It's a harp you might not want to hear, but the shooting of a 17-year-old Cottonwood Heights boy exemplifies the danger of a society having too many guns.
The more guns out there, the greater the chance they will fall into the wrong hands. In the case of the three teens in Cottonwood Heights, they were the wrong people to be having a gun simply because they were inclined to play around with it, with one of them pointing it at the head of another. The gun cycled through several empty cylinders before coming to a cylinder with a bullet in it. The boys might have thought the gun was empty, but, if so, they were deadly mistaken.
With an estimate 400,000 guns stolen each year, the greater danger is that they will fall into the hands of criminals, not just teenagers who don't respect the gun as something you don't play around with.
The gun they were playing around with had, indeed, been stolen. How it came into their hands is not known.
A good share of crimes are committed with stolen weapons. I think back to Sandy Hook, and how Adam Lanza stole his guns from his mother's arsenal. No gun arsenal and Lanza would have had to resort to another method of coming up with a gun. You can't steal that which isn't there.
I am not in favor of banning guns, but I do wish fewer people saw the need to own them.
it seems we are more willing to put our trust in the arm of flesh than God.
ReplyDeleteAfter this incident, the Monkey Suits on the hill need to pass a few laws on gun safety. I read a few years that the state of Utah has some of the highest gun deaths in the nation. Mostly due to suicide, some to accidental (such as this) and domestic violence. The incidents like Trolley Square are a bit more rare than domestic violence.
You make a good point. States with high gun ownership and weak gun laws lead the nation in firearm-related deaths. Gun safety instruction might help, with people being taught to lock the weapons so secure that even their children won't be able to get at them. When I bought this house, the previous owner left a gun behind. It was locked in a wooden case. Needless to say, when I started renting, one of the roommates -- one with a criminal record -- stole it. I should have learned a little gun safety, myself.
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