Mass Shootings

I have been struggling with writing this post for what feels like weeks, yet only a few days have passed. Mass shootings are terrible no matter where they occur and no matter who the targets are. It is gut wrenching to realize that one lone kook can break every social convention and open fire in a crowd. It makes us afraid, it makes us cautious, it is terrorizing. These shooters are criminal; no matter their rhetoric, no matter their mental health excuses, they are criminal and need to be removed from the rest of us.

Mass shootings are not new in America. Everyone tries to pretend that it started with Columbine. It didn’t. We started keeping track of public shootings then, but we had mass shootings before that. They happened in this country all the way back to the old west and probably even before that.

In the old movies it is not uncommon for the drunks to take their guns to the streets. In every western, gangs of criminals ride their horses into towns shooting and shouting to terrorize people. We all know the stories about the organized crime families and how they went to war with each other and the cops, killing plenty of innocent people. The news is filled with modern day gangs fighting over criminal territories, shooting in public places.

American society celebrates and in many cases glorifies gun violence and mass shooting. We write stories, we display it in films, we show the human side of the perpetrator as well as the victims. As sick as it is, it is part of our culture, our history, our society. If we want to change our societal perception of it, we have to institute some drastic change.

Intolerance and hate are also not new, and just like they have in the past, a government amplifying those feelings for a particular group will lead to increasing crimes against society whether they are violent or not, illegal or not. Recent acceptance of hate speech, intolerance, and promoting discrimination is bound to have societal consequences.

I wish I could believe that there was an easy solution to this kind of crime. Instead, what I do see is that many good and kind people are as horrified as I am, and that gives me hope that it is a human issue and together we can solve it.