Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Deport Piers Morgan?

Maybe it takes an outsider to put America's gun culture in the spotlight.

A petition to have Morgan deported back to his native England has by now more than 50,000 signatures. Those are folks who want to deport Piers because he has been using the old Larry King slot to lobby for tighter gun control legislation in America.

They see his lobbying as a threat to the Second Amendment.

Aren't they forgetting the First Amendment?

Frankly, while I don't necessarily agree with him across the board, he's one of the highest profile media personalities making an issue of what unfettered access to military hardware is doing to America. That's a debate that's long overdue.

It's easy enough to endlessly regurgitate the truism that it's not guns killing people, it's people.

Yet it's also beyond debate that people with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns.

One of the tragedies about this entire non-debate is how little serious discussion there is about the underlying factors that are behind so many of the headlines.

After all, there are plenty of societies around the world where guns are common but mass killings are virtually unheard of. Maybe it's time to look at a couple of the other contributing factors.

The rampant over-prescription of psycho-tropic drugs.

The almost complete absence of support systems for people with mental health issues.

If Joe Shmuck down the street has lost his job and his house and his family has deserted him and he's been gobbling down the anti-depressants, is it a good idea that he be able to buy, no questions asked, an arsenal of military grade hardware and thousands of rounds of ammo?

I think not.

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