Musings: Bright Spot

Walking through air heavily perfumed by mock orange, past snow bush ablaze in white and Kapahi mango trees curiously bearing both fruit and flowers, I watch the scarlet snakeskin sky go gray and then there is a blaze of gold in the east, a bright spot before the always-welcome rain descends.

Well, there's one bright spot in the case of that wacko tossing the Japanese tourist off the cliff at Kalalau. Kee was closed for a few days, and the Kalalau Trail still is, giving those intensively used sites a teeny tiny bit of a break during the holiday visitor crush.

And the one bright spot to emerge from the massacre of school kids and teachers in Connecticut is a renewed public debate on gun control, though it's kind of a double-edged sword, since every time the words “gun control” are uttered it sets off a buying frenzy of weapons and ammo.

A friend was attempting to explain the rationale behind the Second Amendment, and I said yes, I understand that it was drafted to ensure that people could rise up against a tyrannical government. So my question is, where were all the tyranny-hating gun owners when the government was passing bills that curtailed civil liberties, like the Patriot Act and the NDAA, with its indefinite detention clause?

Why aren't they screaming over the steady erosion of privacy, the expansion of government surveillance? As in stuff like cellphone tracking:

Law enforcement is more and more deploying International Mobile Subscriber Identity locators that masquerade as cell towers and enable government agents to suck down data from thousands of subscribers as they hunt for an individual’s cell signal. This “Stingray” technology can detect and precisely triangulate cellphone signals with an accuracy of up to 6 feet—even inside your house or office where warrants have been traditionally required for a legal police search.

And mobile high-tech police guard towers:

The SkyWatch command tower is elevated 30 feet above ground level to give police a panoramic view of the streets and is fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment. The manufacturer of the device boasts that the tower can be used for "civilian security operations" and "crowd control".

What would it take to get these liberty-loving gun-owners riled up enough to actually resist the tyrannical actions of their government? A ban on beer? A prohibition on junk food or the NFL?

It's going to be tough to enact any kind of meaningful gun control because Americans already own so many guns. Plus now we're looking at sick stuff like printable, downloadable guns — as in the Wiki Weapon.

It might be more useful to spend some time and money delving into why some people feel compelled to destroy their own lives and the lives of others. Could it have anything to do with prescription drugs that can make users violent, even homicidal and suicidal? You know, popular antidepressants like Pristiq, Paxil and Prozac, the sleeping aid Halcion and the anti-smoking drug Chantix.

Isn't it time to investigate the possible link between certain psychotropic drugs and violent behavior, seeing as how so many shooters are on this stuff? I mean, either these meds aren't working, or they're  working the wrong way.

But when you're a gun-maker or big Pharma, the only bright spot is profit. It doesn't really matter if you have to slip and slid through bloody carnage if you're on your way to the bank.