Shots Fired, Patrons Panic at San Antonio Theater

[primavera]

6. It's not a one or the other proposition

No one - repeat, NO ONE - here is saying that our mental health system does not also need reforming. What people are saying is that a population with so many members predisposed towards violence cannot afford to be allowed unfettered access to weapons of mass destruction. You don't give a toddler a hand grenade to play with as a toy. You don't give a drunk a Molotov cocktail. You don't give an arsonist a flamethrower. These are, one and all, very, very bad decisions. It doesn't matter that the grenade can be harmless in the hands of a skilled, trained professional. The point is, they are NOT safe in the hands of someone who is not an emotionally stable adult, trained in its proper usage. And therein lies the problem: the gun community insists that gun ownership is a right belonging to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether that person possesses the requisite mental stability and knowledge necessary to ensure their safe employment. Until ours is a society in which the underlying conditions that promote violence are under control, we are, in essence, infants who cannot be trusted to play with grenades. So, of course, we need to work on our mental health system, of course we need to work on poverty and income inequality, of course we need to work on racism and sexism and all forms of prejudice and discrimination. In the meantime, though, we have got to take the grenades away from the toddlers.