Less Obvious Security Threats

In class on Friday, I found myself more interested in the political cartoon about Social Security more than any of the others.  To refresh everyone, it was a cartoon of President Bush standing next to a woman who is dying and telling a variety of young people that they will not be responsible for the woman and others like her if we changed the social security system.  I believe that this cartoon indicates not only what we discussed in class, about the need to secure ourselves from inside security threats, but that our belief in social responsibility is dying. 

            I usually like most of what IR liberals believe, but sometimes I get annoyed with self-interest because it is so vague.  I do not see many examples of people acting in their own self-interest by helping others, even when this usually would help them eventually.  This cartoon represents how people think of their self-interest in the short-term and not the long-term.  I still believe that in the instance of Social Security that we can take care of others in difficult times at the ends of their lives because if we keep the spirit of civic duty alive, we will get taken care of late on in our lives.  Perhaps that is too idealistic, but in my short time on this planet I have experienced many things that demonstrate how achieving security for others who are in need will come back and reward you in the end.  

This is also why I do not see the benefits of websites like the one Bo Vice sent in about guns.  Guns are intended to secure yourself, but they can end up hurting yourself or your family.  When people can buy guns off the internet with hardly any supervision, it is very likely that people who do not know how to use guns will own them.  As some have mentioned, there are many gun deaths that are accidental because of novices not knowing what they are doing.  However, the gun deaths that I think are a larger threat to security are when family members get a hold of the gun.  I do not know when I have seen much more devastation in people's faces than when watching the events of Columbine, or felt more sad than when reading about very young children accidentally shooting themselves or their friends because they found daddy's gun.  A person who owns a gun in the name of securing themselves and their family who does not know how to properly use it or store it is a great threat to everyone's security.