{"id":1984,"date":"2012-07-25T09:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T09:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/07\/a-buddhist-perspective-on-access-to-guns.html"},"modified":"2012-07-25T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T09:49:00","slug":"a-buddhist-perspective-on-access-to-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/07\/a-buddhist-perspective-on-access-to-guns.html","title":{"rendered":"A Buddhist Perspective on Access to Guns"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>How can we make sense out of the senseless? When a deranged young man opens fire killing innocent people, what lessons can we take away that can give meaning to the lost lives? Learning something new or deepening our understanding seems to be the best way to honor those who\u2019ve suffered the most. I\u2019d like to offer some thoughts from a <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Events unfold largely due to causes and conditions. An event like this does not happen in a vacuum. An unbalanced person with paranoid delusions, with easy access to guns, immersed in a culture of hatred and violence, whipped up by a media hungry for sensational news, given messages that a politician is threatening his well-being and should be targeted, can produce the tragedy we\u2019re dealing with now. All of those factors were likely at play. To only blame the young man\u2019s mental stability and simply say, \u201cOh, he was nuts,\u201d misses the point. Our country spends 60 percent of its budget on the military and more than the next dozen nations combined. Is it just a coincidence that we have so many civilian gun killings? Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik sarcastically commenting on the easy access to guns said, \u201cWhat will be next \u2014 Uzis in kids\u2019 cribs?\u201d Yet, we were still shocked.<br>Read the rest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/james-baraz\/making-sense-out-of-the-s_b_808309.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How can we make sense out of the senseless? When a deranged young man opens fire killing innocent people, what lessons can we take away that can give meaning to the lost lives? Learning something new or deepening our understanding seems to be the best way to honor those who\u2019ve suffered the most. I\u2019d like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Buddhist Perspective on Access to Guns<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How can we make sense out of the senseless? 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