An autistic boy shot and killed 28 people, including himself, with a gun.

Well, okay, I think it was a few guns. I’m not sure. The new job has me running around like crazy and I haven’t had time to sit down and read much in the way of reports. A friend said the kid shot/killed his mother sometime around when he stole her guns.

Interestingly enough, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of gun control again. No one is talking about how he was autistic. I’m not saying the problem was caused because he was autistic. But you’d think that would get mentioned more. Idk, for sympathy? Or perhaps we cannot feel sympathy for him, because he attached little children.

Society confuses me sometimes. We make such a fuss sometimes about how criminals are victims of society or something. But now we’re not. Not sure what to make of that. What I do make out is that everyone is majorly milking this for politics or moral high ground (well, except my friend Aubs, she’s sitting it out and I admire her for it.)

I’m not sure I’m as good a person as she is.

I ran into a post that asked this question:

And for me the more poignant question is: do I really want to become someone who has to be trained to kill someone else, as the answer to reducing violence?

The entire post is one of those seeking the moral high ground of non-violence in the face of violence. Which, well, you can guess where I sort of stand in that respect. Peace, in the face of violence, rarely brings about an end to violence.

I mean, which of these two people is less likely to worry about being attacked:

I think the explanation is self evident.

Now, I get it. Lot of people ain’t comfortable with the idea of killing another human being. So they like to pass of the responsibility, even if it is just an illusion, a fantasy, of what might be. “Guns are the problem!” they will say, “let us get rid of the guns!”

Of course, something like this happened in China on the same day, with about the same number of children being attacked. Only the person was armed with a knife, and so all the children lived. So someone has the wonderful idea of using this as a reason why guns are worse, because it is easier and everyone hit with a knife lived.

That doesn’t means that guns are more dangerous than knives. That just means that twenty kids in China got lucky, and twenty kids here didn’t.

Could lives have been saved if others in CT had had guns? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it is as my ancestors believed, and when one is fated to die, it is fated, and hiding in a hole or having a million guns won’t change it. It is no comfort to say those words, but it is a…way of things, maybe. Would things have been different with more gun control? Probably not. His mother was a law abiding citizen who by all means seems to have practiced gun safety.

At least, right up until the moment a mentally challenged/unstable autistic boy picked up a gun and killed her before going out on a killing spree. The gun control laws kept him from getting guns on his own. He stole the ones he used and killed the owner. Was this a failure of gun control laws? Or was it the failure of those around him to realize the danger, to get him the help he needed?

Would more gun control have stopped this situation? Or would he have sought out some other weapons, or guns from another source, so that he could do this? I don’t know why he did what he did, but it came from somewhere inside him.

Not from the barrel of the guns he used.

Would I rather be trained to kill as a way to reduce violence should it occur. Stepping outside of my Heathenism, and looking at it, I have to say…yes. If my options are have the knowledge, the ability, to defend myself, even to a lethal extent, in order to have a chance to save myself or someone else in the face of violence…or to not have that knowledge, that power, then I would chose to have it.

Because this whole issue, really, is about responsibility. We want someone to be responsible for the situation. But we don’t want it to be us. We don’t want it to be those that died, unable or unwilling to handle the violence they faced. We don’t even want it to be the killer, since he was mentally handicapped. We would blame his mother, no doubt (and I think some snidely do, that speak of wanting to be trained as a better parent), were it not the fact that she too fell at his hand.

So we blame a machine of metal and chemicals. We say it is dangerous, that it needs to be controlled, kept away from people. We place responsibility on something that has no choice, no will, no discretion. Because that is easier. Easier than to say “I am a coward.” “I am afraid.” “I don’t want to die.” “I should have stepped up.”

“I don’t want to kill, even if it means saving someone else, because my moral standards and need for a clean conscience is worth more than someone else’s life.”

My way, my religion, maybe for me, that’s the difference. There is no salvation. There is no sin.

There is no clean hands.

If you have the power to do something, you often have the responsibility to do it, even if it’s dirty and horrible, if it means that your family is better for it. You learn to kill, so that they might live. Even if you spend the rest of your life suffering nightmares for it, you stand proud because you did the dirty work so that life, joy, happiness, were preserved for others.

Would I have made a difference if I’d been there. I don’t know. Would my have religion changed anything. Maybe not. But I’m not going to sit on some high ground and talk about how violence is bad, how we need to control the things that make violence easier.

No, if I stand on a moral high ground, it is to look at those that do and say “thou art a coward.”

Because it is those who talk about the need for control that are to scared to take the control needed over their own lives. They want someone else to do it for them. They want the world to be safe and comfortable and without the fear of darkness, violence, and pain. They would rather gather it all up, lock such things in a box, give a few people the keys, and say “let us live in a world of light, while you hide the darkness from us.”

This, is cowardice.

To use the deaths of children to further this cowardice…is beyond shameful in my eyes.

Every one of us could have done something to prevent this tragedy, and it wasn’t vote for more gun control.

It was to be more aware.

To look to our friends and neighbors, and even strangers, not with suspicion that should they get a weapon, they will kill us all. Certainly, we should be ready for such things, because that is the way of the world, and that will never change regardless of what weapons are legal and what are not. But to look at each other with compassion, while being ready to be violent. Had more people looked to this young man an given him the aid he doubtlessly needed, this could have been prevented.

Had more people looked to this man and been capable of violence, they might have been able to stop him before it went to far.

The Norn weave the threads of Wyrd, the fates of all things. But we, with our deeds, help with the weaving. By blaming others, we weave. By taking responsibility, we weave.

Controlling weapons wouldn’t have stopped this situation. Being controlled wouldn’t have stopped this from happening. Only by being individually responsible can we hinder the processes that led to this situation. The power to do good or ill is within us all, but blaming other things for when stuff goes wrong isn’t the way to fix, or prevent, it from happening again.

We as a society have stopped connecting with each other. We live in virtual worlds, we don’t say high when we pass each other in the streets, or know our neighbors. If we speak to people, it is often to fight, to be cruel, to mock, and deride. To call them monsters, or ignorant, or stupid. To treat them like crap because they don’t act, or think, or believe as we do.

We have become an inhospitable people. And then we wonder why monsters of our own creation rise up from the shadows and strike. We shun violence in physical forms, and call it evil, but we commit even greater violence in physiological forms. We isolate, abuse, and infuriate, and then scream for greater controls when someone snaps. Then we use pretty words to talk about how the world should be, how it should be better, kinder, etc.

But we don’t change.