How Could Gun Control Lower Gun Violence?

 

This has been a basic question where conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and advocates against gun control advocates have wrestled and neither side has ever found the magic, pardon our word usage, silver bullet to end the violence resulting from criminal firearm usage. Every time there is a dramatic milestone reached as was recently in Chicago where they reached five-hundredth homicide of the year or a dramatic firearms related death toll resulting from firearms usage such as the Orlando club shooting or the string of homicides in San Bernardino for the anti-gun forces to rush to blame the guns even if the real culprit was terrorism as in Orlando and San Bernardino. There is the demand for long waiting periods, deeper background checks, limits on firearm purchases per person per year or any of a number from a plethora of inventive laws which would presumably end criminal purchases of firearms at gun shows, gun stores, private sales or other legal forms of firearms purchases. This begs a simple question, how many criminals are purchasing their firearms legally. Yes, there have been some tragic cases where a person legally purchased the firearms they use all too often in violent mass shootings such as too many school shootings or mass public shootings such as in movie theaters or nightclubs or as vengeance workplace violence or even terrorism. These tragic cases often are the first criminal act of the shooters and they went through all of the existing checks and even if further checks and wait periods were enacted they would have had little if any effect beyond waiting periods causing them to plan longer and delay their shooting sprees but not preventing them. Still, over ninety percent of shootings are committed by people with criminal records who already would be unable to walk into a gun show or gun store and purchase a firearm legally and most of the firearms used in these crimes are often stolen weapons which were bought illegally from nonstandard sources which operate beyond the law. The idea that making legal firearm purchases more time consuming, burdensome and legally tangled with more and more layers of paperwork and legal hurdles does nothing to prevent criminal firearm purchases and the politicians know this and the crime data records prove this. So why if these facts are well known and understood do the politicians continue to call for restrictions on firearm purchases and even have many calling now for the repeal of the Second Amendment and the complete ban of legal firearm ownership despite all evidence pointing to this leading to increased firearm use by criminal elements as they then are assured they will be the only people armed in any criminal incident.

 

There are at least two easily understandable reasons for the politicians calling for more restrictive laws. The most obvious is their receiving funds for making such demands coming from the anti-gun lobbies who will love such legislation and will spend liberally supporting political campaigns for those supportive candidates. Another reason is the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) who also favor more firearm laws as each law, regulation and licensing required by law increases the numbers of government employees required to process and handle the additional forms, research, background checks, license issuing or renewal and any other directives and requirements such legislation demands. These are two of the most active groups a candidate can get behind them in order to finance their campaign. The other reason which looms over the gun debate even more than campaign finances is the general lack of real information and education of the public, especially in most major metropolitan jurisdictions. This is largely due to the complete lack of intimate knowledge, education, training or even the slightest use of a firearm by the majority of the voting public. With a smaller and smaller percentage of the population having served in the military, especially suburban residents, and even less training in firearms in such organization as the Boy Scouts and other youth groups and there no longer having any firearms training in summer camps, the public is generally unfamiliar with firearms and many even developing a symptom bordering on maniacal fear of firearms to the point of hyperventilating at the sight of a gun other than on the belt of a uniformed police officer. Additionally, the use of firearms in entertainment venues such as movies displaying firearms in ways which are wildly inaccurate such as handguns or rifles firing well over one-hundred rounds without ceasing fire for reloading even firing six-shot revolvers twenty or thirty times before changing to another weapon or reloading, has fueled misconceptions of the lethality and practical use of firearms which if applied to swords would have the sword being capable of killing merely by removing it from its scabbard. Another misconception furthered by the entertainment industry is the range at which weapons, particularly handguns, are lethal. With shots being taken with a 9mm or a 45cal semi-automatic handgun at well over a quarter mile, 440 yards or four and a half football fields (pitch) which is a highly dubious range even for a really good marksman, but that is the short end of impossible shots as many a movie aficionado can attest. I have actually seen neighbors shrink away when friends and I would return from the outdoor public range and transport normal handguns and a few hunting rifles from the trunk of the vehicle into the house for cleaning and once had an extremely paranoid neighbor call the police claiming that terrorists were meeting in my place with dozens of guns and other weapons. The police were not all that amused but as two of my friends had Federal Firearms Licenses and one had a Class III Weapons Permit and worked at a gun store, they were forced to allow us to retain our weapons. The neighbor was frantic that we were not taken away in chains and the arsenal confiscated. Ah, reliving the good old days of my misspent youth.

