The problem stems from paranoia

By Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas

Thursday, June 19, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

As a former teacher, I know a bit about young people and suicides. If a role model, such as a father, an uncle, or a teacher commits suicide, that act may give a depressed teen a kind of “permission” to do the same. Depressed teens tend to gather in groups.

They ask, “When and how are you going to do it?” The “when” usually has something to do with a historic date or the end of something, such as the end of a school year. The easy access to guns makes the “how” more probable.

Angry, paranoid and depressed people are similar to the teens. They hear about “Second Amendment Solutions” to Big Government. They hear a gun-toting militia man at the Bundy ranch say he is willing to give his life for freedom from government tyranny. They hear that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

The paranoid see themselves as the good guys. Then there is a mass killing, and another and another.

Not everyone who owns a gun is irresponsible, and not all “gun nuts” will shoot up a schoolroom, but no matter what the gun manufacturers and the NRA says, your guns and your paranoia will not protect you from the British, big government, and probably not even from bad guys.

Your paranoia is not a solution to the problem. It is part of the problem.