In 1996, a Japanese exchange student was gunned down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He mistakenly knocked on the wrong door thinking it was the house where he came to attend a Halloween party. For reasons unknown, the lady of the house screamed at her husband, "Honey! Get the gun." The guy came out with his weapon. Obviously, the conversation with the smiling Japanese kid didn't go well due to language barrier or other reasons. Eventually, the home owner shot and killed the kid!
This incident had an impact on me!. I was a foreign student in the US at that time. It could have been me - I thought! He died thousands of miles away from home, and for what - a lady with racially biased attitude, or a man with an itchy trigger finger? We will probably never know the answers to these questions.
But one thing I know - the gun was the ultimate driving force in the death of Yoshihiro. Avid gun lovers do not have to tell me that guns do not pull their own triggers - any idiot knows that! See, it is not only criminals that use guns to kill. Ordinary people can accidentally or mistakenly or in a feat of anger use a gun to take a life. Without a gun around, a feast fight probably would have ended many of those incidences involving fatal shootings. And do not tell me that a killer could have used a knife to kill! Sure! But a gun makes it a whole lot easier to kill and to kill from a safe distance.
We can safely surmise that the lady of the house would not have asked her husband to get the gun hadn't there been a gun in the house. The guy would have simply stayed home and called the police, and the matter would have ended in a funny note. But that didn't happen - a gun was around! So the man of the house felt powerful to stand against the so-called perpetrator - the gun gave him the power, the power to take a human life from a safe distance! Whatever made him pull the trigger is inconsequential!
I know - gun control is a sensitive issue. But there has to be some controls somewhere so that kids can go to schools without fear of never coming back home! Something has to be done so someone cannot shoot me just because he thinks I am a criminal. All sides really need to sit down and come up with a way to curb gun related killings. Prejudicial statements such as "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" or "Guns are only used for killings" will not suffice anymore.
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To all the little ones we lost in Connecticut - my heart is mourning for you! I see your smiling portraits and want to hug you so badly! You are with the Creator and in a better place than this filthy world!
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