 

Dianna Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers

 

The truth is that should the anti-gun and anti-weapons fanatics get their way, we will be eating steaks with butter knives if the vegans allow us to continue to eat slabs of cows. This claim is made as there have been calls in the United Kingdom, or at least in London and other cities of the Isles to make knives beyond six inches illegal which would make a number of carving knives and my bread knife illegal and some steak knives I have seen such as the ones at a restaurant in the United States and likely elsewhere called Outback. By our figuring, if these fanatics against weapons of all venues got their way, we would no longer have forks and instead be using sporks with our butter knives. The people who wish to make life so guarded that even the roads are made soft enough that falling will not scrape an elbow or a knee really have lost all sense of excitement and see danger not as a challenge to be overcome but a peril which must be eradicated so even the most inept cannot harm themselves no matter how recklessly they address life’s challenges. Where if they desire to round every corner in their homes and pad every piece of furniture while only using safe utensils such as butter knives and sporks and eat only the most bland fruits and vegetables rushing to the doctor’s office at the first sneeze or cough, let them live such lives but do not force your phobias on the remainder of us who wish to live lives dangerously using real forks and steak knives just to eat an apple because we love the thrill of the hunt. Truth be told, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution was argued in the Federalist Papers as being the last line of defense against and to prevent Government Overreach and assure the Constitutional limits on Government power was in the hands of the people.

 

Safe Knife and Spork of the Future

 

These people who claim that the gun is evil are carrying paranoia to an extreme beyond reason. I am willing to bet any of these people that a fully loaded handgun of any caliber could be placed on my kitchen table and sit there in the open for a full year and nobody I know would pick it up or fear it and it is highly unlikely, to the point of absurdness, that it would ever injure, let alone murder, anybody during that year or any number of additional years. I am willing to bet that they could not produce one person who robbed a convenience store who was claiming the firearm walked up to them, grabbed them by the hand and dragged them to the convenience store forcing them to rob it. Yet these same people would claim it was the gun if that same person had shot the clerk and simply wounded him requiring three stitches and a band aid. The tired old phrase that it is the person who commits the crime and not the firearm is true but there are those who insist on believing otherwise. They will claim that had the criminal not had the gun they would not have committed the crime. Somehow we believe it is more likely that the criminal would easily be able to buy a gun from, wait for it, another criminal if they were without a gun and believed one was needed to commit their crime. They would not go to Joe’s Gun Emporium or the county fair gun pavilion or any other legal means, they would go to a well-known criminal world individual and purchase a gun and for a few dollars more a gun without any serial number as it had been removed. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the criminal world will sell you guns made to order for the right price. It probably comes as a shock to the gun control supporters that there exist individuals who actually sell guns illegally and if they desire making it more difficult for criminal elements to use firearms, then the people they need to prevent from selling guns are the criminal elements and not the local gun store. Are there those gun store people who might sell guns under the table? Probably, but they are a rare minority and eventually they will be caught which every gun owner will be glad and hopes such a person is put away for a very long time. Gun owners are responsible citizens and are just as abhorred at criminal gun use as the next person, even the anti-gun lobbyist. Nothing would make gun owners happier than for every gun to be legally owned and never used for a criminal purpose and for not another person to die from gun violence. As far as gun accidental deaths, when you can figure out how to end the fifty-thousand plus vehicle deaths each year on the American highways and streets, then we can worry about the few hundred accidental gun deaths. It is nice to keep things in perspective and every gun death is a tragedy as is every premature death. But please let us remain sane and address the more serious causes of accidental deaths such as swimming pools and bathtubs, honestly folks.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Brexit Passes and Cameron Plans to Resign and Jo Cox Memorialized

 

All of the votes have been counted and it is official as 52% voted yes to Brexit and 48% voted to remain in the European Union (E. U.). Along with the Brexit yes vote comes news that Prime Minister Cameron will resign, as he stated, “But the British people made a very clear decision to take a different path and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction. I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months. But I do not think it would be right for me to try and be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.” Well, he said the if vote went against his preference that he would pass the torch, and the good news is we will have another national vote for new leaders to give us a break from the Hillary and Donald catastrophe across the pond. Below is his entire talk from in front of 10 Downing Street to the media. He stated that he would like to see new leadership by October when the Conservative Party is holding their national conference. I can only assume he expects his Conservative Party to continue to lead the nation such that the new Prime Minister will also lead the party; and if they fail, then he can step forward to lead the nation in repealing the Brexit as I doubt he would change his stated view on E. U. membership.

