Our problems need the solution of collaboration

Stop blaming the other party, gender or age group and stand together as one, united country.

The country mourned again when a gunman in Las Vegas shot and killed nearly 60 people and injured almost 500. The inevitable question followed: Why did he do it?

Every time there is senseless violence, we think if we can answer that question, maybe we can be proactive and stop it from happening again.

Yet, it happens again, and we shake our collective heads and wonder what could’ve prevented it.

The discussions that ensue after mass shootings largely remain the same, reinvigorating the debate over stricter gun laws. One side holds up gun violence statistics and says we should limit gun sales.

Fewer guns will lead to less violence, they say. The other side tells you that additional good, upstanding people should arm themselves.

They suggest that knowing that the person next to you may be armed could stop someone considering violence.

Whether there are greater gun restrictions, or more guns, the larger problem remains: those set on doing violence will find a way.

Homemade bombs, vehicles and knives have all been used to kill and harm crowds. The casualties may be fewer, but the intent to kill or maim is the same.

The reality is that bad people will find a way to do bad things. Police agencies exist because people don’t follow the law.

Read daily recent arrest listings. Despite the gun laws that exist now, police file charges weekly against people for carrying firearms without a license or possessing firearms that criminal convictions preclude them from having. That is, mind you, not a suggestion that we throw our hands up and deem the gun debate worthless.

It isn’t; but it’s not going to be decided overnight, or even with a great deal of discussion. Rather, it is a call to look at our society and figure out what broke in it along the way.

The world seems unrecognizable some days.

Large scale, mass casualty violence is less of a shock than it was 20 years ago because it occurs with startling regularity.

Instead of reacting to each of these by wondering why each individual instance occurred, perhaps the solution is to look to our past and see what’s changed. Why and how did we get so off track?

Stop blaming the other political party, gender, religion or age group and stand together as one united country to figure out how we can make things better.

And stop, while you’re at it, believing that the pervasive, exclusionary divisions we buy into every day are not contributing to the problem.

Those divisions can make us deaf to the suggestions and thoughts of others with differing beliefs, because we’ve shut them out before we’ve heard them out.

Jason Aldean, the country singer on stage when Stephen Paddock killed and injured so many, in Las Vegas, released a statement.

It said, in part, “This world is becoming the kind of place I am afraid to raise my children in.

At the end of the day we aren’t Democrats or Republicans, whites or blacks, men or women. We are all humans and we are all Americans and it’s time to start acting like it and standing together as one.” He’s right. The free exchange of ideas, thoughts and opinions should not create an insurmountable boundary. A difference in age, skin color, gender or religion shouldn’t make a difference.

We should work as one to fix the problem of violence in our country.

Stop blaming the other political party, gender, religion or age group and stand together as one united country to figure out how we can make things better.