Every once and again we must leave the world of Green to discuss topics that we feel are important to us all. Handguns in USA households is one of these times.
We sadly know many good friends that own guns for protection. We do not know many friends that collect guns or frequent gun shows as a hobby or for fun.
We used shot guns to shoot clay pidgeons in our youth and bb guns when we were even younger to shoot at squirrels.
As adult urban dwellers, we are a bit unsure why guns are required if the society and the family does it’s job.
In the case of Ms Gifford’s killer many blame society for not catching the mental problems the shooter had. We prefer to place a larger portion of the blame on the shooter’s parents. Parenting in the US is hit or miss. Many very good parents come from unlikely situations and many kids of the wealthy or those with privilege are horrible adults.
However most parenting really gets down to taking time and caring.
And it TAKES a LOT of TIME.
Many Americans are taught that the child is raised when he/she reaches 18 but that is oh so wrong. Parenting must be practiced until either the child or the parents pass away. Parenting is a life long responsibility and task.
Parenting SHOULD be taught in ALL USA HIGH SCHOOLS but it is not because the USA is largely laissez faire in it’s approach to child raising. Sorta strange for a country that has such large religious fiber.
Maybe the Giffords shooter’s parents had a bad apple but it was really their responsibility to act on it and commit their son or get help. The Korean national Va Tech shooter also had 2 parents and they too could have changed things had they focused more on their parenting skills.
Now back to guns and their manufacture and availability.
The prob is that guns are way too easy to access and many politicians try to make political hay out of gun support. We’ll ask again; Does one really need a handgun in an urban setting if not for defense? They do not use it to gain their supper. They may use it on occasion for recreation at a gun range.
Recreational guns could be manufactured and kept at gun ranges but the bombastic over supply of home owned guns just seems to welcome trouble.
We are out of time but we will try to research the gun ownership/death rate by guns of noted low gun owning cultures such as Japan, Britain and others and report back on what we find.
We of course welcome your responses
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