Santa Clara killer opened fire on family during housewarming

This was a terrible terrible thing that happened. I have close friends who live in that community. It is a place that I visit almost every week. I would have driven through those roads so many times. The fact that it is in a familiar territory and people from the same background were involved makes it a shocking news.

It is no doubt an act of a madman. What could have prompted a reasonable software engineer working in yahoo take such an action - anger? hatred? jealousy? Maybe a combination of all. How can one differentiate a normal person from a person who is capable of doing such gruesome act? He is just one of us but still far from being one of us.

Would he have done such a thing had he been in India? Yes, but maybe not in this scale. Maybe it would have been worse and more gruesome. Maybe he would have used a conventional weapon like a knife, maybe it would have been more bloody. But definitely he would have found it more difficult to kill people with so much ease. It would have taken him more time and more efforts compared to what he did in minutes. Yes, homicides and killing are common in India too but it is still not easy for a common man to carry out such an episode with so much ease. Guns are not legal. They are not easily accessible to common man. Yes, of course one can still buy it in black market.

In my opinion the fact that any one can posses a gun makes these violence a sad reality. The gun laws in this country allows any one above the age of 18 to posses a guns. The private firearm ownership is 49% or higher. The availability of the weapons in the house not only makes it easy to conceive and plan such activity but also makes it easy for children to get hold of these weapons and carry out shooting incidents in schools. I strongly believe that banning the firearms will bring down the homicide rates drastically and will make our schools safer. But unfortunately there are lot of people who do not believe in this philosophy. They stand by the second amendment. In the Bill of Rights, the second amendment to the Constitution reads:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Gun control proponents argue that the use of the word "people" in this Amendment, refers not to the civilian population of the United States, but to the State National Guard Units. Gun rights proponents have argued that the use of the word "Militia" in this Amendment, refers not to the State National Guard Units, but to the citizens of the United States.

The gun proponents argue that the gun control will only prevent the righteous people from buying the weapons. It is not going to prevent the criminals or the gangsters or the mobsters from getting the guns. It is not going to bring down the homicide. In fact they argue that it will increase. According to them, if only the school teachers had guns to defend themselves, the school shooting could have been stopped by the teacher effectively with fewer or no casualty.

It is true that gun control will not make the crime disappear from the streets, but definitely it will make it difficult and fewer in number. Only seasoned criminal will be possesing firearms. And yes, it would definitely have made it a lot difficult for a software engineer to go to a shop, buy a gun and murder 6 members of his family!