I have yet to be very political in these articles but I feel in light of the Aurora shootings that I want to discuss something that truly scares the shit out of me: random shootings and the media and political reactions. Incidents like Columbine, Virginia Tech, and both the Eaton Centre and block party shootings really remind you have how fragile and chaotic life is.
For the sake of this article I will not refer to the shooter by name. The smug attitude and Joker comments he made makes it clear that he did this for attention. I will not give him this attention because then he wins and the victims died only to glorify a monster. I will make him anonymous, to take away his power and give respect to the victims. I will not give the internet one more article about him. This is an article about the issue and how it creates victims.
I was in a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in a Cineplex theatre just like the victims in Aurora and I could not imagine being in the same dark and confined chaos as them. What made my theatre different from theirs? Not much at all. Sure, Canada has a different relationship with guns than America (go watch “Bowling For Columbine”) but in the end it comes down to one person with a twisted sense of morality and a couple magazines of ammunition to end lives and shake the world. We can’t stop people from committing crimes, but you take away their toys.
I do not believe that handguns or automatic weaponry should be legal for anyone except police officers and military forces. I am not against hunting animals for sport (actually doing it however, is a different story) or long guns used for riflery, but banning those guns is not the issue. The fact that a 24-year old is able to legally and easily acquire a shotgun and a military grade assault rifle points out a major flaw in how society operates. There is no need for any common person to be able to buy that equipment for everyday use. That person is planning to hurt people, why is it being sold to him?
All it takes is one person to fire that weapon to forever change hundreds of lives who have now lost a friend, colleague, lover, best friend, husband, wife or child. The onus should be on companies who actually make these items available. The whole “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is bullshit. Guns give said person the ability to maximize their destruction. Planes haven’t been banned since 9/11, but security has drastically been changed. Why hasn’t gun security been drastically changed?
This image should be enough to motivate someone to make change.
Because people love their guns. The two schools of thought in regards to gun control following the Aurora shootings are this:
- Guns should be controlled so that innocent people do not become victims.
- The other camp is full of communists. If everyone had a gun, than Shooter X would have been gunned down in the theatre.
If no one had a gun, no one would get shot. That is a fact. Vigilante justice does not work for the common person and being judge, jury and executioner leads to even more insanity. The movie that was being watched during the shootings was “The Dark Knight Rises” which tackles that exact issue first hand. Look to Christopher Nolan’s Harvey Dent for an example of someone being corrupted in his attempt to do something right.
Long story short: if no one has handguns or assault weaponry, less people would get murdered. That is a fact. How often do you hear of someone going on a killing spree with a registered hunting rifle? Hardly ever. If people want their guns so badly, get one of those to fulfill that need. Stop bringing up your freedoms and rights to own assault weaponry as they are tools designed to kill human beings faster. It is not about controlling your life, it’s about protecting it and ensuring incidents like Aurora, Colorado become extinct.
Bear Pursuit 