More Than Guns

Trey Smith

Let's face it. We live in a society dripping in violence. The most popular video games are violent. Many of today's most popular songs feature violent themes. Go to a movie or flip on the TV and violence is front and center. Child abuse, wife beatings and rape are rampant. While the overall murder rate has gone down in recent years, assaults have gone up. Everywhere we look, violence rears its ugly head.

And so, even if our government leaders decided to pass legislation that enacted extremely stringent gun control laws, I don't think that this alone would reduce significantly the number of mass killings. As long as we glorify violence in all its various forms or pretend that societal violence is not a big deal, growing numbers of people will resort to violence to get what they want and/or to seek revenge against real or perceived injustices.

Unlike those on the rabid right, I'm not calling for book or video burnings and laws that outlaw freedom of speech. In fact, I don't think law is the area we need to look to commit to societal change. Laws tend to reflect the mores of a given society and so the work I think we each need to undertake is in our own hearts. If you and I say no to violence and violent imagery and others do so as well, then the market for violence eventually will dry up.

As with so many other aspects of our society, one of the prime drivers of violence is economic. Put plainly, violence is promoted because it makes some people very wealthy. If we, as consumers, refuse to buy into violence, then the market for it will shrink. Of course, it will never go away completely -- to think so is not realistic -- but let's make it a fringe market. Let's make it like those people who collect pez dispensers or Davy Crockett lunchboxes!

My next post will deal with another more aspect of violence in our society, one that, in my mind, is the worst culprit of all.