Let's Get Serious

It's another of the talking points pushed by the gun camp, symbolically accompanied by the throwing up of hands in the air.

"If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns."

First, I am not in favor of banning guns. I fully believe in the Second Amendment to the degree that folks should have the right to protect their castles---even if deadly force is required.

I do, however, believe that reasonable, responsible gun owners can darn well protect themselves---and their homes and their families---with weapons that aren't designed to mow dozens of people down in minutes.

But here's the thing. These mass shootings that are being committed nowadays aren't being committed by criminals. In fact, many times the perpetrator has no previous criminal record. Not even a parking ticket.

Like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old monster who shot up Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT.

Lanza had no criminal record.

Neither did the shooter in the recent mall incident in Oregon. Same with the Aurora, CO theater shooter last summer.

The kids who committed the atrocities at Columbine weren't criminals, either. Nor was the perp in the Virginia Tech massacre.

Loners? Yes. Troubled? Definitely. But not criminals.

Criminals aren't committing mass shootings. Armed criminals typically rob or steal. Or trade on the black market. If they stockpile artillery, it's to sell. They don't acquire automatic weapons so they can shoot up a mall, a school or a movie theater.

Those are facts.

The folks who are arming themselves to the hilt, throwing on military-style vests and camouflage gear, aren't criminals. They're suffering from mental illness.

Until we start treating root causes rather than symptoms, we're going nowhere in the effort to try to make what happened in Connecticut on Friday a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy.

It's time to start educating about mental illness, which is still, in the 21st century no less, terribly misunderstood.

Look no further than the reports that Lanza may have been autistic, or afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome.


Adam Lanza


Neither has ever been directly connected to violent behavior of any serious degree. Yet you just know that there is a segment of the population that will take the autism and Asperger's thing and run with it. And you know that those afflicted with said disorders will now be looked at sideways.

There is so much we don't know about mental illness. I'd say we'd better start getting a handle on it, because it ain't going away.

If there is any common ground I can find with those on even the most extreme side of pro-guns, it's that people are ultimately responsible for their actions. The gun provides them with the means of destruction, but not every gun owner commits mass shootings, so that should be a clue right there.

Lanza's mother, Nancy, who was gunned down first last Friday, has been taking some posthumous heat for her decision to have guns of the magnitude that was used by her son, in the first place.

But even his own mother clearly didn't understand the scope of Adam Lanza's troubled state.

This is a time for experts in many arenas to sit down, together, and start hashing some stuff out. To do whatever we can to prevent another atrocity like Newtown from happening again is going to require serious, honest discussion from everyone across the gun, mental illness and law enforcement spectrum.

You're afraid that only criminals will have access to guns?

It's not working too well when the non-criminals get a hold of them, either.

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