Lately I've been pondering some Carl Jung, who heavily emphasized the darker side of the human psyche, and how we all have one. He recommended acknowledging it, and accepting it, in order to conquer it. While I believe most people are inclined to naturally gravitate toward positive feeling emotional states, I also know that life can be cruel and hard, and many people can get caught in self feeding loop of negative emotions which eventually can lead to anger, resentment, and ultimately murderous thoughts and actions. I completely understand the call for gun restrictions in light of the uptick in senseless shootings of defenseless kids who are required by law to gather in these unprotected areas, or else they and their parents would be punished by other people with guns. I also understand why many would opt for homeschooling exemptions to keep their kids out of schools, but I think if that were actually fiscally viable for most parents, more homeschooling would be happening anyway. However, these are still both fear based reactions, that do not take into account that the potential for both good, and malicious intent will always be inside each and every one of us, and in every atom of existence for that matter. There is much potential good in gov't imposed restrictions on guns, but there is unavoidably also very much potential bad. I'm not really worried about the government disarming the population because of what I know about 3-D printing in the 21st century, say I so go for it, and see how it goes. But what I'd also like to see addressed is the fact that our country, our society, is cranking out more and more hostile, malevolent, and murderous people than ever before. The guns and the schools have been around for a while, but the epidemic of tortured, whaling souls bent on mass destruction is fairly new to our countries equation. Jung wrote about neurosis and the tortured soul and how it's often a person's inability to make sense of the cold callousness of the world. I realize that a lot of people go through life with the idea that it's overall a really fun place, a never-ending supply of fun things to do with lots of other happy people. Yet at the same time, it's trapping some people in some real internal hells. It's fine if we try to make it harder for those who fall through the cracks of our social and moral webbing to obtain guns. But I'd also like to see more effort into making it harder for people become like that in the first place. Many of these shooters have things in common such as being outcasts in their social groups, and being put on psychotropic drugs to try and bring their "anti-social" behaviour more in line with the herds. Like most things in life, stopping school shootings is going to be very complicated. So please people, as we debate this, please make it a complex debate, that covers as many angles as possible, with an eye on fixing the problem, and not just on "well we have to do something!" for there is evil in that too. let's do more than just take the guns from the baddies, and let's figure out why there are so many lonely, angry, suffering souls emerging out of our society. These shooters aren't crawling out from under rocks. The went to school with us. We saw them at the mall and the grocery store. Most likely we made fun of them or avoided the shit out of them. As the cry for government intervention grows louder, let us also turn inward and ask ourselves is there someway we can each individually take responsibility for the society that we are collectively creating each day, with every interaction, with each and every tweet, and facebook post. Because to me it seems that taking away a specific murder weapon is a only a temporary solution if you don't stop the increase in murderous intent, and it leaves the rest of us vulnerable to abuses of power. I think that's what I meant to say ;) If you've read this far, you're an amazing human being and we need more of you.