Every time there is a mass shooting, a cry goes out from people all over the United States to limit the ownership and use of lethal weapons. Mass shootings in California and Texas have prompted our president to suggest that we need better background checks and to somehow limit people with mental disorders from owning and acquiring guns.
Those are good ideas, but has anyone checked lately to see how many of the shooters were mentally incompetent or who would have been identified through a better background check? The answers are shocking. These shooters did not have any problem obtaining a weapon and were mentally competent. They knew precisely what they were going to do and exactly how to do it.
Our responses to mass shootings are reactionary -- that is, they are our response to what has happened and our intense desire to find a quick solution to the problem. Such responses may be psychologically and emotionally important to victims and others, but they are not good answers to the problem.
Let me be honest and extremely blunt: There is no way for our law enforcement agencies to provide protection for every individual or susceptible event. And it is impossible to remove lethal weapons from the people who own them in our country. There are millions and millions of guns already purchased and available. When Walmart and Dick's decided to remove ammunition from their stores, all that did was prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining bullets for their weapons (and will probably result in a rush to purchase ammunition); it did nothing to prevent a bad person from using a gun and shooting people. I know this sounds harsh, and I apologize, but it is the truth. It is simply impossible to keep bad people from obtaining guns while restricting them from the good guys.
We need desperately to address the systemic problems of violence in our country, and it is going to take years to undo what has already happened. I do not have all of the answers, but let me at least suggest three.
First, it is obvious that our country is no longer guided by Judeo-Christian principles and ethics. We might blame this on Hollywood, but it is much deeper than that. We do not teach "good neighbor" and mutual respect in our homes and schools, and our social media is full of just the opposite. I hear people offering prayers for victims but never see them actually praying to God. Public prayers are written and given for those in attendance, not for God's interaction. Our chaplains are now told not to end their prayers in the "name of Jesus," and there are even some atheists in our military chaplaincy. Our efforts to take God out of our schools and society have created a tremendous void of righteousness and instead have left a sea of ugliness.
Second, the traditional definition of a home as being a husband and wife with two children no longer exists. The proliferation of every conceivable lifestyle, the availability of easy divorce, and the delegating of parenting to schools and others have prevented families from nourishing children and bringing them up to know right from wrong. Too many of our youth are taught by the television and movie industry instead of law-abiding parents.
Third, it is equally as obvious that we have done a great job of teaching our youth how to be violent by exposing them to violent video games and social media. Violent media games are murder simulators. In July, 2000, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent psychiatry -- all of our doctors, our pediatricians, psychologists, and child psychologists -- made a joint statement to both houses of Congress claiming that over 1,000 studies point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children. They were ignored. And yet, these games use military training techniques to teach our youth how to kill with great accuracy.
In Paducah, Ky., Michael Corneal, a 14-year-old boy, fired eight shots into a prayer circle in his school and hit 8 out of 8 people in the head or upper torso. In the Adamou Diallo shooting, four NYPD officers fired 41 shots at an unarmed man at point-blank range and only hit him with 19 rounds. You get the picture. These killers have been well trained.
We control alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking to protect our people but not the violent media games from training our youth to be assassins.
The Wall Street Journal (9-5-2019) carried a story by Georgia Wells and Ian Lovett that further illustrates this problem. When Brenton Tarrant killed 50 people in New Zealand mosques, he became a hero for those using the dark web. Many of the mass murderers afterward paid their respect to him and sought to surpass the number of his killings. Mass shooters are revered on the web forums. Posts encourage attacks against mosques, synagogues, immigrants, feminists, black people and minority people; and a large number of fatalities are celebrated as "high scores."
When a gunman in West Texas opened fire, the forums lit up with people demanding to know his "kill count" and saying they hoped he shot Hispanics. It has now been documented that a very high number of mass shooters were active on the hate-filled forums before shooting. This has to be addressed in order to change our society.
I do not have the space to list all of the documentation supporting what I have just written, but suffice it to say that it is imperative that we begin to examine the basic root causes of violence in our society instead of simply reacting to it. If we do not train our children to be good adults when they grow up, if we refuse to address the violent forces leading them into crimes against humanity and if we do not rediscover the God who created us, we are in deep trouble and it will not go away with reactions that don't address the real issue.
Robert Box is the former chaplain for the Bella Vista Police Department and is currently the Fire Department chaplain. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 09/18/2019