Is Frying Pan Violence On The Rise?
There have been lots of headlines recently about the out-of-control violence and unrest in many of our country’s major metropolitan areas. Shootings in Chicago and NYC, as well as other big cities, have reached levels compared to the wild west or Middle East war zones.
And of course the mainstream media always describes such madness and mayhem as ‘gun violence’.
But the phrase ‘gun violence’ is a bit of a misnomer in my opinion. Guns don’t commit acts of violence.
Guns just sit there as good inanimate objects should, doing nothing at all. Until a person picks one up and does something with it.
So ‘person violence’ is the term you’re looking if want to describe a shooting. Because a shooting requires a deliberate act of conscious will; taking up a gun, loading it, aiming it, pulling the trigger etc.
And a person is the only entity capable of doing all of that in order to hurt or kill others.
So it’s ‘person violence’, not ‘gun violence’.
‘Gun violence’ is a term used in a not-so-clever political attempt to transfer blame for violence onto a particular inanimate object in order to make folks afraid of the object rather than outraged at the jerks committing violence with that object.
How often do you hear media reports of ‘knife violence’? Lead pipe violence? Louisville Slugger violence?
Nunchuck violence? Pool cue violence? Whip violence?
Or my favorite; frying pan violence?
You don’t read so much about those other varities of violence because they don’t do nearly so much damage. When you do read reports of “knife violence” it’s always far fewer victims. If all the gangs in LA or Chicago had as weapons was frying pans there would not be anywhere close to the level of damage and death, nor would there be any such thing as stray frying pan deaths. The media covers “gun violence” because violence with guns causes so much death. It’s simple. Guns don’t initiate the violence but violence committed with guns ends up with far worse outcomes.
That was a reasonable answer. Won’t cut it with Rick.