What: No Guns?

I remember even now crossing Tokyo on foot, sometimes walking late at night and never having in twenty years once been assaulted. The day I left San Francisco someone took my bag off the bus. Another guy threatened me in the subway station. Then while I was in Japan someone in my home town of Dana Point walked into the post office and blew everyone away with a rifle. An employee they say.
I never forgot the way this kid walked into the post office and shot them all dead except for a guy who hid under the desk. The kid told this man that he didn’t want him. Maybe he was the only one in the post office who understood youth. As for me I was inside that post office on one or two occasions and I remember a grumpy rude government worker who didn’t give a shit. It formed my opinion of government operations. And now that I think about it it may have been this guy that the kid didn’t want. Maybe the guy knew just how corrupt society had become and while the others harassed the kid, who had worked in the post office, he let it go, let the kid make a mistake or two. And I admired this kid for having gotten a job, though in the end I think this was the kid who on the first day of his job, left the emergency brake of the letter truck and as he brought the mail to the door the truck rolled down a hill and totaled my brother’s car at the bottom. He had come to our house and offered to pay cash for the damage if only we wouldn’t report him because it was his first day on the job. These are the kind of things that stick in my mind.
Yes, I definitely remember living in Japan, where the average citizen would wonder why anyone would want to own a gun. I wonder how many Americans can really appreciate how people in so many other nations see guns as something bizarre that no one in their right mind would want to have around. And then I think of America today and a nation actually moving towards allowing handguns on campus as I realize I would never live in that country.