One Hundred Mass Shootings in 64 Days
Over the course of 64 days from January 1st to March 8th, there were a total of one hundred mass shootings in America. Last week, there was a mass shooting in Hamburg, Germany at a Jehovah Witnesses church. A guy who was a former member of the congregation who’d left on bad terms went in there and shot and killed six people. That is only the fourth mass shooting Germany has had since the decade began three years ago. In comparison, America has had one hundred mass shootings in 64 days, which tells you something about the state of our country. I’m convinced our democratic society will not survive at this rate if mass shootings continue. The people in Hamburg were shaken to the core by the shooting that occurred this past weekend and one person even said the world has gone mad. That was the reaction of just one shooting. If there had been one hundred mass shootings in Germany over the past eight weeks, people would take to the streets and demand the government be shut down. I do not think our democracy is going to survive much longer because a democracy that cannot protect its people from mass murder is no democracy at all. I hope I am wrong, but I know what happens to nations that cannot protect their people - they go under, and usually the government that comes into power is much worse than the one that got kicked out in the first place.
As I’ve said before, there are two schools of thought about how to handle this. One is to ban guns and assault weapons and have extreme protection laws. The second says we need to focus on people instead of the guns. After all, a gun never shot anybody by itself; somebody had to be holding the gun to shoot, so we need to take measures a bring paddling back to the schools. By itself, gun control may not accomplish a whole lot because people are going to find a way to get a gun if they really want to, and by itself, paddling students in schools isn’t going to cure the underlying problem. What we need is a comprehensive national strategy to address this problem, one that can deal with the real root instead of the imaginary one. We need a comprehensive strategy and everything needs to be implemented simultaneously if we hope to bring this horror story under control. This strategy needs to include the following:
The President of the United States needs to declare mass shootings a national emergency. One hundred mass shootings in 64 days is a direct threat to our democratic way of life and needs to be put under control before this country collapses. Just one of these shootings can do a great deal of damage, like the one in Hamburg. This sort of thing happens literally every day in America. Therefore, the President needs to begin by declaring this a national emergency of a higher order and we need to deal with it.
The President needs to call for a nationwide conference and give one mandate and one mandate only - stop mass murder. We must come up with a strategy to stop it or we simply won’t have a democracy much longer. Instead, it’ll be replaced by some sort of authoritarian government with strong bureaucratic overtones. We would lose our rights, our freedom, and maybe even our lives.
We need public service announcements made night and day from one end of the nation to the other telling people that violence is wrong, it accomplishes nothing, and there are better options available. We also need a hotline for people who feel angry so they can call before they explode.
If we say we can help shooters, we better be able to back that up. If these people go for help and find out they can’t get it, what’s going to happen? Chances are, they’re going to get even angrier and be more likely to commit an act of mass violence. If we say we can help them, we better stay true to that or else we’ll be in even worse trouble than we are now. The number one problem with these shooters is that they don’t know how to handle the world. Many of them are bright and capable, but they don’t know how to handle things on a social and emotional level. In this day and age, if you can’t handle the world like that, you’re not going to live a happy life. We need a network of clinics nationwide staffed by people who understand the problems these emotionally disadvantaged people have and can teach them the skills they need to be successful. These people should be given job aptitude tests to find out what they’re good at so we can then give them the skills they need to thrive.
We need to have gun control laws and we need to ban assault weapons completely. That’s not going to stop all the gun violence, but it will put a big speed bump in the way. We can’t just sit back and wait for people to kill and wonder why they did it. We have to be proactive.
We are up against a massive problem and we must take immediate action; not just here and there, but altogether.