 

 

Now we will see the rush for the door. Already France and the Netherlands have had public pressure for their own exit vote on their E. U. As we had stated earlier, with Brexit passing, and not by what should be considered anything but a fairly definitive vote, all right, landslide it wasn’t; but any politician would be very happy to have a 4% margin of victory which the media in any election would report that the people had made their decision known as if it was a really definitive vote. One has to further note that initially the “remain” vote was comfortably leading after the early vote count from London and other metropolitan cities where the population is younger and considered more erudite, but the rest of the country was definitively of a different mind. This was sort of reminiscent of the Dewey Defeats Truman headline which proved erroneous as the rural votes came in and Truman won the day. The vote was expected to be close with the older population favoring leaving while the youth desired to remain in the E. U.; so once again it fell to that favorite item of pollsters, the ever unpredictable middle. This time the middle was not the middle between conservatives and liberals but the middle aged people, those who may not have lived or only their childhood witnessed Britain before the E. U. but were raised by people who lived through both before E. U. membership and after joining E. U. From appearances this middle aged voting public really did not want to remain in the E. U. or they really wanted to remove Cameron, whichever, the vote is done and the British are free of the Brussels Bureaucracy and their dictatorial ultimatums.

 

Dewey Defeats Truman

 

It will be interesting to see which nations now have similar demands for being allowed to see whether their people desires remaining in the E. U. or demanding their government be empowered and freed from the restrictions and economic directives from Brussels. As noted, France and the Netherlands may already be heading for a vote and if there has been sufficient public outcry, we can expect they too will vote favorably for leaving the E. U. and in many ways the E. U. has brought this upon themselves with their slow but steady suffocation of individual sovereignty. The E. U. was supposedly a mostly economic and trade union and not supposed to replace the individual government’s dominion. But as time went the E. U. grew and assumed more and more power taking these decisions from the individual governments and supplanting them with the dictations and ultimatums from Brussels. They took control over immigration erasing borders between the separate nations. Further they began taking from the wealthier nations and giving to those faltering nations which are where the idea of central planning began to fail. There we are again with central planning being the difficulty, the causational problem. This had a dual effect which simply furthered the problems. The wealthier nations were put out for being made to cover these other nations which they regarded as slacker nations where the people did not have the same work ethic of say Germany or Britain and at the other end these faltering nations were being dictated on decisions which they refused to obey which caused further friction. Both the sides found the demands placed upon them by an unelected set of faceless bureaucrats to be onerous and distasteful. The E. U. will press the predictions that leaving their overseeing guidance as resulting in confusion, trade wars, and every problem conceivable as should the E. U. be disbanded these bureaucrats and the governing central planners will all be out of a job and with no prospects for future employment. What will these poor central planners do without the power of the E. U. charter, a document they have stretch beyond all recognition, to empower them and grant them powers, well, some of the powers they wield as some might be beyond the original intents the member nations originally agreed upon. Overreach can really be a downer that can lead to resentment followed by people actually doing something about being so dictated to.

 

Perhaps the lesson here is that when the representatives that the people elect are slowly but ever so steadily disempowered by an unelected group of central planners who have been overreaching and taking more and more power to themselves, well, you eventually get blowback. The decision to also allow thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and beyond into the E. U. may have been the final straw. Then there were the terror attacks which many blamed on the E. U. and their immigration policies. This was possibly brought to the fore last week with the horrible event where a Labor Party Minister of Parliament, Jo Cox, was murdered by a reportedly mentally unstable fanatic who was anti-refugee and believed to have been a white supremacist. We can only hope he gets treatment and remains incarcerated in a mental health institution or prison for the mentally unstable such that he never again has the opportunity to harm anyone. This crime did bring an end to the discussion a full week before the vote and was thought would suppress the voters favoring Brexit. If that was true then the Brexit was even more favored than the vote may have indicated though it is more likely that this crime had little if any effect.

