By DARLENE VANN / Headline SurferEDGEWATER, Fla. -- What makes a person decide to go to a crowded mall or a place he/she used to work or anywhere there are a lot of people to shoot and kill complete strangers, then shoot themselves?
Or die via suicide by cop as it has been called?
It is not the gun that makes that decision. It is the person wielding the gun.
The most recent tragedy ocurred in which eight people were gunned down at a FedEx facility in Indianopolis by an 18-year-old former employee whose motive is not known.
This young man was reported a year ago by his own mother to police as a danger to himself (talking of suicide by cop) and the police then took his gun away. There should be no way he could get another gun, right? Wrong! He did. If you think that the gangs get their guns legally you are mistaken. Taking people’s guns is ludicrous because those guns are not the problem -- the people are!
This young man was reported a year ago by his own mother to police as a danger to himself (talking of suicide by cop) and the police then took his gun away. There should be no way he could get another gun, right? Wrong! He did. If you think that the gangs get their guns legally you are mistaken. Taking people’s guns is ludicrous because those guns are not the problem -- the people are!
I have said it before and will say it again: If every citizen were armed, robbers or people such as the recent young man would think twice about gun mayhem. There should be background checks for legal buyers. I support that but it will not solve the problem. We are the country with the most guns and gun violence.
We can protest, riot, march whatever, but none of that will solve the problem. Pressuring the President to pass gun rules is simply placating the majority of non-thinking and grieving people.
We need to concentrate on cleaning out gangs and letting those communities breathe free. We need to not keep reporting over and over when these awful things happen -- almost glorifying the perpetrator.
Some will gladly die for that publicity even though it is negative. I do not have a solution, but I am just so very tired of all the violence in my country.
In my younger days these things very rarely happened. We lived peacefully with our neighbors, but then I did not live in a city and we did not have all the media hype, online social media sites and hours upon hours of news that comes over your Apple Watch, your tablet, your phone or however you receive today’s media.
We read the newspaper, but back then they were not so biased as they are today. It was such a better time and I miss it daily.
I don’t disagree with progress, but I do disagree when progress causes such chaos. I think back to the '90s when a truck driver was pulled from his truck and badly beaten by protestors during the Rodney King riots in LA.
It was King, a Black man beaten by several white cops in a traffic stop caught on camera, who appeared in front of the TV news crews on May 1, 1992, pleading for an end to the deadly riots riots: "I just want to say – you know – can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?"
All these years later that question remains unanswered.
YouTube download / AP video / Authorities say police seized a gun last year from the suspected shooter at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, killing eight. Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt also confirmed the gunman’s identity as Brandon Scott Hole, 19, a former employee. (April 16)