The Year of the Gun

Case O’ Guns (Photo credit: Gregory Wild-Smith)

One of my father’s hobbies was collecting firearms, so I’ve been shooting them for as long as I can remember. And he made a point of teaching me gun safety not only so I wouldn’t hurt myself, but also so I wouldn’t hurt others. I have lots of respect for guns as a result, but have to say I am appalled by their abuse in our society. Case in point: all the terrible shootings over the past few years.

From 2011 to today, there seem to have been more mass shootings in the world than I have witnessed in my 41 short years on this planet. I use 2011 as a starting point because that’s when Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, 33, murdered 77 people in cold blood. He began by destroying the Oslo government headquarters with a fertilizer bomb on July 22^nd, followed by the killing of 69 more people during the ruling party’s summer youth camp. And in case you haven’t heard, Breivik just received the maximum sentence for his crimes: 21 years. This alone is pretty disgusting and I have to wonder about the effectiveness of the Norwegian justice system.

James Holmes (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

On July 20, 2012, 24-year-old former neuroscience student James Holmes entered an Aurora, Colorado movie theater during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” With his hair dyed bright orange and referring to himself as the Joker, he opened fire on the audience, killed 12 people and wounded 58 others. Holmes then exited the theater and immediately surrendered to police. Further investigation of Holmes’ apartment revealed it was rigged with all sorts of explosives, as if he was hoping to kill any officers who entered the premises later. As if this wasn’t bad enough, it now appears there were all kinds of warning signs that could have prevented this tragedy from happening in the first place.

How sickening is that?

A few weeks later—on August 5, 2012—white supremacist Wade Michael Page walked into an Oak Creek, Wisconsin Sikh Temple and murdered 6 people, wounding another 4 in the process. After being shot in the stomach by police, Page turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

Today, a disgruntled women’s accessories designer named Jeffrey Johnson, 53, murdered his former boss outside the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan and injured as many as 9 others. Thankfully, police shot him dead before he could hurt anyone else.

All of these incidents happened in only one year’s time, which worries me because I know there are more shootings to come. Before anything else happens, though, I have a request to make of any would-be shooters out there:

Do us all a favor, grow some balls and just use the gun on yourself. No one else needs to die because you’re too much of a coward to remove yourself from your pathetic life.