 

Late Minister Jo Cox
Refugee Advocate
Killed by Anti-Refugee Fanatic

 

This crime also deserves some investigation. Jo Cox was both shot and stabbed as was a 77-year-old man, who intervened to help Cox and sustained a serious injury to his abdomen and remains in stable condition in the hospital. Britain had gun laws which are amongst the strictest in the world and yet this unstable individual somehow came to possess and use a firearm in this criminal act of murder. This goes a long way in proving that if a person is determined to murder, there are no laws which will prevent them from attaining a firearm with which to commit their heinous crimes. As long as there are firearms, and that means as long as nations have armies, then people will find a way of attaining weapons. We don’t want to get into a gun control vs. gun rights argument beyond the understanding that anyone willing to commit a violent criminal act will never be deterred by laws about weapon possession or any other law as they are already committed to violating far more serious laws than possession laws or crossing the street outside a crosswalk or stalking or anything else on the books, period.

 

As far as we have been capable of determining, Jo Cox was a refugee advocate and had been quite vocal about the responsibility of the wealthier and peaceful nations of Europe to offer open doors and open arms to the refugees from the war torn areas of the Middle East and Africa. The man who murdered her in cold blood was an adamant and vehement opponent to immigration of those people he saw as from an inferior society and likely incapable of acting and interacting with Europeans and would be a disaster waiting to happen. He had a history of prescribing to white supremacist and apartheid organizations as well as other, according to police and media reports were “right-wing” and “extremist” groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning United States ‘human rights and minority rights’ organization, has published what it says are documents showing that the suspected murderer, Mr. Mair, had a history of purchasing material from the National Alliance white supremacist organization based in the United States. They released copies of receipts and a 2013 subscription to the National Alliance’s publication, National Vanguard, as well as receipts from 1999 showing purchases for neo-Nazi book “Ich Kampfe,” the “Improvised Munitions Handbook” and other books and traced his activities back to his having also subscribed to a pro-apartheid group’s magazine in the 1980s. Thank you Southern Poverty Law Center for your timely research into this person’s history.

 

This person, Mr. Mair, had definite problems and if law enforcement or public health had known of his problems, it raises questions as to why he was still permitted to be outside of observation and managed care. There was a movement back in the late 1960s and through the 1970s and continuing to this day which operates under the misconception that people with mental difficulties benefit from living in the real world even if this means their missing taking necessary medications. The numbers of homeless living on the streets rose precipitously coinciding with the decisions that mental institutions were harming the people they cared for and that the monies wasted on such institution could be better used in outpatient services for these people. There were studies done subsequently which varied and conflicted with some reporting that many of the former institutionalized individuals were not receiving their medications and has missed appointments with counselors and had been removed from rolls and left on the street without getting the medical attentions they had received previous to being placed out in the world without any real assistance in adjusting. Others reported how many had obviously found a better life as living in the real world had filled them with and through interactions such that they were no longer in need of medication or counseling. One side of these results has to be horrifically missing the mark as they are opposites though their percentages are remarkably similar. So we have to believe that either there are a number of formerly institutionalized individuals who remarkably recovered or that an equal number of these people have fallen through the cracks and nobody really cares. How many of these people will end up on the wrong side of the law or are being abused by others also on the streets as many are likely easy marks. Either way, if there are even half of these people not receiving the medication and help they need, that is a calamity of tragic proportions. One of the victims of this experiment is now Minister of the British Parliament Jo Cox, and that too is a tragic price that British society has paid.

 

Our final note on Brexit, this is just the beginning and this story is about to take on a whole new and serious proportion as the rest of Europeans force their governments to allow them the same choice and we may soon have a free and independent new Europe free of the dictatorship in Brussels. This might be the start of a healthier Europe when each nation will determine their own trade and future and economically they will now be able to have a free and independent currency as each return to their own currency which then adjusts with their economic strength and needs. The ones who would benefit most from being independent from the E. U. would be Greece, Spain and other areas which have found the Euro to be inhibitive of their economic needs. Time will tell and we can hope that the people will get the freedom to decide for themselves and each nation does what is the best for their economies and people.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Political War in Aftermath of Pulse Nightclub, Orlando

 

