Today sharing that I found a piece of what I felt was powerful wisdom from reading an old sci-fi novel, then hearing a news story, then connecting the dots between them, finding wisdom in seemingly unconnected places.
Apologists for the ease of possession of guns in the USA will say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Many of us are exhausted from attempting to reason with those who oppose gun control. The rational arguments seem to have no impact. So, it was with a numbed sense of shock that I heard a few days ago a 6-year-old in the USA deliberately shot their teacher, the first school shooting in the USA in 2023, following 300 of them in 2022 (see the article containing the graphic above here). This was a SIX-year-old.
As I heard that, a quote came to me from a book that I have been re-reading. Consider Phlebas is the first of the “Culture” series of science fiction novels by the late, great Scottish author Iain M. Banks, who also wrote (as Iain Banks) novels not set in an imagined future universe, more conventional, perhaps. The imagined universe Iain M. Banks created was one in which societies had far more advanced technologies, yet also could not resist going to battle with each other, though, from the quote from the book below, they put limits upon themselves within that.
Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.
~ Iain M. Banks, in “Consider Phlebas”
If “people kill people” then perhaps people without guns might kill fewer people.