It breaks my heart that a man came armed to the Harford Mall, where children go to have fun, walkers go for their daily exercise, many old folks hang out to people watch, and the disabled are brought by their supervisors for an outing.
The gunman pumped bullets into a fellow man he knew, over an altercation. The big cats hunt and kill when they’re hungry. Men kill when they’re angry. Human anger is a danger to self and others, and it is often fueled or preceded by nasty rhetoric and lack of reason and logic. This incident of violence was described as isolated. There is no joy in that.
Guns bought or stolen, guns 3D printed or assembled from ghost parts pervade America, and human anger spurred by substance abuse or bullying or sexual abuse or mental illnesses under the radar and untreated due to health gaps and social injustices too numerous to enumerate are some of the subterranean causes of the violence convulsing America. Until every man and woman commits to nonviolence across America no man or woman will be free.
Nonviolence means abjuring guns and rage. It means embracing the language of peace and compromise. It means refusing to settle scores. It means what Jesus preached and Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi practiced. It means kindness and mercy even toward those who would harm you. It means patience in the face of folly. It means de-escalation of tension.
The tenets of nonviolence should be taught to children in homes and schools, and that education should continue into adulthood and beyond. Nonviolence should be a subject for credit in colleges. It should be inculcated and practiced. Gandhi died from a gunshot wound. MLK the same. Medgar Evers was shot by white supremacists. If they could be brought back and asked if they regret not carrying guns for self-defense, I have no doubt they would say that guns are for the fearful, the bullies, the killers, the gangsters, the warriors, the hunters and the police, but guns are not for those committed to the ideal of nonviolence.
How much worse it would have been in the Harford Mall if the man who was shot also had fired his own gun or if a visitor to the mall fired off some rounds. How much worse for the police who rushed there to put an end to the violence. I’ve heard people say they own guns to fight government tyranny, that freedom is earned at the barrel ends of guns. But freedom is also lost at the barrel ends of guns.
Usha Nellore, Bel Air
Around the Web
