First of all, no one should ever have to die from a mass shooter just as no one should have to die from a drunk driver, EEE, or a plane crash. Specific to the issue with mass shooters, we typically respond to them in a disproportionate way compared to the presented threat. You are far more likely to die on your drive to work than to be killed by a gunman but we accept the risk of being behind the wheel because we don’t feel the danger.
We should look at the numbers. Though there are a significant number of gun deaths in the US, as per the PEW Research Center, about 60% of them are suicides with 37% being homicide and another 3% classified as “Other” which includes such things as hunting accidents.
Those that were killed in mass shootings represent a small fraction of the gun murders. Though there is no agreed upon definition of “mass shooting”, the most liberal definition I could find has it at about 11% out of all murders. Using the FBI’s standards, it’s about 2.5% of all murders. Those numbers would drop if you were to include the suicide deaths but they’re pretty low as it is.
Though the number of deaths is relatively small, I will agree with many activists in that there is a problem that we should work to resolve. My issue is that we’re ignoring the actual causes of the problem because they don’t make for effective talking points. This is true with both leftists and conservatives.
Democrats love to blame the guns but that’s an ignorant solution because it doesn’t deal with the fact that we have people that want to kill others. Republicans seem to always blame every shooting on mental health but that too is lazy in that it doesn’t address the root causes for what made people so crazy in the first place.
Thought seemingly ignored when this has been brought up in Senate testimony, I believe that the root cause for these deaths is cultural. Some years ago, I was listening and agreeing with a doctor (PhD) testifying before Congress that a degradation in our society is the root cause for these deaths. Many of the cultural pillars that sustain our ethical and moral standards fall apart when families don’t stay together and individuals become isolated as a result. Such isolation can escalate to radicalization when such individuals harbor anger towards those that failed to include them.
So, what’s the fix?
I’m no expert in the matter but I believe that the best way to address social rifts is to talk to each other. The problem comes when social and political tribes start to exclude anyone that doesn’t think as they do. When you see me speak out against these kinds of talking points, it’s because they are exclusionary and they tend to come from people who refer to themselves as inclusive. This presents the obvious problem of dealing with people who don’t want to fix something because they don’t feel that it’s broken.
As we become more tribal, those at the extremes will want less to do with those on the opposite extreme. This gets worse when such things as free speech are challenged with a recent poll indicating that over 50% of those surveyed want to put legal restrictions on what people are allowed to say. This is to the point where those that would violate such proposed laws would be incarcerated. This presents open paths to a dystopian future that I would very much like to avoid.
Daryl Davis, an American R&B and blues musician, activist, author and actor has gained some notoriety by convincing 200 Ku Klux Klan members to leave the KKK. He now speaks at events where people with different views can openly talk to each other. This has effectively proven to deradicalize those at the extremes when they participate in these exchanges.
It’s no shock then that those on the far left have protested such events and even made threats against the venues where Davis and others work to end racism and the violence that comes from tribal polarization. We have working solutions that address the tribal violence that leads to mass shootings but we’re not adequately adopting them. Too many people would rather fight the enemy than make peace.
If we really want to address the mass shootings and other forms of deadly violence, we need to stop what is causing the desire to do harm to others. This is done by bringing people together, listening to each other, respecting those whose opinions we don’t agree with, and rejecting the tribal extremes that only serve to manifest hatred for people we don’t understand.
Jesus Christ once spoke of loving one’s enemy. This is quite literally the kind of logic that brings people together. For those that care about peace, it can happen if we listen to each other.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7613617/Americans-want-Amendment-changed-reflect-cultural-norms-today.html
https://www.inquirer.com/news/minds-irl-pitman-antifa-philadelphia-20190831.html
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes