Vehicles: A medium

My foot pressed the acceleration petal as I drove the Interstate past a line of houses on the edge of a nearby small-time town.  I slowed, hastily stepping on the brakes when I noticed a little lump in the road ahead of me.  I approached the limp figure of a tiny Min Pin at a slowed pace, middling the car to pass over.

My mind flitted to our own vivacious Miniature Pinschers.  What a pity!  Someone had no doubt lost their beloved dog-friend.

The dog lay there dying, if not already dead.  I turned my head in time to see a girl of about ten years of age running down her short, broken cement walk.  The screen door slammed in her wake.  She ran toward the road with her eyes riveted upon the still animal that I was just ready to pass over.

As I did so, I looked at the child.  She stood there, a complete picture of despair and hurt.  My car was over the child’s companion by then, and her focus was forced to turn upon me.  She looked me full in the face then.  Her expression tore at me.  The river of tears that flowed from her eyes became a riptide that carried her accusations of blame upon me.  It washed over me, and my conscience could not escape it.  I, the driver of a vehicle, took the blame those eyes had hastily spoken.

A car had taken the dog from her.  As I drove by, she needed no further reason than that to lay upon my person the fault of that cruel circumstance. 

Her look haunted me as did the tender scene that I witness in my rear-view mirror.  I turned on the radio hoping to shift my mind from its current thoughts.

 

Obama was speaking.  He was addressing the recent school-shooting.  He spoke of the gun bans that he planned to impose, of the past harm done by such weapons, and of the damage that guns would cause in the future if laws were left unchanged. 

In his voice I heard the accusing eyes of that child that hated me for the loss of her play-mate.  The unspoken blame for my car’s cruelty to her friend was being cast by the President of our world’s leading nation as a legitimate judgment and response to the hurt and pain that we were feeling over the death of innocent, helpless playmates and family members.

If guns (or cars for that matter) are the cause for unfair deaths and unjustifiable behaviors, we need-no, we must seek a solution to be rid of such terrible and heartless destroyers.

But in thinking that way, we are approaching this topic with the anti-logic of a wounded and hasty child.  We need to be mature and sound enough in our reasoning to realize that guns are simply vehicles.  A car doesn’t drive itself; and a gun doesn’t discharge itself either.

When we focus the blame solely upon the weapon, we must ignore the good potential for it as well.  Was it not these objects that the American Revolutionists uncovered and utilized to buy the freedoms that we love and cling to today?

There is an evil behind the weapon.   This is the focus that our solution should be upon.  We cannot blame the trigger; we must understand the source of the problem.  Let us use our level heads on these issues.  Stop excepting the idiocy of unfounded arguments that result in more violence and the infringement of our costly freedoms.

A correct understanding of this issue will lead to the power of finding an adequate solution.