So, I'm thinking about gun violence

I've been doing some reading today on the issue of gun violence. Of course, with the murder of the 9 people attending church this past Wednesday night, it's on a lot of peoples' minds. As is the issue of gun control. A massacre occurs and automatically there is fear that the gun control debate will begin and of course it does. People post Facebook statuses proudly declaring their right to own guns and suddenly there is much less talk about how we can possibly stop these kinds of crimes from occurring.
"There is no way to stop it." "If you take away the rights of the good guys to own guns, only the bad guys will have them." "I'll do anything to protect my family."

And we will, right? The vast majority of us will do anything to protect our own families and we'll even do an awful lot to protect the families of those close to us.

Yesterday, on my way to pick up the boys from my parents' home, where they have been going during the days while I'm at work, I listened to the latest episode of Radiolab, Eye in the Sky. It's a really fascinating podcast, only 28 minutes, and I really highly recommend it. It starts out being about Project Angel Fire but then gets into the business venture of Dr. Ross McNutt, Persistent Surveillance Systems and how it helped the Dayton Police Department solve a crime during a trial of the company's services. A second case, involving a drug cartel in Jaurez, in which they describe the execution of a female police officer, was much harder to hear, especially given that I work in a police department.

The discussion moved to the various perspectives taken by the journalists (Manoush Zomorodi and her producer, Alex Goldmark of Note to Self) reporting on the story, as well as the perspectives of the Radiolab hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. After hearing both of the cases (listen to the podcast), Alex moved to the camp of believing this is a good idea, this surveillance by a plane outfitted with cameras, to allow crimes to be solved quickly, easily, and efficiently. Manoush and Robert were in the anti-surveillance group.

And I am not really certain how I feel about this. It's so fascinating to hear of all the cities who are considering implementing this technology. I completely understand the negativity about this idea. I think in some way we've been primed to believe that the only option is for government to become so corrupt that it feeds on its own people--that there simply is no chance that a form of government exists which could take care of all its citizens. And perhaps that's right. I don't know. It seems to me, however, in some ways, that we already feed on our own people.

I also understand how family members of murder victims might feel if they knew that the technology existed that would help find a murderer and bring him or her to justice and it wasn't being used solely because of fears of giving up privacy.

I don't know what the right answer is. I just know that we have to look at the facts. We have to stop attacking one another out of fear over the differences we perceive when we each have so much in common with one another. Education matters. Reasonable gun control efforts matter.