Society and Culture
The Shooter Alone is to Blame for Santa Barbara Slayings
Hey y’all!
I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! For me it is always a low-key weekend that usually ends up in quality time with my family, celebrating the holiday honoring the men and women who have died serving in the armed forces protecting our freedom. This weekend also calls for a celebration of my birthday — my actual birthday is today.
Monday was like every other Memorial Day where a small group of my family members get together to have some sort of meal and talk about anything and everything. This time, no surprise, the subject matter of the young man who murdered six people and injured 13 before killing himself near Santa Barbara over the weekend was brought up. A tragedy that is hard to understand but something that has become increasingly normal in our society.
It’s no secret that I have conservative views, as do most of my family members. I was raised with guns around the house, unavoidable when your father is in the military and a gun enthusiast from the South. I was taught early on in life what guns can do, how to handle them but also how to respect them. Shooting a rifle in the backwoods of Mississippi was a summer pastime with my brother under the supervision of our father. I am not a member of the NRA but I certainly support the organization.
As my family and I sat down for lunch, my aunt brought up this news and the press conference where the father of one of the victims, Christopher Martinez, age 20, had made a statement blaming not only politicians but also the NRA for his son’s death.
I cannot imagine the pain that a parent goes through when losing a child to such a heinous act and I understand that with grief comes anger and the need to blame someone for the loss of his child. I have lost friends in the past to guns, either self-inflicted or at the hand of someone else, but never have I once needed to blame anyone except the person who pulled that trigger.
The NRA promotes safety, responsibility, respect, and education toward guns. The NRA did not put that gun into the hands of this obviously disturbed man. Not to mention that in later reports police have discovered that three people were stabbed to death by the same person. Who do we blame then? Victorinox Swiss Army? Spyderco Knives? How about Crate & Barrel for selling cutlery? A knife can be just as deadly as a gun. It is not the method being used but rather the person behind that tool that we should blame.
The scariest part of this whole tragedy is that in some way it could have been avoided. The shooter’s father even contacted police a month ago due to the disturbing YouTube videos his son was posting. Let’s take a step back and think about why the police were unable to do anything about it before all of this occurred. Hindsight is always 20/20 and we can always play the “what if” game, but there were warning signs and nothing was done about them. This is not the fault of the NRA or anyone who supports the Second Amendment. This is the fault of a disturbed young man who felt that he was dealt a bad hand in life and blamed everyone but himself.
With that said, we should all take a minute to pay our respects to those who lost their lives in this tragic event. They are the ones who deserve the attention from the media — not the soulless creature who took them from this earth.
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Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.
Featured image courtesy of [Ted Eytan via Flickr]
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