Responsibility for Shootings: It's Not Just a Guns Issue

Lest anyone say I'm not fair minded, I'm going to give some credence to the other side of the gun-ownership debate.

The gun-rights advocates are fond of saying, "Guns don't kill people, people do." Well, it's true that before there were guns, people could and did kill other people.

I can't even say that the invention of guns made it easier to kill people at a distance, because bows and arrows and even spears meant you didn't have to be face-to-face with a person to kill him or her. And Homo sapiens has had spears for a long time.

Okay, so if we take the position that people kill people, then this is what logically follows: When, as in the case of many of the killings of multiple people that the U.S. has suffered in the last few years, it seems that the shooter was suffering from mental illness, we have to say that there was a lack of action, a lack of responsibility on the part of those persons around the shooter before he tipped over the edge and killed people.

Parents, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, schoolmates, neighbors, teachers. All these are people who had some opportunity, at least, to observe the developing erratic behavior in the person. And too often, they did nothing. I think it's especially important to point out that parents should urge troubled children to get help. Easier said than done, perhaps. But if the person in question is seriously troubled, parents can ultimately have recourse to their power to have the person committed to a mental institution.

I know that many parents, friends, etc., in retrospect have said, Yes, they saw the signs. They saw the erratic behavior. They saw the progression into irrationality. Yet they did nothing. I don't want to lay a burden of guilt upon any individual. It is more a matter of a collective responsibility on the part of whole communities that was abrogated. People need to be more vigilant and more willing to take action when they know of a person who might become dangerous to himself and to others.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein