Many of us can remember the ad campaigns from Colt firearms.
“Isn’t it time you gave yourself a Christmas gift?” the ad asked, with information about how to order all sorts of great Colt revolvers through the mail.
No waiting.
No background checks.
No accountability or regulatory paper work.
Though you might argue that use of the mail would mean there was more of a paper trail than you’d have if you bought the same gun at a discount store, this was back in the ‘60s and before.
We did away with all that, though, because it was simply too easy for people to get hurt without the perpetrator being accountable.
With guns.
Today you can attack someone with a more high-tech tool, however, and still be guaranteed absolute anonymity, and some folks in Wichita are about fed up with it.
The Associated Press reports that parents of kids in a middle school in Wichita are upset because of the intentional harm being done to students there.
“Some parents in Wichita are expressing alarm about a Facebook page that spreads malicious gossip about students at a middle school.
“The slam page, called ‘Brooks Trash,’ is apparently the work of someone at Wichita’s Brooks Middle School ... users upload pictures to the page, then add nasty captions.
“The site was reported to Facebook and taken down, but showed up again.”
Understand: The intent of this site, and others like it, is to hurt people.
Period.
They are intended as a place where you go and anonymously post nasty comments about other people whom you and your contemporaries know and don’t like. You are encouraged to post false, malicious, defamatory comments about people who are clearly identified and who have absolutely no method to either protect or defend themselves.
The intention of the site is to hurt people.
It is almost as if there are groups out there who are dedicated to making the Internet so despicable and dangerous that it MUST come under government control.
It is irresponsible enough to host a site where people are injuring other people through negligence and ineptitude, but to allow publication of material that is intended to do harm, that is known to be false, that is malicious for entertainment is inhumane and should become very expensive to those who perpetrate it and to those sites that facilitate it when it ultimately makes new libel law.
You can’t anonymously order a gun through the mail anymore.
You shouldn’t be able to destroy someone electronically either.
— Chuck Smith