Another Mass Shooting

Here we go again, another mass shooting – this time two in one day. Plus, we had another one a few days earlier or the week before. It seems to me that these incidences of mass shootings are accelerating.

All happening after the President’s constant racists comments, after the North Carolina rally goers’ chants of “send her back”, after a Floridian’s suggestion to “shoot them” during yet another rally.

It feels like Nazi Germany in the early thirties. Guys, we are in a deep dark place.

And still Moscow Mitch won’t bring any bipartisan bills to the floor.

It’s just insane.

You would have thought the slaughtering of children would have done the trick. Instead we get conspiracies from the fringe that it was a hoax.

You would have thought that last year’s slaughter in Parkland would have done the trick. Instead, the fringe says the eloquent high school kids were actors.

Now we get two in one day, plus another one occurring within the prior week. Will this do the trick? Will Congress do something this time? Most Americans, including gun owners, seem to be for some kind of gun control: banning assault weapons, doing something about the mentally ill, doing more stringent or expanding the background checks. Only time will tell whether Congress (Republicans) start to do something besides “thoughts and prayers”. We’ve had so many thoughts and prayers you would have thought, that by now, Republicans would realize that thoughts and prayers don’t work.

For now, it looks like Congress may move on the “red flag” laws where relatives or police can take away guns if they believe the person to be an imminent threat. Some says that this won’t work but it might help a little. It might be start to break the dam of inaction.

But in the meantime, there were a couple of things I learned that upends what I thought about what could be contributing to the mass slaughters.

For starters, doctors say that focusing on the mentally ill will not resolve the issue. In other words, it’s not a mental illness issue. That was surprising to read. I always thought, “yeah, you don’t want to have the mentally ill have access to guns.” But the medical profession says that mental illness does not always lead to violence. Most are not violent and we are needlessly stigmatizing them. But here’s what really got me: around the world, the level of mental illness is the same, and yet, other countries don’t have nearly the same level of violence as we do. Japan has the same level of mental illness and they have close to zero mass shootings. The difference appears to be access to guns.

So, I can cross out mental illness because the medical profession’s logic makes sense to me.

Secondly, researchers say videogames are really not the main precipitating factor in violence. Huh? Surely, with the shoot ‘em up pathos in the games, young boys playing those games would become anesthetized to the violence and would think a real shoot ‘em up in real life is just another game. But research has a nuance to the violent games: yes, playing violent games makes one more aggressive but if one is playing those games, then one is not out there shooting up people. Basically, it’s if you keep young men busy, then they can’t get into trouble.

Okay, that seems plausible, although it would be a perverse way of preventing violence: keep the boys busy playing violent games so that they can’t do the real thing.

There’s also the chicken and egg issue: do violent games really increase violent tendencies or is it those that already have violent tendencies play these games? The researchers may have already provided the answers and I just haven’t read it yet.

So…

The world thinks America has gone off the rails because we keep having these mass shootings and yet Congress does nothing. Other countries have put out travel warnings about our mass shootings. Just this past week, we had another young boy who thought it would be a lark to go to Walmart with body armor and an AK-15 weapon to test if Walmart really means about respecting 2nd Amendment rights. Are you kidding me? He also didn’t expect the reaction of the other shoppers: they ran, fleeing at the sight of him. How much dumber can you get?

I hate to say it guys, but America is no longer great. Between the rising crescendo of hatred and racism, the escalating mass shootings, and the expanding trade wars with multiple countries, the world no longer trusts us. We are now deep in Nazi-like era with the potential for much worse. It will be a couple of generations, if ever, before the world has respect for us.

Thanks, boomers. This will be your legacy. Not your Vietnam war protests or your civil rights or any other positive actions. It will be the Trump era you voted in – the stench of corruption, vulgarity and bigotry. This will be your legacy.