Should America work towards becoming a gun-free Country?

[marions ghost]

73. People don't live by statistics

--we've all had the experience of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Risk, by the numbers in the abstract sense, is not the point.

When we subconsciously absorb the incidence of gun violence near and far--via the local papers, internet, and TV --about things like school shootings and drive-by shootings and gun accidents and wanton killings that go on every day in this country, it takes a toll on our perception of our health and safety that you can't erase from memory banks and nervous systems. This situation makes people feel vulnerable, unsupported and un-cared for in the most basic sense. It makes us all slightly crazy and paranoid. It makes us all brutal. Humans are tuned in to threat. We are on alert when we go out in public now. We think about it, try to repress, but we are aware. We know what it feels like to live in far off places where this happens all the time. Because it is happening here.

It is also hurting us economically and politically, but I don't have time for a longer essay on it.

I've lived in Australia. Don't knock it til you try it. It changes everything to know that you are protected and that other innocent people are protected from idiots with guns. You look at other people differently, you are far less suspicious. Gun control makes SUCH a difference in quality of life for everyone. But Australia has a government that invests in the health of its people. We do the exact opposite.

Oh yeah, and I should add fear of going to hospitals and court rooms in that list of Where Not to Go (without worry & caution). Have you ever been in a hospital lockdown? I have. More than once.

This is a tragedy of national proportions. Symptomatic of a divisive society.