Gun control

At the start of this year my husband, a high school teacher, had one student stab another in one of his classes.  This would be hands down the worse thing that has ever happened in his years as a teacher.  It certainly shocked me and many other people.  The student used a chisel, they were in a wood work class, so it was a tool/weapon that was close to hand.  He snapped after many many years of being bullied by the other kid, and while I don't condone his actions I do understand them.  We have all gotten to that point at some time in our lives where we have just had too much.  We might throw something, we might scream, we might say things that we later regret; I am sure that the student regretted his actions later.  When my husband saw the boy grab the chisel and run out of class after the other kid he chased them, I am forever grateful that he didn't catch them.  It might be selfish of me but I love my husband and hate to think what might have happened if he had caught up with the student who did the stabbing.  The child that was stabbed was OK, he needed surgery and the chisel went very close to his spine but he is fine now.  There is no way to stop everyone, everywhere, all the time from reaching this point.  In a perfect world someone would have stepped in long before and helped both these boys out and everything would have been wonderful.  But it is truth that we learn all too soon now days, that we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a very imperfect world and people will snap, what ever their reasons, what ever their provocations it, will keep happening, there is just no way to avoid it.  So now thinking about this incident and events in the U.S. this week I am so very glad that I live in a country where we don't all have guns, where we don't feel that we have "the right to bare arms" in order to protect ourselves.  I have never felt the need to have a weapon of any kind in my home in order to protect myself or my family.  We lock our doors and have a phone to call the police and feel that this is all the protection we will ever need.  I am so very grateful that this is our reality here in Australia because it means that people, like that student at the start of the year, when they do snap and grab what is close to hand to vent their rage can only grab a knife or a chisel and not a gun.  Thank goodness for our gun control laws in Australia where we don't have to live in fear!