Guns, culture not to blame for shootings

For the last 23 years, a mass shooting occurs, and the media rushes in to report whatever tidbit they can find, relevant or not, truthful or not, to suit the bias of their parent organizations. Fueled by ideology, us citizens donate to Everytown and the DNC, or the NRA and the RNC. Vile rhetoric froths and foams from the fringes, nothing gets solved, but a lot of money flows.

For the 98% of us not occupying the fringes, I would offer the following three facts that I believe we can all agree upon: There exists a certain amount of evil in the world that cannot be contained no matter, every mass shooter has some form of crazy, and that mass shootings were not a common occurrence until the last 23 years, specifically the last 13.

What is it that makes a person decide that killing a bunch of strangers is a really great idea? You and I can ponder this forever, but it will make zero sense to our rational and moral brains. Any solutions that we might generate are based on logic, but the perpetrators of these violent crimes are anything but logical and moral. Evil and Crazy exist, and we the general population are incapable of understanding the motivations driving these forces. The best we can do is acknowledge that Evil and Crazy exist.

Despite Columbine, mass shootings really didn’t start ramping up until 2010, with the AR-15 being glamorized as the "weapon of choice" after Sandy Hook in 2012. But what changed to make this happen? The detachable magazine rifle has been a known, commonly available product in our country since the end of World War II. Kids commonly brought guns with them to schools, to be used after class for drill teams, competitions, hunting, or just for fun, and no one batted an eye or cared in the least. Nothing bad happened.

The big question should not be what new law can we pass to "maybe" curtail evil and crazy, but what has changed that has driven evil and crazy to this level? When I hear phrases like “If it saves just one life,” “Deer don’t wear kevlar,” “Common sense anything,” or “A good first step”, I know that whatever will follow is hollow rhetoric, logically incomplete, and designed to fail while making a segment of the population feel good because they “had to do something.” The only problem is the something that they had to do only impacts the 99.9999999999% of gun owners who were never a threat to anyone, and will do nothing to prevent the next tragedy.

It is commonly pointed out that America is the only industrialized country where these tragedies happen, but we are not the only country with a firearms culture. Doesn’t anyone wonder what is so different about America as compared to  Finland, Switzerland, or Israel, to name a few? Yes our laws are different, but then again we don’t have compulsory military service and issue our teenagers true assault rifles and ammo to be kept on their person or at home. Assuming a certain amount of evil and crazy per 100,000 in any population, why do they not have the problems that we have?

Accusing the gun culture of relishing in the death of children for their own personal gain and immortality is disingenuous, accomplishes nothing except to further polarize the issue, and doesn’t solve the problem. Instead of the knee jerk reaction to demand more new better laws restricting guns, maybe we should first define the problem. Are gun-banners, the NRA and politicians the right people to answer the question of what changed with the evil and crazy? I would offer that psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, sociologists, etc. are more qualified to define the problem, study it and propose solutions that can be acted upon.

We spent how much time, resources and money investigating the Trump ‘Muh Russias nothing-burger, but in the last 23 years have managed nothing in regards to what makes these mass shooters tick? How their brains work? How to identify them? Most importantly, how to stop them? 

Finally, for those of you that think simply banning an evil inanimate object will solve the problem, it's pop quiz time. What was the biggest school massacre event, when was it perpetrated, and how was it carried out? After you look that up, be glad that our evil and crazy hasn’t been paying attention in chemistry class. Will depriving tens of millions of lawful gun owners of their property, which has not and will not cause you any harm but may one day be used to defend their home or family solve the problem? Your answer had better be more than “Well it’s a good first step.” Also, just what are you going to want to do after the next "common sense gun law" fails to stop the next tragedy?

If I was being cynical, I would come to the conclusion that our citizens are more interested in repeating unfounded opinions that they picked up on social media than asking questions, and our politicians are more interested in dividing the country for the purpose of gaining campaign donations and power than they are in solving the actual problem.

JIM BALDREE

Sagle