I'm confused. School shootings, police shootings and revenge shootings all seem to elicit screams of these lives matter or those lives matter as well as calls for gun control; all of it often gains national press.
Yet I read on April 4 in the News Tribune about donations being sought for the family of two innocent victims of a wrong-way head-on traffic accident in which alcohol was detected in the other driver's system. There was no comparable outrage over the senseless loss of innocent lives and no calls for the removal of cars, which obviously caused the deaths. There wasn't even any discussion about how to prevent repeat DWI offenders from driving. (What would we do to a gun owner who waved a gun in a public place?)
Where is our perspective? Are lives lost in car crashes involving alcohol any less important than lives lost due to firearms?
I'm not taking sides on the gun-control issue. Rather, I am questioning why we as a society seem willing to accept one set of killings versus another. I don't know how the number of auto deaths due to impaired driving (impairments due to alcohol, drug, or phone use) compares to firearm deaths, but I suspect the former is greater.
We can do things to reduce both categories. Why don't we? It's not because we can't; it's because we won't. I'm confused.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mike Keller
Duluth
