge?” defense to claim every behavior is normal and then put every single sharp object on the highest shelf. The truly driven will find a way to climb that shelf or use something else to accomplish their task – people use vehicles as a weapon. Society simply cannot lock up everything that could be used to kill like it was toothpaste at a downtown San Francisco Walgreens (if there are any left) – but we can recognize behaviors and mental conditions that could lead to murder and act accordingly.

• Federally funded mental institutions need to make a comeback.

• Involuntary commitments need to be considered (with appropriate levels of safeguards).

• Society at large, and the medical and mental health communities in specific, must stop telling people that aberrant behaviors are OK.

• Current treatments need hard reviews – we need to stop the psychotropic drugs for kids and young adults.

• We, the people, need to speak out to each other and to law enforcement, when necessary, when we see dangerous, self-destructive, unexplainable, or out of context behaviors.

The one thing we must resist is the call to “do something” before we know what that something is. If we don’t, the chance we get it wrong is pretty damned high.