Talk Of The Town

To be quite honest, when I started reading this essay, I thought Adam Gopnik was talking about the Columbine High School Massacre. "The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing." That line opened me up to an uncomforting feeling. But when I read on and understood it was about gun control, I got a little reluctant to read on. I personally don't have much thought on the subject, so I feared my blog was going to end up dry and dull. But then I said, "What are the positives and negatives of this topic?"

The essay thankfully opened up to a very bizarre mentioning of a mentally ill person purchasing a gun. I remember making a 'what-the-French toast' face when reading that part. How can a mentally ill person even buy a gun? At work, one of my co-workers, who is a bit mentally ill, isn't even allowed to help customers sign up for a new store card. My thoughts almost instantly were that the seller of the gun was one of the following: dumb as a mule for not learning information about the customer, was working their last day on the clock and didn't care who they sold a gun to, or sick themselves and wanting to see public chaos. Knowing some people today, I would have to guess they fell under the first category.

When reading about several other countries raising the bar on gun control after having some troubles of their own, only to successfully decrease the numbers of shootings, I guessed it would be only positive for the U.S. to follow in those other countries' footsteps.

When Susan Sontag chimed in with her preaching about war, our "robotic president", and the troubles with our government, I instantly labeled her as a nag. Surprisingly, I wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because her writing was a little too preachy for my taste. I can't stand people who spend all their time making ironic comments about other people when they themselves aren't doing jack squat. Then again, I don't know Ms. Sontag, so I can't say she hasn't tried to make changes with this issue.

Her focus was on the U.S. of having some kind of "superpower". Not sure at first what she meant by that, I immaturely thought she was comparing ol' America to the Man of Steel. Then I managed to realize she was saying America thinks we're on top. (By which I mean we're on top of all the other countries.)

This made me start to see America as a self-absorbed child--or maybe even a sheltered, self-absorbed child. Our country is always hearing about only itself. Yah don't believe me? Go watch the news and realize we only hear about how great our country is. I personally have nothing against America, I just understand we don't get much knowledge about how the rest of the world is doing unless it involves us.

Even though learning about ourselves and how our country is growing each day is important, it might not be such a bad thing to understand everyone elses' status so we can learn and understand this big rock we call Earth.