MORE TOKEN TALK I have a strong feeling that tells me the much publicized "acceptance" of gun safety locks by Smith & Wesson a few years ago was political token talk only. We have not, I fear, been entirely enlightened on how one manufacturer came to be willing to start putting such safety lock gun trigger mechanisms on their guns, while others have remained quiet and non-noncommittal. Some said, at the time, they were being "blackmailed" into doing so.
Politicians, from time to time, become aware of what they call a "public outcry" which demands that "something be done to get guns off our streets and to keep them from falling into the hands of children." The politicians responded to such a cry with - of all things - an idea of putting locks on triggers of weapons which is something like the old sayings of carts before horses. Certainly, there must have been more positive ways of eliminating, at least a portion of the guns which are "on the streets", in the schools and homes and so readily available to even the youngest of children. This seems now to have been a temporary ploy both by the pols and the gun makers, designed to stave this every adverse off a bit longer until the public cooled off a bit from the, at that time, a recent rash of random killings by kids with firearms.
This past week I was in a city where a local gun show as being held. It occupied the largest exhibition hall in the area and every day the parking areas where packed solid with vans, trucks and cars and the vast majority of them bore license plates and ID and advertising signs from afar.
It reminds me, in one sense, of the plight of a small child kept on a pacifier from infancy. It keeps the child quiet for the parents can watch TV, talk endlessly on their ever-present cell phones or go about their normal work - or lack of it - in peace and quietness but efficiency fades fast with fads and fakes and it often the parents who wonder why. To show their devotion,they off to the local "specialist". Overt physical action and therapy seem to come naturally. Normal growth denied by constant use of the pacifier or "Binky" nurtures violent conduct predictably and forestalls a child's natural need to communicate with others without tantrum tactics.. Disdained, he wishes to how toward others through physical acts. He pushes, shoves, tugs, elbows, kicks and takes other such action to express his displeasure with someone or something about him. Again, the parents are quick to note this "misbehavior:" and Retalin tablets, or some other preparation, are quickly brought into play.
It sounds trivial, I know, but this sort of "easy way out" does give rise to frightening possibilities, when we try to answer the next question we must face: where did our drug culture" problems come from ...when did they start?
A.L.M. July 1, 2005 [c506wds]
