After the horrific shooting by Jared Loughner, Ron Barber, who was an aid to Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, returned to work yesterday. He was shot in the cheek and the thigh. Other people at the scene were not so lucky, with the judge, 9 year old girl, and another Gifford aide named Gabe Zimmerman all died. This is such a sad story because it was extremely preventable.
Stricter gun laws would've made it much more difficult for Jared Loughner to get the gun and shoot the people he did. America has a strange obsession with guns, that even as an American citizen, I don't completely understand. Hunting for sport or something similiar is one thing, but buying a gun that fires multiple rounds very quickly is just a killing machine that really serves no purpose for a regular citizen.
The answer to violence, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, is not more violence. "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." The way to stop violence is to stop fueling it. Society needs a fundamental transformation in the way we look at crime, moving away from this mob mentality of punishment, and towards reformation and helping people re-enter society and be as productive as possible.
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