It might be strange to say, coming after four murders in Penticton, another in Salmon Arm and a sixth in Kitsilano, but gun violence isn’t the problem.
Violence is. Or at least the way we present it to ourselves and our children.
This isn’t an argument that tighter gun control laws aren’t necessary, they are. But in the murders B.C. has seen over the past week, there is no guarantee they wouldn’t still have been committed, guns or not.
Lack of easy accessibility to a gun might have slowed the shooters down in these cases enough that the tragedy would be prevented, but who knows?
It was clear in the Sri Lankan attacks, leaving nearly 300 dead, that not having a gun isn’t going to stop someone truly dedicated to killing. In Sri Lanka, it was extremists using bombs and a few weeks ago, it was an extremist with guns in New Zealand.
Same result, loved ones dead, communities wounded and a world in horror.
So if it isn’t guns that are the problem, what is? Well, we’ve spent generations, at least in the Western world, teaching people that violence is the way to solve problems, and on top of that, it’s pretty cool.
As a society, we need to get at the root of the problem, the message we don’t even realize we’ve absorbed, that violence leads to success.
It would be naive to suggest that violence can be done away with altogether—eliminating it in video games, for example, would lead to some pretty boring video games.
But perhaps the conversation can be reframed to portray violence as a last resort, not the first solution to a problem.
That’s the message we need to start changing. To quote one of Isaac Asimov’s characters, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” That’s a much better message to send.