More than 30,000 Americans die each year in gun-related incidents. It must be the guns that are the problem.
Just set aside the Second Amendment and develop a plan to confiscate the millions of guns in America. That should fix things, right?
Wrong. American culture is the problem.
Hollywood consistently churns out a barrage of ultra-violent movies, TV shows and video games and we don’t bat an eye.
We lionize Wall Street masters of the universe who create esoteric financial instruments to reap multi-million dollar paychecks, all at the expense of the Main Street Middle Class who don’t have high-powered lobbyists in Congress.
Our country’s most popular sport reduces many of its players to shadows of their former selves while we sit in the stands on Sundays reserving our biggest cheers for bone-crunching, concussion-causing hits.
We glorify political leaders more for their ability to destroy their opponents than for the statesmanship in their behavior or the content of their ideas.
We tolerate bullying, too often looking the other way when young people torment their peers to the brink of despair while we say “kids will be kids.”
Occasionally, though, an epiphany -- a horrific event we think will serve as a wake up call.
At Sandy Hook, the gunman killed six adults and 20 young children. We mourned. We screamed. We hugged our kids. We took to social media. We said, “This time, it’s different. These were children. We must do something.” And we did, collectively, nothing.
Guns are the problem? Nahh. It’s our win-at-all-costs, take-no-prisoners, kill-or-be-killed American culture that foments this violence.
Fix our culture and guns will become a moot point.
I’m Wester Wuori, and that’s my perspective.
