I have recently gone back to graduate school. As a thirty-something surrounded by mostly twenty-somethings, I am constantly reminded that I am old. I was recently telling the story of how when I was in high school, our band director used to conduct with his lit cigarette. My classmates were incredulous. "But there's no way, you can't smoke in schools! You can't even smoke on school grounds!" they said. Ah yes, my children, there was a time not so long ago when you could smoke on airplanes, and in schools, and in restaurants. You could go to Denny's, order coffee and smoke. A local coffee house had cigar night. If you went to a bar, you would leave reeking of cigarette smoke. You could smoke in the workplace, any workplace, even if that workplace was a school or a hospital.
So what changed? People loved their cigarettes, in fact were quite addicted to them. Wouldn't we be liminting their freedom by banning smoking in public places? How do you get people to quit smoking or at least smoke less?
Slowly they began to increase the tax on ciggarettes. The price of a pack went from $2.50 to roughly $10.00 in just a matter of years. They started to ban advertising to kids. Joe Camel used to be as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. Then they began to say no more smoking in schools, and then even smoking on school grounds became taboo. They moved from having a non smoking section in restaurants to not allowing smoking, period. And yes, this "they" happens to be our government.
After this past year of shootings, maybe we as a society should begin to say I don't want your second hand gun smoke. I'm not a 'gun owner/smoker', so why should I be subjected to to you smoke/gun fire. I don't want you smoke/gun fire in my kids schools. They, the government can affect change, they have done it before, in very recent memory. Maybe if we stand up as a society and say this smoke is making us sick, we can make some simple but effective changes. Then hopefully there will be less Auroras and Newtowns and Trevon Martins.
It is already illegal for someone else's guns to affect you in a negative way. It's already illegal for them to be fired at school children.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a "gun lover" but I do think we're in real trouble when the only people with guns are criminals and our government. Just like drug laws haven't eradicated drugs, more gun control will not eradicate guns. Bad people will always find a way to do bad things, and if they want guns, they'll get them.
The bigger issue is that too many kids are being raised without a solid grasp of right versus wrong. They have no faith in God, in their family, or in their country. They are slaves to technology and aren't socialized in a healthy way. They aren't taught the value of hard work, and their parents feed into their sense of entitlement. And they grow up and are sent out into a world they're not equipped to navigate. Gun control laws are not going to protect our families from these people.
It may be illegal to shoot at school children, but it is legal to buy lots and lots of bullets. I'm not saying get rid of all the guns, but let's not throw our hands up in the air either. I'm saying small changes to our gun policy, like taxing bullets to the point where you may think twice about buying hundreds of them at once, stopping the sale of bullets at places like Walmart all can be done. I can't buy liquor at Walmart (at least here in NY), but I can buy bullets? Becuase that makes so much sense.
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