The horrors and the toll in human life and limb makes anyone come to definitive conclusions on how to insure that such horrors never again darken our morning news. Reading the reactions in the news and online and each individual was adamant in their solution not only being the obvious solution but also inarguably the only possible conclusion any rational person could reach. What’s the problem then BTC? The main problem is people had fallen into two camps as distinctive as the day is long and nobody remarkably suggested what we see as a third solution just as possible of solving the problem as the others. There was one camp in which we find President Obama and Candidate Hillary Clinton. They agree that the real problem is the private ownership of guns and that if nobody had access to firearms then such crimes would never happen. The other camp which we find candidate Donald Trump where they claim the problem is radicalized Muslims. The former camp would accuse the second camp of Islamophobia. The second camp called the first on being unrealistic and ignoring a little impediment called the Second Amendment. What both sides missed was an easier solution to the problem, make reporting such news illegal. I know, we would be ignoring Amendment I, but since rights and the code of laws did not constrain the other two groups, why not throw in an easier if not more legal approach. Of course there would be another consequence of a law allowing only positive news stories; it would destroy news reporting until somebody discovered the work-around.

 

News reports could always take a positive slant on negative news such as we can all celebrate we were not crossing the street when two cars collided flying out of control and destroying a mailbox, isn’t it just wonderful there were no pedestrians who found themselves in the location in question. OK, sure we need some polish, but with time there would be formulae which could be implemented for virtually any evil being reported with a positive slant and avoiding any mention of the negatives. They could even point out how it was a fortunate circumstance that somebody called and an ambulance responded to transport the people for necessary treatment once again proving the great healthcare provided in the country. Well, maybe we should just leave the media free and not challenge Amendment I. As for the other two finger pointing claiming that either Islamists or firearms are to blame? Perhaps we should take them each in turn.

 

The claim that firearms were the problem and that, if only people were not permitted to own firearms, and all guns were removed from the world, then shootings like the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando would become impossible. Of course there is no mention that the removal of all firearms from the world is impossible as long as nations insist on keeping their militaries armed with, you guessed it, firearms. Making matters even worse, militaries use real fully automatic fire weapons as well as explosives and rocket firing weapons which some are capable or taking out entire rooms and small buildings as well as armored vehicles and downing aircraft, all a whole lot more destructive than anything generally out in the public currently. As long as there are weapons anywhere, there will be weapons everywhere, just the more illegal they are made the more sinister the people who will deal in them and the far higher the prices of firearms for which they will be sold. Further, as long as only military weaponry will be manufactured, the firearms which do make their way into the hands of the most determined of criminals will have far more destructive capabilities and possibly by leagues is likely as only slightly. Further, a determined killer or a mentally unbalanced one would still be capable of committing a crime of similar or potentially more devastating result in a similar scenario. Since it appeared that escape was not easily available for the victims in the club, a person armed with a sword of the quality and ability of those used in warfare since time immemorial, the resulting slaughter may have been even greater and the injuries far more horrific and the victims still just as incapable of defending themselves. This would be even more true had the perpetrator in such scenario would have armed themselves with leather armor, studded and spiked, chain linked helm and other items making them just as dangerous as any attacker in a closed room (see below). The main difference is a firearm is a ranged weapon but one could arm themselves with ranged weapons with a small version equally deadly crossbow which fires four inch darts. There are no limits to how deadly and devious to weapons beyond that of imagination, and human imagination has proved to be virtually limitless or at least not bound by laws of man.

 

Sword Alternative to Firearms Real and Imagined

 

So restricting weaponry would be just as futile as it would impossible; so what about the other side, limiting those believed to have dangerous beliefs or practices? This too has been tried in the past when science was young and religion was king. Their attempts to limit science proved only temporary and ineffectual as well. Discoveries came and science spread almost as far and as fast as the imagination could perceive new ideas and experiments to prove or disprove each postulation. It mattered little whether it proved or disproved as long as it produced answers which would simply generate more questions. There was no locking the box which is the human mind and it eventually proves preposterous to even try. The King of Spain sent an Armada to bring Protestant England back under the control of Rome and approved Christianity. At that time there was only the Church of Rome and the Church of England and the second was the young upstart. So initially religion attempted in Europe to regulate religion within defined boundaries and failed. Some claim that the spread of Protestantism indirectly led to the scientific revolution which spawned from the Protestant Reformation to the Reawakening, the Renaissance, then followed political revolution, industrial revolution, and then the greatest invention of mankind, for the first time since the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai the world gave people time to themselves, the weekend and private time. Jewish Law, Torah had conceived of the necessity for human beings to have time where work was put aside for a day and the Sabbath was observed where people could pursue private endeavors and learn which originally meant the study of Torah. Even the time spent in study of Torah allowed for time with family and relaxation from the daily burdens of toil and labor which even applied to the servant and the slave, which were more like one’s employees. The salary was clothing, housing, food and protection from facing the world alone with nothing and if one worked for a successful person, they might even have a small salary on top of everything else; otherwise, one would need to request their employer if they desired something beyond the basics.

