Gun Land

Another mass shooting, this time in Oregon. A 26 year old man walked into the classroom in a community college, shot the professor point blank and then proceeded to attack the students. Apparently he asked those who were Christians to stand up before he shot them.

The violence ended with 10 dead. I looked up a LA Times article which sets out the timeline for the deadliest mass shootings in the US between 1984 and 2015. There were two year-to-date, two each in 2013-2014 and six in 2012. In total there were 32 in those 21 years, averaging more than one a year. But when I looked at another website that came up from my search there were many more cases that didn't make it into LA Times deadliest list. The US is the mass shooting capital of the world and the country, in Obama's words, is numb to it. A nation that goes to war in foreign lands to defend democracy has no resolve to confront this serious epidemic in its home front.

This tragic and senseless murder reminds me of a group discussion on Freedom that I sat in a couple of years back. What is Freedom and what it is not? Is it the license to do whatever you wish however you wish? This is a question that the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free needs to ask itself more of. A nation that is paralysed by politicians who are far more concerned about maintaining the support from the NRA than doing protecting the lives of its citizens.  A shameful form of democracy that is advocating the use of guns for self-defence against gun violence.

That Bible study session reminded us that laws are established to protect the community from harm - a freedom from harm. Freedom is about being free to do good. Intellectuals will ask how is good define? Good from who's perspective? Valid and philosophical but absolutely irrelevant to the gun issue. Freedom is not freedom if it destroys families. Good is when the government takes control to protect students from premeditated murder. Those who died so innocently aren't just statistics. They call into account the inaction of those who who were elected to protect freedom.