The Answer To Gun Violence Is Not To Be Found In Guns

Bob Barr has a piece of reality at Full Mag News entitled The Answer to 'Police Shootings' Is Not To Be Found in Police Shootings that makes the case that police shootings, or mass shootings, or even criminal acts with guns can not be found in the guns themselves. Guns, after all, are just inanimate objects, tools that are either protective or offensive because of the needs of the user. They have no will of their own.  The fact is that the answer lies not with the tools, or in the case of the police, with the police themselves. Instead, the problem lies with the within the culture.

As police-involved shootings have come to dominate headlines, the question nobody wants to ask is perhaps the most obvious: Why are we seeing the need for police shootings in the first place? The answer to this question is neither easy nor comfortable, which is why most people, especially on the Left, do not ask it but consistently keep the focus on the police and not the broader and deeper issues.

Every police-involved shooting represents a failure of some sort. Certainly, in some cases, they are the product of poor training or shoddy investigation, other times simply the result of circumstances beyond the officer’s control.

Far more important than police shootings being considered as the result of specific circumstances at the time of the shooting, however, they are indicative of a community failure — a breakdown of the normal safety nets that keep people from hitting rock bottom where, in the midst of crisis, their irrational behavior spills into public view and becomes a threat to others.

The teenage girl shot by a police officer just last month in Columbus, Ohio who was a split second away from stabbing another girl, or the 13-year-old gang member who had a handgun he was firing just prior to being chased and shot by a police officer, represent tragedies birthed not by the police, but by society.

It always is the person, or the people, and it never is the tool. There are few things I will say the work "always" about, but this is one of the few. And it isn't just police shootings. It is every instance of what is called "gun violence." Because, again, the gun is just the tool. It could be a knife, a screw driver, a hammer, a rock... The common denominator in all these kinds of violence is the human heart, which occasionally harbors evil.

Please read the whole article. Bob Barr is unusually to the point.