I remember coming across some meme on 9gag quite a long while ago that meant to mock the paranoia over the whole gun restriction laws debate after the Newtown shootings in the US. it said something along the lines off "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!" and suggested there wasn't much point in restricting arms trade because that wasn't the root of the problem. my first reaction was: obviously guns aren't the root of the problem! but by taking away the means in which the killers carry out the massacres, they can't go around on their killing sprees as smoothly as they'd want to. With less access to all these guns that can be so easily bought at the supermarket or whatever, at most the killers could use were like knives and shit, which would at least give victims a fighting chance of survival. this is not a new argument, I know, but I still think it's a pretty valid and solid one. The root of the problem, I think, is probably something to do about the mental health of American kids in general (I'm not saying they're crazy, I'm talking about things like mental stress from social problems, or whatever. something to do with their environment, maybe?) that compel them to do such stuff. another significant cause is also their police force, which doesn't seem as good as many other countries. I've seen jokes on the internet mocking US policemen because they only went into this profession 'cause their grades in school were lousy, and they hadn't much of a choice. And there's also the perpetuating image of fat American policemen eating donuts in their police cars. I don't know how true this all is, but it's giving me a fairly bad impression :x anyway, again, the whole point is that by cutting off the access these people have to the means or medium of violence, there's pretty much little they can do about all those supposedly violent thoughts in their head.
on to religion, and how both issues seemed similar at first to me. My stand on religion has always been that: religion isn't the root of evil and violence. Religion has just been a tool, used as a front by religious fundamentalists as a means to their own ends, and used to justify the violence they inflict. I've always thought this was fairly obvious, and I would say many of the people I'm surrounded with have similar opinions, whether they had a religion. Even most atheists in school who like to bash on religion for being illogical would agree on this point. It probably has a little to do with GP lessons in class, also, but anyway, I still find many comments on the internet (Youtube, 9gag, Facebook, etc) denouncing religion because it's "the root of all evil".
Somehow, when I thought of my stance on the guns issue and my stance on religion, it suddenly struck me that they were kind of contradictory viewpoints. here's the thing: I put down the idea that guns are the cause of violence, but think they should be done away with for the most part because they're the means in which people achieve this violence. but when I look at religion, I don't put down religion in the same way - even though, I just realized, religion is also kind of the means in which people go around inflicting violence! Without religion as a front, I'm fairly certain there would be at least somewhat fewer supporters of religious fundamentalism in places like the middle-east, because religion is one of the factors that everyday people can more or less relate to. I'm sure without religion these fundamentalists would still find other ways of achieving their goals, but it would receive much less support (which was already on decline since the beginning of the twenty-first century I guess). For a while I was wondering if I was such a hypocrite.
I did find a way to reconcile those two different viewpoints in the end, though. Although removing access to the means does solve (or at least improve) most problems, the thing is these means are, in other situations, the cause of other benefits to society as well. There's a fundamental difference between guns as a means to violence and religion as a means to violence. guns are tangible, direct means of inflicting violence on others. It's difficult to solve violence with even more violence, which the NRA in the US seems to think is a good idea: more guns to protect citizens from others with guns. it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Religion, on the other hand, is not just a medium for violence. it's also a means of spreading goodwill just as much as violence. Religion is more complex in this sense. When people denounce religion for spreading violence, I doubt those people concerned actually consider all the good things religion has brought to many victims around the world. Muslim religion might have been used to justify terrorism by some, but Muslim religion has also been used in goodwill: organizations like Red Crescent, the equivalent of Red Cross for Christianity, are always helping out victims of natural disasters or whatever. There're plenty of other similar Muslim organizations as well but I don't remember them. Whatever the issue at hand, people only ever really notice the negative impacts but neglect the good ones.
Actually this post seems quite dumb and redundant. I just creating a dilemma in my head that no one else would think of (comparing religion and guns) and then just solved the dilemma in my head on my own, where there was no real issue at all in the first place. hahaha!! I just went round in one big circle. I have too many discussions with myself in my head ):
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