Wants vs. Needs
I grew up in a gun culture. I bought my own BB gun when I was 9. We lived out in the country and I spent lots of time shooting at things. One of my most memorable birthdays was my 12th! My dad took me to the local pawn shop and bought me a 20-gauge shot gun! Some of my best memories of adolescence were going hunting with my dad.
As an adult, I bought a 30-06 Winchester hunting rifle and made my own ammunition. Shooting is fun! I get it! Pulling the trigger on a machine gun is quite a kick! (Pun intended!) I don’t want to deprive anyone of that experience … however ….
I have yet to have anyone give me a rational explanation as to why they need to own a weapon that can shoot forty to sixty rounds a minute … or more! Law-enforcement and military … that’s a different story, but I’m talking about regular law-abiding citizens.
I do know friends and family members who WANT to own weapons like this … and here’s the rub: When the “wants” of a small number of people come in conflict with the needs of the larger society, then it seems to me that we need to deny our wants for the greater good.
CBS reported that six weeks into this year, there have already been eighteen school shootings in this country. We are the ONLY COUNTRY in the world dealing with this epidemic of carnage to our children.
It seems that we would be well served to look at what other countries are doing, and learn something. They’ve figured out something that we haven’t … how to keep our children safe when they go to school!
It is easy to point the finger and place blame … it is easy to offer platitudes like “Guns don’t kill; people kill.” I guarantee that if dozens of our school children had died this year from an infectious disease, we would be pouring massive amounts of money into research … but when it is a white guy with a semi-automatic rifle killing our children, we shake our heads and wonder what part of the system failed… and offer to pray for the families.
I want my grandchildren to feel safe when they go to school … I don’t want them leaving home in the morning, wondering if what has happened to so many other schools might happen in theirs … I don’t want anybody’s children to be afraid to go to school, for fear of being shot!
One of the things that has changed drastically in my lifetime is the huge increase in the number of guns and their destructive power. Why is it that we seem so unwilling to even look at what other countries are doing differently? My hunch is that deep down, we have a fear that, when we do look, we will realize that we will need give up some of what we want for the greater good of what our children, what our society needs. More people with more guns have not made our country safer … they have made our schools deadlier.
My invitation is for each of us to live from our Inner Magnificence … to honor the magnificence of our children … and to start thinking – not what do I want – but what do our children need … to stop pointing fingers at who and what is to blame and to start thinking, “What can I do to make this world a better place for our children?”
The extent we do is the extent to which we will be able to say, “I feel good about being me!”
