Another Mass Shooting. Ho Hum; Thoughts and Prayers

 

Happy Fourth of July, America! My celebration will have a cloud over it.

Two more mass shootings overnight; ten in the last seven days (and today isn’t half over yet!) Eleven people killed, eighty wounded, and only two shooter/suspects arrested. More than 200 thus far this year, and in each of the last three years more than 600, averaging almost two per day! 4243 mass shooting deaths in the last 9½ years (source: Gun Violence Archive ~ ​How many US mass shootings have there been in 2023? - BBC News). The numbers are devastating, and the fact that it continues unabated and unchallenged is completely baffling.

Why is nobody with authority and position doing anything concrete to stop this? The second amendment is sacrosanct and permanent. For at least the next several generations there will never be enough votes in congress, nor enough states in the union to overturn it. And its unflinching cult will not consider any boundaries or limitations or qualifications. So eliminating firearms is not the answer (even if firearms were the problem. Firearms, in themselves, are neither good nor bad. They’re just tools, no better or worse than the one who wields them.)

There are gun owners all along the left/right political spectrum, so ownership is not really a partisan issue.  I have had guns in my home; although, they never came out of the closet, and I never had ammunition for them (they were my father’s and I “inherited” them when he and Mom broke up housekeeping. I later gave them to my brother-in-law, who lives on an rural acreage where varmints abound.)

What seems to be partisan is not gun ownership but the intensity of devotion to the constitutional right “to keep and bear arms.” At some point that devotion reaches a critical mass of oblivion that gives priority to gun ownership while overlooking more than 4243 human lives senselessly and preventably lost over 9½ years.

The left has no answer other than some level of gun limitation rhetoric. That ain’t happennin’ for the reasons stated above.

The right has only a knee-jerk, dismissive liturgy, viz., mental illness; however, the right also has engineered legislation to remove public assistance for mental health issues, even though, by the very nature of mental illness, those who suffer from it most likely are unable to fend for themselves or pay their own way. [Most homeless people are dealing with some form of mental health issue; but that’s fodder for another blog.]

By now I suspect that a significant number of mass shootings are “copycat” occurrences that manifest a growing insensitivity to violence of any form. After all, how many generations have grown up seeing all kinds of violence in movies, TV shows, video games, and the nightly news? Eventually, the mental, emotional, and moral callouses form.

How does a society of 332 million people acknowledge and own the need for a values adjustment? If we can’t legislate our way out of this inexcusably immoral acceptance of violence, how might we demand—demand—that all media redirect its efforts toward a more just and honorable society? I know: follow the money.

I’m left disbelieving. Why?

I have no proven answers, but I’m willing to join any credible movement to create them. Such a movement of necessity must be non-partisan and zero-based, and the resistance will be formidable. Until that can happen, I return to my opening question: why are those with authority and position doing nothing? Do something; even if it’s wrong!


That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

 


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