Everyday Systems

I have a comment and a question:

1. I was watching the news coverage of this last night and realized that at this one school, there will be less than 10 kids in second grade next year. Until these children go into middle school and merge with students from other schools, there will always be an obvious reminder of what happened Friday.

2. Why do ordinary citizens need assault rifles? I can understand handguns and guns for hunting, but I don't understand the need for assault rifles.

Looks like no-one on this forum owns an assault rifle - not that sort of crowd.

Living in the UK I see life without guns as quite normal, and can't see why they are needed at all. I think the reasons for having them won't be rational ones, but more to do with people's psychological history.

Yesterday I heard a politician, I think it was U.S Senator, from Texas say that we needed them to "protect us from the tyranny of government." I don't agree.

I'm reading the works of Alice Miller at the moment, being vividly reminded how the force of things we don't want to consciously feel perverts thought and feeling. Consequently I feel pessimistic about having an honest debate on gun ownership with the people who want to have them.

A safer world would have to be brave in a different way - not "fight those bad guys over there" but "deal with these uncomfortable feelings I have in here". It may come, I hope it does, but it needs people to be willing to look within. It would be a radical social change, to become a more self-knowing society, and I'm not sure what it would take to bring it about.

There is no point pretending things are better than they are, even at Christmas. Season's greetings anyway.