It seems as I grow older, the number one question I ask myself is, “Why?” I never questioned much as a young man, but lately, I find myself questioning many things.

A few weeks ago, the News Journal had a picture of a vehicle that had been in a bad accident. The picture showed the speedometer was frozen at 80 mph. It caused me to look at my speedometer which went up to 120 mph. Why? If speed kills, why are car allowed to reach that speed. Nothing has ever been that important in my life that I needed to go even 75 mph, and that would be rare. So why 120 mph?

In the past month or so the new TV shows have been advertised almost hourly. Have you noticed that many of them show high-powered weapons being fired, bodies lying here and there, explosions of buildings, etc. There was one showing a pizza delivery man coming out of a building and the building explodes behind him!

Why?! And we wonder why these weapons are used in the mass shootings we see so frequently.

And what about gun control … Is that possible? I think not. The Constitution protects gun ownership even though it was written at a time when protection against wild animals, Native Americans, etc. was of prime importance.

But what if we stopped the manufacture and sale of the ammunition used in these weapons? It would take a while, but the high-powered military weapons would be only wall decorations.

I haven’t seen many wild animals that needed killing, have you?

And what about the daily news. Why is it necessary for citizens here to know about a murder in San Francisco? It seem our news people must be starved for excitement to report. Many of the stories reported only tend to plant seeds in a person who really does not need this type of reality reporting. The so-called copy cat crime might be caused by a story on the news that we do not need to hear about.

These are just a few of the things I, and I’m sure many of you, ask … Why?

Tony Lamke of Wilmington writes a periodic column for the News Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].