Words alone won’t stop mass shootings
America is once more facing a moment where thoughts and prayers are going to be the only response we will have to a mass shooting. We are somehow trapped in a Groundhog Day of tragedies while leaders on both sides find new ways to rearrange the old words in arguments none of us believe while doing absolutely nothing to stop the next shooting.
Yet Americans from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly want something to be done.
While one side argues passionately for ways to restrict access to guns and the other insists that it is a mental health problem, I am reminded of Shakespeare’s Claudius, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
Our political leaders fill the airwaves, print media, and online spaces with words aimed at their bases, but the problem remains unaddressed.
We are often told that “now is not the time to politicize this.” But we have had nearly 250 mass shootings so far in 2022. That is, on average, about 15 hours and 33 minutes between mass shootings.
That means that in America, we are always in the immediate wake of a mass shooting. There is no time when we are not, therefore we must talk about it now.
I am calling on our elected officials at every level to seriously consider all options regardless of who proposes them and to whom they cater. I am calling on all voters to press our leaders to start agreeing with one another, make concessions, and reach compromises instead of playing only to their most polarized constituents. Some 40,000 Americans are dying each year from gunshot wounds, it is time for leaders to do their jobs and voters to do ours.
To those who say that this is a mental health issue, no one denies that this is the case. To address this mental health issue, though, we will have to invest in substantial increases in access to mental healthcare. This would necessarily mean expanding Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, and finding a way to compel insurance companies to increase mental health benefits for those with private insurance.
Most of us value our privacy, but we may need to modify HIPAA in order to share information to make red flag laws work.
We should also bolster social and emotional learning in schools, not attack it, because a fair number of the shooters are young people. Perhaps with more social and emotional tools at their disposal, this mental health problem could be identified early on by educators.
This is a mental health problem, and we need to provide solutions and fund them.
I value our Second Amendment rights. But the right to bear arms is not absolute and it is time for us to look for ways to make gun ownership safer. If that means reexamining the Second Amendment, the founders provided us a mechanism to do that if two thirds of Americans agreed. Right now, more than two thirds of American voters support red flag laws, universal background checks, and mental health restrictions for gun ownership, none of which would stop people from legally owning firearms.
No, this will not stop every shooting, but if it stops a few without denying law abiding citizens their rights, then we have to put it on the table.
Some have proposed that we need to harden our schools, churches, and other public spaces. I confess —even though I have four children in school — I think this idea is awful. I hate the idea of kids having to go through a security checkpoint to get into their school. School is supposed to be safe, no checkpoints necessary. Moreover, there are over 130,000 K-12 schools in America. Outfitting each with a TSAlike level of security would take billions of dollars of equipment and millions of people to operate that equipment.
But I want to see that on the table too, because doing nothing is not working.
I want all the options on the table. Where I come from, if you can do something to save a life, then you have a moral imperative to do it. And where I come from is America.
It is time to see our words, our thoughts, and our actions all take flight, because it does not take long for a clock to count off 15 hours and 33 minutes.