#policynotprayers

Why is it that when a Muslim commits a mass shooting they are all terrorists and we need a travel ban, when a Latino commits a mass shooting we need a wall and when an African American commits a mass murder we pull up every minor infraction they may have committed since they could walk on their own two feet and every middle school photo of them with their middle finger in the air is plastered all over the news but when a white person commits a mass murderer the facts of how tragic his life was to lead him to this point is what’s on the TV and the only solution anyone can muster is to send their thoughts and their prayers?  

I can hear it now, this isn’t a race or religion issue, and where the act of mass shootings comes into play I will agree. In how we handle mass shootings, or in most cases pretend to handle mass shootings, race and religion most certainly play a factor. We somehow actually have a need for solution and the answer to go with it if the shooter is anything but white however if he is white we must just come together as one nation to send our thoughts and our prayers.

You will say race or religion isn’t a factor until race or religion is an attribute you want to blame but for the sake of argument let’s get to the real issue, the two factors that ultimately must be present to equal a mass shooting- guns and people.

I know, I know guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Why is it that everyone just recites that without realizing that all we are trying to do is get the people who kill people factor away from the gun factor?

Yes, cars kill people. Yes, heart disease kills people. Yes, drugs kill people. Yes, knives kill people. I have passed a test, have a license, registration and insurance on my car as well as a plate that gives my identity attached to the back of it. Millions of dollars are spent in the health care industry to prevent heart disease and other diseases like it. “Ban forks” A person who eats foods that lead to health problems are doing it to themselves and they cannot go into a school and do it to 17 others, and to be fair half of them probably can’t make a living wage in this country to afford better food to begin with. I cannot go to the store and buy Sudafed without showing my ID and with that I can only buy a limited quantity. I have been turned away from prescribed and necessary medications because of controlled substance laws and the next time that someone kills and injures over 900 people from a hotel bedroom, goes through a nightclub and murders over 50 people or puts our country through this repeated torture time and time again with a knife, I will consider sensible knife control too!

Of course, mass shooters don’t become mass shooters without other factors such as a troubled past, bullying, lack of parental guidance, lack of respect, mental illness and a multitude of other things. I am the first person to agree that raising children with respect is a step in the right direction toward creating more a compassionate, empathetic and less hate filled tomorrow. I am also the first person to agree that we need to implement changes to our mental health care system and the social, economic and emotional resources surrounding these troubled individuals, and I truly think these things will lessen the amount of violence our society is enduring. We need accessible and affordable healthcare and lawmakers that support it! However, people are dying right now.

Children are dying right now.

I don’t know about you, but I am not okay with waiting for the next generation of children to somehow be raised in a way to prevent this even if I hope so much that they will. I am not okay with waiting for every troubled person out there who needs help to gain the resources they need when people are dying right now. Getting help for these people is ultimately the solution but clearly there are already people out there who are mentally ill, fallen through the cracks however you want to put it who are going into places and killing our children. Clearly if this is the sole solution we are failing, and I am not okay with waiting for us to succeed.  One common denominator that comes after the mental illness, after the troubled past, that is there regardless of the race, is the gun. No, it is not the gun’s fault but if we could stop one person from giving a bad name to responsible gun owners everywhere why wouldn’t we? If a mandatory back ground check stopped even one mass shooting isn’t it worth the wait time until you can go to the range? If closing the gun show loop hole stops one of these troubled people with ill intentions from being the person behind that weapon isn’t it worth it? We have a people problem, clearly and those troubled people are utilizing one tool time and time again. Why would we not make it even the slightest bit harder to walk into our schools and mass murder our children.

I am not saying that sensible gun control will stop every one of these tragedies from happening but if we can save as many lives as possible until we fix the people problem why would we not?

I hope that the next time something like this happens there is a “good guy”, someone responsibly armed and skilled enough around to prevent such tragedy and I also believe that responsibly armed person could still be there if sensible gun control were in place but maybe just maybe, they wouldn’t even have cause to draw their weapon. So yes, guns don’t kill people, people kill people and it is the people I want mandatory background checks on, it is the people I want licensed, it is the ill-intentioned people using the gun show loophole that I want it closed for and it is the people I want to hold responsible, not the gun. No one that I have seen arguing for gun control wishes to take away a responsible gun owner’s right to defend their family, hunt or shoot for sport we want to keep them from people with much colder intentions, intentions the majority of people, good people don’t even want to imagine possible and if a responsible gun owner is what you are I see no reason to be afraid.