Blaming tool for the actions of its user
John Litle
sophomore
I would like to address Melissa Beiting's letter yesterday. Throughout the meanderings of her response to Scott Brodfuehrer's column, which admittedly I did not read, Ms. Beiting professes that administrators of schools should not be blamed for the acts of these teens, and perhaps rightly so. Instead, however, she contends that guns (inanimate objects) are to blame. How convenient this argument has become in an age where no one is responsible for his or her actions.
I contend that the person who commits the crime is responsible. It is a drastic conclusion I realize, in this age of ultra-political correctness but imagine if we held just those who actually did wrong accountable, no matter how horrendous the crime. I just cannot fathom blaming a tool for the actions of its operator. To the best of my knowledge we do not revere the paintbrush of Michelangelo, but rather the man.
Perhaps I am too nostalgic, remembering back to the days when my forefathers took up arms against forced tyranny, or maybe I am too aware of the defenselessness that resulted when Stalin banned private gun ownership, but I cannot accept that guns are responsible for our high crime rates. If an example of an "uncivilized" country with high gun ownership and low crime were desired I might point to Switzerland. There nearly every household has a firearm, but I don't remember reading about too many school shootings in Switzerland. The fact is that there is no correlation at all between gun ownership and crime, and pawning off responsibility for the terrible actions of an individual is only an attempt to justify their actions and thus contribute to the act's repetition.
Violence does indeed hurt, but displacing the responsibility onto anyone and anything other than the perpetrator neither heals nor helps.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, March 27, 2001