 

That piece of history should serve to prove that the desires of the mind and the soul cannot be strapped and tied down by laws, edicts or any oppressive acts from an establishment or even the counterculture. The mind, the individual, the soul if you will, cannot be prevented from going wherever it is destined by the chain of experiences, influences and, yes, often the temptations of the forbidden. If “radical Islam” as a belief system were to be regarded as something forbidden, that would simply serve to make it all the more enticing and often to the most vulnerable and Islamic State gives a perfect example of the result of attempting such a ban. That is the problem with Donald Trump’s idea to ban Muslims for a period from entering the United States as that would just make those who did find their way over the border placed with such difficulties that radicalization would be made far easier as the concept that they were being beaten down and forced into the shadows. The best path has been proven time and again throughout history though more often societies have gone from the best to the worst method of facing differences in cultures. The tried and proven method is limited accommodation with reward for incorporation of the existing societal model while allowing for variance as long as it remains within legal standards. Acceptance goes a long way towards modifying behavior towards cooperation rather than conflict. That is not to say that all behavior is to me accommodated as there are, by necessity, limitations to acceptable behavior. An example would be the Aztecs could be permitted to dress as they wish but their practice of cutting out the beating heart as part of an annual ceremony would need to be prevented from the start. Human sacrifice is not an acceptable form of worship and some other means would have to be found. The same would be for animal ritual sacrifice. Sacrifice of an animal for a celebratory feast would also need to be regulated in some manner such that the animal does not suffer. Simply placing the live animal in a cage and rotating it over the fire would be unacceptable as would many cruel means for killing the animal, but if an accepted and humane death be performed and then the animal roasted and consumed, it might be extreme to many but it is not that far removed from taking a side of beef and roasting it on a spit at a huge celebratory feast where the meat is to be consumed. Granted, the majority would prefer smaller servings but how many have been to an all you can eat buffet where roast beef is carves off the bone for those who desire roast beef over say meatloaf.

 

Donald Trump’s seeming well timed but probably ill-advised suggestion that all Middle East immigration be ceased for a period of six months, where it could be done, would prove ineffectual as anybody wishing to reach the United States from the Middle East need only reach Turkey with whom there exist laws allowing for their immigration to the United States and even if not Turkey, the news informs us how easily any Middle East refugee can reach most of Europe and from there the United States again would be legal and relatively easy. There is no way to prevent a determined person from reaching the shores of the United States legally and most definitely illegally. Donald Trump’s claim that by making this ban it would prevent any terrorists from the Middle East from reaching America is utterly false as the terrorists are exactly those who would have the funds to defeat any regulation one could enact as their “blanket fix” for the problem. The solution is a full background check and with records as lax as they are and the turmoil making most people all but without any identifiable or especially documented history and once again it is the terrorist who would most likely be capable of meeting even those requirements. There is no absolute means of preventing terrorists from gaining entry to any nation as has been proven by the recent attack in Tel Aviv, as Israel has likely the most effective screening and tracking for terrorist and terror likely individuals; but still there are attacks and in great numbers as it is impossible to prevent those attacks committed by what are termed “lone wolves” as they have no traceable history of interaction with terror institutions or even other terrorists.

 

The best way to protect and prevent such horrific criminal carnage comes down to a select few things. Have a society which commits to equality, extends egalitarianism in all things, and provides opportunity. Further the people themselves need be welcoming, accepting of various cultures for as long as they remain within societal codes, enjoys respect of every individual and remembers from where they came as it sets where they will proceed. The laws must be equally applied and respected by all members of the society. The last thing is to remember that every person is a gem to be enjoyed and allowed to shine with their own special brilliance and every day offers equal opportunity for all to achieve. Beyond that is the government’s responsibility in making all safe and respecting of the laws and rights of one another. None of this is easily accomplished and no society has provided such a high standard for more than half a millennium. Some very select groups have managed to maintain such expectations of standard of their peoples and their identity we will leave for each reader to research and discover the identities for themselves as they may be quite surprised and the greatest surprise is amongst the select groups.

 

Beyond the Cusp