Assault rifles can do only one thing – kill people. They are not built for hunting and they are not built for protection at home; they are military weapons designed for use in war to kill enemy soldiers in battle. That’s all they’re good for. Why would you want to have an assault rifle? Many people who buy assault weapons believe guns are the ultimate power and think that killing others gives them the power of a God. That’s why these people go on rampages with assault weapons. Many shooters are failures at life - in social instances, in employment, and in doing good in the world. A lot of them have domestic violence convictions and don’t know how to resolve conflict, so they use brute force. The only way they know how to solve their problems is with violence - either beating somebody up or shooting them with a gun. We need public service announcements on every major TV and radio station in the country telling people there is help and we can acquire a better power than the power of a gun. If you use a gun and kill people, you’re either going to end up dead or in prison for the rest of your life. Having a gun does not make you powerful. There are better options than that. We can give you social and emotional skills that will make you far more powerful than you could ever be with a gun. The real power is the ability to manage the world. It is the ability to have skills that enable you to be a success, to have a family and a job, to do something good to make the world a better place.
When somebody wants to buy an assault weapon, we need to be asking them: What do you want this for? Why do you feel you need it? Does it make you feel powerful? Does it make you feel like you can get revenge on the world and pay humanity back for all it’s done to you? After all, it’s no fun to feel like you’re a loser. You don’t need to be a loser. You don’t need to have an assault weapon to kill people with. You don’t need to walk into a grocery store or school or church and start shooting. You don’t have to do that in order to get back at the world for condemning you with a life with no future. That’s what a lot of these shooters are going through, but they can do better than that. No one enjoys living a life of bare survival in which you’re constantly hanging on the edge, living purgatory at best and hell at worst. If you’re living a life like that, why not take a gun and kill people? That’s the mentality we need to combat. We need to get the word out that assault weapons are not the answer and that a gun is no power at all. There are better solutions than getting a gun and killing people. We can help you with that. We can show you a much better way to manage the world. We need to train mental health professionals and teach them how they can use things like person-centered planning, self-determination, and building on strengths instead of weaknesses.
If we don’t stop this wave of mass murder, we’re not going to have a democracy much longer. We will lose our freedom, but that doesn’t have to happen. We don’t have to give up our freedom in order to protect our children in schools. There are better alternatives.