We are by now, after dozens of mass shootings in the last year alone, accustomed to the drill. Someone, heavily armed, enters a normally peaceful venue and starts shooting, usually with a weapon that in a normal society, would be used only for war.
People die. Usually the shooter dies as well. Politicians and everyone on social media offers the meaningless “thoughts and prayers” condolences. Then there is a scramble to study the shooter’s motives. What was he thinking? Why did he do this? Police interview family and friends. There is a battle over prying open his smart phone in the hope that will yield some answers to this tragedy.
Mental health, of course, is a popular scapegoat, but perhaps not far off the mark. I’m not a mental health professional by any means, but it stands to reason that you must have some issues to randomly kill dozens of people.
Then, slowly (although with increasing speed lately as the shootings mount) media attention fades about as fast as the flowers left behind on the crime scene. We move onto the next tragedy.
This has become so common recently that we as a society have begun to treat these tragedies as yet another issue that must be dealt with the normal course of day to day life. Just as we need to prepare for power outages and flu season, we need to prepare for the “active shooter” situation. A recent opinion piece written by a security expert talks about the best ways to survive these situations (don’t just hide, he tells us, that just makes you an easier target). Following the latest shooting in Texas, one police official suggested that churches need to add an armed parishioner standing guard to their list of positions that used to include just the choir, ushers and minister.
And of course let’s not forget the National Rifle Association which advocates the use of armed “good guys” to “take down” the armed “bad guys.” In the NRA’s world, we would all be armed and deputized to take out the “bad guys,” whoever they may be.
This strikes me as insane (circling back to the mental health issue here). We seem to have accepted the inevitiablity of random gun violence in our society and are proposing various workarounds of dubious effectiveness without seriously asking the question: Why do we need so many guns?
If you think about it, firearms are poorly suited for humans. They are relatively inexpensive, very portable and unforgiving of the flaws in nature. We can emotional, impulsive, fearful. A simple mistake can lead to tragic results. Just ask the families of the thousands of people who are accidentially killed each by in gun accidents.
Yet our laws encourage gun ownership. Here in Maine you can buy a gun from your neighbor, no questions asked. Or walk into the nearest firearms store, complete a simple form and in a few days walk out with your latest purchase.
Guns are designed to kill. That is why they were invented. They serve no other purpose. Many of those who support their use argue the need for “personal protection.” This, like our current situation, strikes me as nutty. How many of us can truly say carrying a gun would actually make them safer? Unless, of course, it’s to protect us from mass shootings, but that circular logic just feeds back on itself creating an endless loop of crazy.
I am not comforted by the thought that the guy or gal walking next to me on the street, the one armed for “personal protection” who may have minimal (if any) training, will be able to help me the event of criminal assult on my person. I’m more more worried that the person, who, by the very fact that they are carrying a deadly weapon for the purpose has exhibited evidence of paranoia, will mistake me for their enemy and shoot me. Or that I will be caught in the crossfire between them and their perceived threat.