“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today….”
John Lennon
Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. In the face of the latest mass shooting, we must insist on government intervention with some common sense reforms to curb violence. At some point we need to decide whether we are willing to sacrifice the lives of our citizens to our devotion to a document whose authors lived hundreds of years ago before a society like ours could even be imagined. I’m not talking about gun control, the President can waste his time with that one; to take a page out of the liberal playbook, “The politics are settled, it’s the law of the land”. I’m talking about going after other “freedoms” that should be examined.
Clearly, the perpetrators of these crimes are invariably young men, usually looking to do something so spectacularly evil that they will become an instant celebrity. That being the case we should immediately institute a government censorship office to review all news sources to insure that no mention is ever made of these incidents. Presidential addresses would also be subject to censorship, as nothing gives notoriety like the President of the United States talking about you! These censors would also have power over all social media outlets so that these attention junkies would not be able to find fame on the internet. Of course since most of these sickos are killed in the commission of their crime, silencing them would need to occur before they actually do anything. That means the censors would need to be able to terminate any suspicious or questionable items on the grounds that they could be used to gain celebrity in a potential act of mass violence. Oh, I know, “Freedom of the press! Freedom of speech!”. These common sense reforms are not meant to violate anyone’s free speech, or the media’s right to report news, but with all the things to talk about or report on, no one needs to be talking about mass violence, especially if talking about it is encouraging it.
Further, most of these acts occur in schools, gun free zones, or crowded places like movie theaters. We should investigate the concept of “crowd control”. With today’s technology, we no longer need to congregate like livestock in universities, elementary schools, theaters or churches. You can watch movies at home, as well as pursue your education, or worship your gods. In the rare instance where people do need to gather in crowds, the organizers would need to go through an extensive registration process where they would be required to explain the reasons for the assembly as well as demonstrate adequate security measures are in place. This would pretty much eliminate gun free zones, which apparently are a magnet for gun violence.
“Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…”
This shooting seemed to have some context in differences over religion, as so many do, and so possibly we should take Lennon’s advice and eliminate religion from the social environment. You would still have freedom of religion, just in the privacy of your own home. Don’t ask, don’t tell… we could regulate when and where people would be allowed to talk about religious beliefs. If it had been illegal for this young man to ask about religion, and illegal for his victims to respond, how would he have known who to kill?
Of course the greatest acts of mass violence occur not just from individuals but between differing factions and countries. We should immediately eliminate political affiliations: in so many countries such affiliations have led to extensive violence and death. Beyond this, the existence of separate nations itself is the cause of so much of the world’s violence. The United States should lead by example with this one by simply opening our borders and dissolving our government entirely, if other countries follow our example we will soon find ourselves in one big happy world.
“You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”
As long as we’re sharing dreams here, let’s delve a little deeper into the psyche of the shooter. He lived as an adult in his mother’s basement before moving to the college town in Oregon, liked to sit in the dark, kept isolated from people, wore camouflage, and seemed depressed that he had no girlfriend. Plainly, restrictions should be placed on young men living with their mothers, hermit like behavior should require a background check, camouflage should go the way of the confederate flag, and having a girlfriend should be considered a protected right, even if it means government subsidies for escorts and prostitutes.
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
I’m sorry John, I would have to say that you were a dreamer. That might be ok, or even necessary, to be a good songwriter, but it’s no way to govern a nation, as I hope this little exercise in the absurd has demonstrated. President Obama’s shameless retreat to political posturing on gun control every time there’s an incident like this flies in the face of political reality, and reality itself. I am a sane law abiding citizen, but if I were otherwise and set my twisted mind to it, I could easily obtain illegal weapons. Failing that, I could certainly procure or create things that would greatly mess up a crowded room. I have a chain saw. I have gasoline. Assuming my conscience is sufficiently seared to commit such an act, I would venture that I would feel no moral compunction not to steal a weapon I felt I needed in order to perform my dastardly deed.
IMHO: Lennon imagines in his song that the root cause of all the evil in the world is created by the things people use to justify it. Heaven and Hell, nationalism, religions, possessions… but evil is born in the heart of men, not in the trappings of their everyday lives. The human trafficker uses chains, kidnappers use duct tape, rapists use rope, and murderers use knives and guns; but focusing on their tools averts our gaze from where we should be looking, into their heart of darkness. If we, as the President says, are the only developed country that has this level of sickness, then we need to look beyond the gun and ask more difficult questions about our society. No, thoughts and prayers are not enough… but neither are imaginations.
