Keep the Gun from the Devil

The late Flip Wilson was a widely popular comedian in the mid-1970's. Wilson had a string of successful comedy albums and a top television show. I particularly enjoyed one of Wilson's many characters he potrayed, "Geraldine." Flip, as Geraldine, would dress in drag in the most flamboyant outfits and saunter about the stage spewing outlandish logic regarding the reasons for her behavior. Often to explain her extravagant spending on clothes, Geraldine, in a high pitch voice would proclaim, "The Devil made me do it!" Geraldine's finger pointing was funny because of the transparent childlike excuse making. She was matter-of-fact dodging any accountability for her own actions.

Strange as it may seem some adults, on the stage of life, wish to explain away individual responsibilities by placing blame for bad behavior on others. Since the latest mass-shooting tragedy (Aurora, Colorado), one excuse after another is advanced as possible explanations for an individual committing horrific killings because the individual is unbalanced and the society, in which he lives is condusive to unbalanced people acquiring multiple guns, assault weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition without bumping into lawful barricades protecting the innocent.

I previously mentioned some quarters questioning the wearing of costumes into public places as some cause. More recently the commentary of finger-pointing-blame is towards the film industry; they are simply making too many violent films, say the critics. Really? Well, if so let's not stop with attacking the movie-makers; let's ban the sale of the Holy Bible, which is filled with violence and sex and certainly consider other bans: history books, comic books, video games, television shows, big game hunting shows and perhaps viewing the ever violent NFL games. If the logic is that visual-stimulation causes acts of criminal behavior then we must keep children out of the sight of pedophiles, women should have a dress length code to deter the sex offender and...and where does this silliness stop!

There is a simple historical truism; our America has always known violence, We perpetrated our own genocide in the relationship with Native Americans. Our country had nasty and unimaginable violence as the KKK made its statement throughout slave States. Many major American cities dodged the violence of blatant-organized crime, however this Nation addressed many of these uncilvilized and violent activities, enacted laws and policed for safety; as said in the old West, we 'took the bull by the horns.'  It is time to take that measure once again and use commonsense to identify the issue and address the problem of easy availability of our own 'weapons of mass destruction!' Stop pointing the finger.