Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

There has been at least 6 school shootings in the country from Feb. 4 to Feb. 14. I only read about two of them, one is in the county that I live in, otherwise I would have only heard of the one at Northern Illinois. We are so used to this type of things that most of us would have missed 5 out of this 6 events. In the past whenever a shooting occurs there is a call for tighter control of guns. Now there is actually calls for letting students, at least in colleges, be armed. Some want people be able to carry guns in churches, malls and libraries because shootings have occurred in these places as well. While it can be argued that gun control alone may not reduce murders, it would be nonsense to believe that if everyone is armed that we would actually be safer.

The shooting that occured in our area involved a middle school boy killing another boy who is gay. While activists are demanding that the school increase sensitive teaching, I do not think that prejudice is the main reason why this boy died. When I was a student in the Detroit public schools there was way more prejudice than today. It was not unusual for me to hear racial slurs on the little league field. There is no way that would be tolerated today. Fights occurred regularly between racial groups back then. The difference was that fists were the weapons of choice then. I don't know how a 14 year old got a gun but is not hard to do so today. So instead of punches now there are shots. Which is more deadly? I am sure there was plenty of road rage in the 60's. But people would just give each other the finger. I never heard of someone shooting someone else for cutting in front of him back then. If everyone is carrying guns, the number of angry encounters that end with shots being fired will increase dramatically.

I read somewhere that even trained police officers hit their targets accurately only about 8 percent of the time. So if someone fires away in a crowded lecture hall, even if someone else has a gun what are the chances that he will hit the shooter instead of some other people. What if several people respond at the same time by pulling out guns at Northern Illinois? I think the death toll would have been higher than 5. I don't have a great answer for all these shootings but arming everyone is definitely not the right answer.