I think the free will is a component of the problem we are experiencing in society today.

Free will at its core concept, states that we will do what we will do not even the creator will mess with that. . Forcing a person to decide to choose one behavior pattern over another is coercion not freedom and disrespects a true gift from our creator. The best any society can  do is to teach personal responsibility, compassion for others, and at least some sense of civic responsibility to the young people and maybe throw in some painful, truthful exposure to history so that they can make better choices for themselves in the future. Again, I say,  educate the young, truthfully educate them and then let them choose for themselves based on knowledge and free will. Forcing someone to do a thing just doesn’t work. It all goes back to that tricky thing called free will.

Right now in American culture I am seeing extremists on both sides of the political aisle trying to legislate morality and when they cannot manage to do that they go after false sources of the problem they think they are trying to solve.

Right now our leaders are talking about more gun legislation as a response to the recent mass shooting events. Don’t get me wrong, I think mass shootings are terrible, horrible, irreprehensible events. That being said, I don’t understand why people think that suing gun manufacturers is going to stop gun violence. It really makes no sense to me. I don’t see the survivors of those who have lost their lives too drunk driving suing either the company that made the alcohol or the manufacture of the vehicle simply because these items were used by a person to do a bad thing.

It saddens me to see us, as a nation, potentially repeating the mistakes of the past. We have tried prohibition, a war of drugs and both of these approaches only brought more problems. During prohibition, the people that wanted to drink still drank and during this long war on drugs people that want to do drugs are still doing drugs. As a result of both of these events we have the mafia, drug cartels, more governmental laws and regulations than we had before and people are still drinking and doing drugs. Making more gun laws is not going to prevent these things from happening. Criminals and those in mental crisis will continue getting guns either legally or illegally.

Just because we pass a law that states you can’t do something isn’t going to stop these horrific events from happening. Criminals will continue to get guns through illegal sources. If we stop gun manufacturers from manufacturing guns do you really think that’s going to stop the government from having guns made, criminals bringing guns from outside the country, or just  choosing another way to act out like building bombs at home out of common household items?

The real problem here is people. Plain and simple, people. Rather than raise these last three or four generations to understand ethics, personal responsibility, how deal with difficult emotions, problem solving skills and compassion for someone other than themselves we have sugarcoated everything to the point that the younger generation get their noses all bent out of shape because they are told ”no you can’t do that”.

While I was in college I saw a meme that said” the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome”.

The older generations will tell you we are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn, teach and remember the mistakes of the past.  Just because we pass a law, a regulation or other such forms of legislation to an item does not mean that people will just suddenly quit buying guns, buying alcohol, buying drugs or getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated.

Again my friends, I ask you, Think about this…. We have been told we are the creators chosen and we were given the gift of free will. Whether we use that free will for evil or good is a decision that each person makes for themselves. When we stop teaching ethics, compassion and reasoning skills as well as good problem solving skills, a person’s free will can get extremely skewed and that person’s behavior has a very high possibility of  becoming extremely dangerous to those around them.

If we’re going to greatly reduce the amount of  all of this senseless violence against each other we’re going to have to stop blaming inanimate objects and look to help and heal the person that’s wielding the gun, bow and arrow, battle ax, stick or rock.  Things are not the problem, people are the problem.

Having a person behave in a manner that the society that they live in can deal with is a tricky thing. Because of free will, that person has the potential to do really awful things to other people and animals or do really wonderful things and make the world a better place. Getting a person to do really wonderful things instead of bad things is next to impossible. Free will gets in the way of that.

If outlawing a thing really worked we would have outlawed sticks and rocks a long time ago. I wish I could help the world understand that the problems of the world are not caused by things they are caused by people. I am sad and scared for humanity.