Guns don't kill people

The American archetype of today is a tall blonde man shouldering his way through a doorway with an automatic pistol clenched in his doubled fist. This image seen on popular television programs, films and movie publicity posters all over the world shows an American who is impotent without his 9mm weapon in his hand.

The more this image diffuses into the consciousness of the world, the more violence we see, not only from the youth of America whose "right to bear arms" affords them easy access to the tools of death but from the other young people of the world who are too so inured to death and violence through Hollywood anaesthesia that it becomes an option to solutions that no unpolluted person might consider.

Teenage school rampages and the gunning down of persons who lead lives that place them in the public gaze is so commonplace that we are almost immune to the shock of it now. I remember the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. I was too young to understand but shocked all the same when my mother told me about what had happened and the world was shocked too because the rarity of the events made them exceptional.

The more we see of men peering from behind guns, the more it becomes an accepted part of
our field of view. 

Will we ever rise from the barbaric throwing of stones and stabbing with sharp sticks to solve problems and become truly civilized enough to forever leave our brutal ape heritage behind? I often admit that we are nothing more than sophisticated monkeys. Perhaps it's time to become people instead.