Fifteen mass shootings in the last four years. The number of lives lost and altered forever is unmeasurable. Before I start this, let me provide you some background on me about the subject at hand. I am not a gun owner, but have owned a gun in the past. I am not anti-gun, nor am I pro-gun. I have many friends that have guns, and hunt and shoot regularly. I also have many friends who are not gun owners. In my life, the gun issue is not important. Nor am I convinced that guns are the only problem here.
I have no concern about folks owning and using guns. Most do so with specific purposes. Primarily, they are hunters; but many are also target shooters. They take firearms seriously and treat them with the respect they merit. Some even own them with the primary purpose of defending themselves and their property.
Where I get concerned is those firearms that were primarily created for use in military situations being available to the general public. It may just be me, but I see no purpose in someone owning a Bushmaster .223 with a 30 round clip. Unless you are hunting charging packs of wild dogs, I don't see the sport benefit of that kind of firepower.
Do I believe that we can legislate the problem away by banning such weapons? No. Should such weapons be available as easily as they are? Yes. Then again, I am curious as to what purpose in a civilized society there is in having ballistic armor so easily available too.
Ours is a culture that is increasingly desensitized to the whole idea of violence. Yeah, I include myself. Our favorite sport is an unapologetically violent game played by helmet clad warriors. We have dramas on TV that deal in multiple murders and other acts of violence per episode. The top box office movies are often violent affairs. The top ranked video games are all violent and martial in nature. Does this play a factor in these mass shootings, I do not know. I leave that to psychologists and other researchers to determine. (Sadly, the ones who could provide insight kill themselves more often than not.)
Does mental illness play a factor in these kind of events. Again I don't know for certain. It sure does seem that the media defaults to this explanation. I do know that our courts have consistently held that you can not force the mentally ill to stay on medication. We also have made a societal decision that treatment should be on an outpatient basis. Could this be a factor as well? Again, I do not have an answer.
Sadly, in surfing the net, reading Twitter and Facebook feeds it is clear to me that folks on the political extremes are already in their default positions. Ban all guns vs. the 2nd Amendment. This rigidity will not solve anything. To me the common sense approach is for us to look at all these shootings in an analytical way and determine what factors we can address and fix them.
