Back in March, some neanderthal shot up a couple of mosques in Christchurch, NZ, and I wrote a short post about it (here).
A few days ago, a 16 year old kid killed two of his classmates, wounded two more, before shooting himself in the head; he later died. It was his birthday. I don’t know – there’s something particularly horrific about a kid doing something like this…
And, of course, the condemnation of the NRA, not to mention every Republican in Washington, and the renewed calls for Congress to do something (i.e. disarm the people who had nothing to do with it), started before the crime scene was cleared.
Wrong. If you blame the NRA and its 5 million members, if you condemn one political party for what this kid did, you’re dead wrong.
If you’re going to point fingers, point them at the people who refuse to acknowledge the complexity of society’s problem with violence. Point your fingers at the people who won’t let us take the necessary interim steps to actually protect our kids. Point them at the people who want more dead children to politicize so they can consolidate their power, and turn their subjects into sheep.
Did you know that 89% of mass shootings occur in so-called “Gun Free Zones”? Point your finger at the proponents of that abysmally stupid idea.
Turn on your brain. Think, critically, analytically, logically. You want to end these shootings in schools and the workplace? Quit listening to the fearmongers, stop wringing your hands, and quit being a damned sheep.
As a society, we need to address the causes of violence, learn why the notoriety that’s attached to mass murderers leads others to commit these horrific crimes. Until we make those leaps in human understanding, there are interim steps that can be taken to protect our most vulnerable.
Education and training. Encourage parents to be involved in their children’s lives. Teach them how to recognize the red flags and give them an effective avenue to report them – students, too. Let those who volunteer to do so, who are thoroughly vetted and trained, be discretely armed against a worse-case scenario. Fund school resource officers.
Human nature hasn’t changed in the last 50 years, and 50 years ago there was no such thing as a school shooting. Availability of firearms hasn’t changed in that time, either. So until we understand and correct the actual root cause of the current wave of deadly violence, we need to take steps, now, to blunt it.
We can. We must. We can no longer allow these fearmongers to leave our children vulnerable.
Uncle John is NOT Happy 