Life is a highway...

San Bernardino is unfolding before my eyes...the mayor is speaking about how this is going to impact the families of the victims...
But looking at it from my perch on the sofa, it seems like a movie complete with police in body armor, victims being wheeled out, reporters milling about, cameras zooming in, cameras zooming out...but it is just a movie...we just finish watching it and then move on...
But then you remember that just because it happens with sickening frequency , doesn't make it any less sickening. This is not a movie you walk away from, and ominously, this could happen to any one of us at any moment and that movie will not have a happy ending.
And as usual,mental illness is being vilified and bandied about like that would end the discussion on a high note, with neatly tied up endings. Even ISIS is being eyed as a possible suspect!
But this recent incident unfortunately refuses to be categorized into that usual sinkhole, because in this case, there were supposedly, three shooters. One, you could say was mentally deranged and acted alone, but three? That doesn't make sense...
Which brings me to the oft repeated excuse that guns don't kill people, mentally deranged people with guns do? What a bunch of crock!!
Let's discuss this mental illness issue a bit. I am not a qualified medical professional, but I have enough of an education to know that mental illness is exacerbated by stressors, which can cause people to do something heinous as what unfolded today and has happened with enough frequency in the last few years.People with mental issues do not to act out like this on a regular basis, but only when something tips them over a point. So what could possibly be the tipping point, for this many people? We live in the only remaining Superpower of the world, where the leader of the free world resides, and almost everyone who lives elsewhere aspires to immigrate to. Our GDP is mind boggling, our control over the world's economy, why even the state of democracy the world over is almost absolute under our purview and this, this is the land of plenty, Utopia, Xanadu, Eden all rolled into one. Yes, our economy did tank the last few years, but if we look at how the rest of the world lives, we still are not that badly off.
Unless there is a pathological or physiological reasoning behind it,let's assume we are not the only country where instances of mental illness is noticeably higher.
So, there are a lot of countries which probably have people with mental illness living among the supposedly normal populace. I'm going to pick,hmmm... say India out of thin air to compare with the US. and see how we fare. Ironically one cannot blame me for skewing the following argument by picking a country which is better than us on any comparative scale.
India is still considered a 'developing ' country, a euphemistic way of saying we are nowhere near where the US is on any measurable value. We are a poverty stricken country, with a great deal of hunger and disease, low literacy rates, a stagnant economy, a stifling caste system still powerful enough to throttle the path of advancement to millions of Indians, a misogynistic society that discriminates against women and even the virtue of the womenfolk is at risk on a daily basis, and a government so corrupt that the public have no confidence in their leaders..
See the picture?
So in a country with almost three times the population of the US, statistically speaking, let's assume, there are the same number of people with mental issues...
Consider the stressors that a person with mental issues might face in a country like India. Extreme poverty, hunger, homelessness, and even if these are not relevant issues, lack of opportunities to get ahead in life, lack of educational options, joblessness, discrimination...the list goes on. So if you want to pick a stressor that might put someone over the edge, there's a cornucopia to choose from...and what does someone who has been pushed to their limit and cannot think their way through the fog of mental illness do? They pick up a gun, that is easily available anywhere and go shooting people at random places?! Oh, wait a minute! They don't, not in India, they don't. Because, in India one cannot buy a gun as easily as one can in....say, the US of A!
 I am sure naysayers will consider my comparison apples and oranges, but even if you compare the US and UK, two countries almost on par with each other, we would win massively in the body count due to gun violence.
Going back to that third world country we were discussing, mental illness is still considered a stigma
and so people don't recognize,much less treat mental illness there. So the whole idea of the inability
to institutionalize mentally ill people having contributed to this mess is absolute bunkum. By that token, people don't even get diagnosed in India, much less treated...but you still don't find a bunch of crazy people running around shooting people at random in India!
Since I started writing this, there has been mention of some kind of terrorist connection to this recent shooting, but my argument still holds good, don't you think?
 So when people are pushed over the edge and want to act out in an insane manner, they tend to pick an action that they feel will have the maximum impact on everyone around and what better than a shooting rampage which automatically ensures a higher mortality rate even if you know you will be stopped.. The ease of acquiring guns makes the task even more attractive... In my mind, with its limited capabilities, there is a straight line from the need to act out when mentally ill and the easy availability of guns......but then that is just me..
If you take guns out of the equation, and replay the whole scenario? The ending is different isn't it?
I know that removing guns from this equation has a million roadblocks, but the simplest one, that it is one's right(to bear arms) isn't the best of them.Unless you live your life in a state of paranoia, self protection is the lamest excuse for someone who lives in the only remaining Superpower, where the Leader of the free world resides etc etc...
So please, give it a good thought,maybe sacrificing your self interest might end up doing good for the country at large.Like JFK said,"My fellow Americans,ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."