It seems like a rather basic concept, but it has been so often overlooked. You could not have committed the kind of atrocities that were committed at Columbine with a knife or with a bow and arrow. The only way that such destruction could have occurred at Columbine and indeed at any of the high schools that have been targeted for these attacks is through the use of guns. Guns in these cases are not the symptoms or the diseases. They are the mechanism by which the diseases and symptoms are most destructively able to manifest themselves.
Guns are everywhere in our society, and cause an incredible amount of death and destruction.
Sixty-six million Americans own some 200 million guns. According to the Economist, every year 2,000 Americans between the ages of 14 and 17 use a gun to kill someone. We ask ourselves why these numbers are so high, but we continue to ignore the plain and simple answer that there are too many guns in our society, and that this proliferation is enabling a generation to slaughter itself. We ignore guns for a number of reasons, but there are two primary causes that are important to look at. The first has been demonstrated numerous times in The Herald already.