Gun culture

By Marifi Jara

Two Christmases ago, I remember the big toy rave among the children around here were guns.

Guns of all shapes and sizes, looking almost like the real things.

And these were spewing out pellets bigger than the size and similar to the texture of mung (or mongo) beans. Now imagine how that has the potential to inflict serious injury, perhaps not on the skin but on the eyes.

All Christmas break long, the tots – mostly boys and some girls – had the time of their lives out in the streets playing gang-war games.

I have to ask: Who manufactured such toys? (I bet, as plenty of things nowadays are out in there in the market, they were made cheaply in China.) Who sold or gave them those toy guns and bullets? (Couldn’t retailers and gift givers at least consider the cultural/moral value of the item?) What did their parents think of it and what did they do about it? (I hope the craze simply did not die out of the kids’ loss of interest and dwindling Christmas loot for buying pellets but from a serious enlightening lecture from the adults around them.)

As for the computer/internet shops, these are thriving, partly on patrons chatting with their kin abroad but mostly on children playing video games that more often than not involve ammunitions intended to kill the computer-generated enemy in exchange for cyber points and bonus virtual lives.

I never played with toy guns as a kid nor ever gotten interested in bloody video games so I don’t really know what the thrill is about them. But it scares me what sort of psychological impact these must be creating among our young.

And I am particularly worried now because just this week, another road rage incident in Manila made big news as someone ended up being shot to death. Reminds me of how several years back, a parking altercation during a very crowded All Saints’ Day at the Loyola cemetery in Marikina, where my paternal grandparents are buried, caused the life of a pregnant woman. She was sitting on the passenger’s seat and was hit by the bullet intended for her husband on the driver’s seat.

Closer to home, guns have been ringing over the last few weeks in San Fabian. And there has been bloodshed. There’s plenty of buzz about what the motives are and the characters behind the supposedly inter-related incidents. I am giving our local police the benefit of the doubt about their serious intent to get to the bottom of things. But the guns really bother me, so loosely and easily available.

Guns, toys or real, have no place in a civilized society – except in the hands of the authorities, but even then only those who have been well-trained, psychologically and technically, about the responsibilities of carrying a weapon that, with the easy click of the trigger, can take the life of a precious human life.

We can’t carry on turning a blind eye to such mounting culture of guns and violence.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/roots/)