Well, I consider myself to be a liberal and anti-Iraq war but under no circumstances would I ever say that Lance Cpl. Robert Crutchfield deserved to die. That’s just madness. In the UK members of the armed forces have been told not to go out in the streets wearing their uniforms because they are getting abuse from local residents. I really have no idea why abuse would ever be directed towards individuals in the armed forces.
It’s our governments who are to blame for any wars that are “un-just” and not those who are fighting. My own cousin has just started at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy and will probably end up being posted to somewhere like Iraq or Afghanistan. Never for a moment would I say that he deserves to die because he wants to join the army.
When I hear news reports such as this it really makes me wonder how the world has come to have such a gun problem. I know that in America gun crime has been an issue for many years but now we are hearing about the same things in the UK too.
Some will argue that we are conditioned from a young age to have an interest in guns because of western movies and now we have some really violent console games on the market. Although many of these games have age restrictions, children under the age are still allowed to play them by parents or by older siblings.
In the UK, the average police officer is not allowed to carry any sort of firearms but with so many gun crimes taking place the question being raised is whether police should be allowed to. This is such a difficult question to answer but once this line is crossed it’s very difficult to go back and it might only encourage further crime.
Another problem I find is that the media often report certain types of crime that are “flavour of the month”. When we see so many news reports on gun or knife crime we think that perhaps we shouldn’t go out onto the streets without “protection.” This in itself exacerbates the problem and we get into a very vicious circle.
Of course, if you wanted to you could try to analyze the mentality of people such as Ean Farrow and Thomas Ray III. Perhaps he was abused as a child and has been given no discipline by his parents and therefore thinks that he is above the law. Who knows, but I what I do know is that something has to be done about gun crime before even more people have to lose their lives.
