Another shooting. Another school campus became a place of terror for our children. My daughter is a teacher and she is in a poor county in a Southern State. Lockdown is a frequent occurrence. My grandson is in college and they had a lockdown because a guy came on campus with a gun. There have been four school shootings since Newton.
We can pray, love, be compassionate, however, we need to do more. We need to teach our children how to live ethically. We need to be good positive role models for a non-violent life. We need to teach our children to forgive, love, and accept people as they are, blessed children of God. We need to put hatred and violence aside.
Will it take armed guards at schools to keep our children safe? I am of mixed feelings about this. My heart screams no but I realize what our teachers and school employees go through every day. It isn’t good. This daily danger may very well influence our best teachers to find other, safer, occupations. I believe we need to discuss the subject and leave the NRA out of our decisions. What is the best way to go?
I invite people to discuss how you feel about this subject. I am not talking about hunters or the person who keeps one gun for safety, but why do people need eighteen guns and 60 rounds of ammo? I don’t understand that. So please, let’s talk about this. It is a vital part of our American agenda.
Britain has strict gun laws and have had only 51 gun related deaths in 2010, compared to 11,078 in the U.S. This is amazing to me and I think it is something to add to the discussion. How did they do it and make it work? So I invite my British readers to give insight from your point of view also. May we be able to end this horrible violence and put our eyes on the Divinity in this life. I am grateful for everyone who responds.
idealisticrebel 
This is a powerful and wonderfully thought-provoking post. I did some math because I have seen those gun figures before and was curious to work in the population of the Country. It wasn’t comforting for USA stats. Basically about 1 in every 28,300 Americans may die in a gun-related death, whereas only 1 in every 1,221,000 in the UK need worry of the same death. Yikes. I agree completely that we must begin with the children and have said the same thing in similar posts. We must role model what acceptance and patience and kindness looks like, by doing it daily ourselves. I feel for your daughter who shouldn’t fear going to work, and your grandson (and my son) just going to college. I too am not sure whether or not to have guards at schools. Maybe? Thank you for this important post, generating conversation about changes that must be made, and how we ourselves can help make a difference. Oh and I adore the Playing For Change Foundation and love that video and song! Here’s to keeping on trying for higher ground!
Namaste. Gina
Thank you for the comments. The culture that has developed here is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind and not a healthy way to live.
The Gandhi quote could save the world if people heeded it.
Reblogged this on Spirit In Action and commented:
Thank you for writing this! I have been thinking a lot about these issues too, and I think the only way we will be able to solve it is to get people to come together more. People have to rebuild the community that was purposefully destroyed in order to create the industrial age.
Because no one would work in a factory for more than a few days if they had enough to eat, a place to sleep etc the industrialists worked out how to splinter families, clans and tribes, how to steal the commons and separate people-turn them into workers and consumers instead of members of integral communities.
There is a process called Circle Justice, it is common to indigenous societies(the Hawaiian version of Ho’o’opono is more widely known I think) but it is based on the idea that we are all part of the circle and any time anyone is broken the circle is broken and must be healed for us all to be ok. That means if someone is sick it is a community issue, if someone is depressed, or if two people are fighting, if someone steals from someone-it’s not just to do with the people obviously involved because we are all part of the circle.
When the community comes together to help each person and each family heal and be whole it creates something more, I think, something we in modern colonized societies have been missing for a really long time.
Even when guns were invented and had been for a long time, you don’t see this mass murder meme in traditional societies. Just like traditional people went to war over land, or hunting rights or to get women or slaves but did not go to war to exterminate and eliminate their opponents from existence-it’s a different mindset, and I think it is one we have to recover before it is too late.
Everyone was indigenous once, every people on Earth were once traditional people before they were colonized-even if for some that before was so many generations ago even the memory is deeply buried.
In Britain it helps having restrictions against guns. Our problem is knives in schools, but at least the harm is less with a knife than with a gun.
I had no idea knives were a problem there. How is your government handling that.
Strict laws involving many years in jail.
Retailers now won’t sell knives to those under 21. I think there may be laws against selling knives to children.
So how do we make the violence end. The shooting and stabbing. The bullying and the judging and hating?
Following the principles of sustainability. All those problems are the result of bad stewardship of children, schools and society.
True and we have no ethics anymore. Culture has become very dog eats dog.
I believe part of the conversation needs to be about gun control. I am not talking about taking people’s guns away….I’m talking about outlawing assault weapons and different types of ammo. Why would any person who is not fighting a war or on the police force need an assault weapon?
I do realize that even if we did get a ban on these types of weapons it does not mean the senseless killings will stop. We are a violent society and unfortunately our children feed on violence in movies, cartoons, video games, comic books, and TV shows and think nothing of it. Children are products of their environment so how do we stop this without changing the environment?
There are so many issues contained in this one big issue. Our world is out of control and bordering on the brink of insanity. I agree with ohneventsya that community is missing. We are no longer tribal people. We no longer look out for our neighbors.Modeling love and compassion to our children is certainly a beginning. Thank you for opening this conversation.
My pleasure and I am glad we are having a conversation to learn more from each other. One of my readers, in Brit tan, guns are illegal and gun related deaths are less than 60 a year but now knife killings are up. So I am so glad to be speaking on this subject. Teachers need to be valued more, kids need to be protected. We need to care about each other and help each other. You are right we need to be what we want our children to become. I have nine grands and a daughter who teaches. I want them all to be safe. So please, lets keep talking.