CONTROL

It seems to me that extremist views are dominating our essential dialogue in America. For example, in the Uvalde, Texas mas slaughter, over 400 men with guns failed to stop the carnage. So yells about gun control reverberate.

Then in Indiana, one “good Samaritan” with a gun stopped an episode before a more extensive e mass killing might have occurred occurred. (Yes, one is too many). Extremists will yell, “Arm everyone.”

 Truth is, reactions to mass murders aren’t any more predicable than, it sometimes seems, reactions to minor criminal offenses. Events occur. History marches past without having consulted our opinion, and we beat on, “boats against the current.”

Consider:

Had Israel B. Richards not been mortally wounded at Antietam while leading his division in a charge on the sunken road, could the Civil War have ended on September 17, 1862? Some say yes. Some say no. 

Had Gavrilo Princip lost his way on June 28, 1914 and not found the Archduke and his wife, could the world have avoided World War I? Some say yes. Some say no.

If I strap on a pistol and happen to be at the next mass shooting, will I (and I have been trained on weaponry from the semi-automatic 45-caliber pistol to the M-60 machine gun to the M-79 grenade launcher) stop the killing and emerge a hero? I can’t imagine anyone saying, “Yes.”

If I lead a life suggestive of the premise that disagreements are best settled by thoughtful dialectics and compassionate dialogue, might the world emerge a bit more stable. I think so.

Maybe it's not guns that need controlling but our national psyche.