This is the eighth column I have written about a mass shooting since the Columbine school massacre in 1999. I am just as fed up with these tragic incidents as President Barack Obama was when he spoke hours after the latest shooting Oct. 1 at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. The tragedy left nine students dead, in addition to the gunman, who took his own life.
I am so disgusted I am not even going to criticize the president when he said, “We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.”
I’ll let the right-wing political pundits such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity at Fox News bring up Chicago when it comes to how the state of Illinois has the strictest gun laws and just about every weekend the body count in the Windy City continues to reign with double digits.
I get so tired of hearing about how these shooters attempted to seek, refused to seek or were undergoing psychological counseling before they went off the deep end. The red flags consistently were missed every time these tragedies occurred.
Most of all, I am sick and tired of politicians using such tragedies as a means to get on their political soapboxes about how more stringent gun control laws need to be put on the books to stop these tragedies from happening. It’s nothing but talk.
Three days after the shooting at Umpqua Community College, it was reported four students were arrested in northern California for plotting to carry out a similar Columbine-style attack at Summerville High School in Tuolumne. I don’t believe for one minute that if California had the same stringent gun laws that Illinois has such a mass shooting would have been prevented. If someone is intent on killing, it doesn’t matter how he got the gun. Nor does it matter how many rounds the weapon can fire so long as the person can take out a few people before his cowardly act of turning the gun on himself.
Let’s face it: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Politicians in Washington have been debating the gun control issue since the deaths of the Kennedys in the ‘60s, Beatle John Lennon in 1980 and President Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassination in 1981. Both of the last two assailants were mentally ill.
We have gotten nowhere. Every incident since Columbine has been, as Obama called it in his speech, “routine.”
Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump said on CNN’s “New Day” this “…isn’t a gun problem. This is a mental problem. It’s not a question of the laws. It’s really the people.”
Commenting about the problem and actually doing something about it are two different things. I don’t think a presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, has ever said during their campaigns what they intend to do about treating the mentally ill in this country.
Maybe it’s time for them to start.
©10/14/15
I am so disgusted I am not even going to criticize the president when he said, “We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.”
I’ll let the right-wing political pundits such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity at Fox News bring up Chicago when it comes to how the state of Illinois has the strictest gun laws and just about every weekend the body count in the Windy City continues to reign with double digits.
I am tired of hearing the names of the dead and their young ages being read off by law enforcement officers at crime scenes. I’m also tired of the “drive-by” media, acting like vampires in need of fresh blood who hope the more people killed, the more they can keep the tragedy alive, reporting it for days.“That’s not the son I raised” would be among the many responses from the parents.
I am tired of hearing from survivors recounting their horror with stories about how the killer in this latest shooting asked students about the religion and, depending on their answer, would either shoot them in the head or the leg. I am tired of hearing survivors talk about how this is not how they envisioned their fifth day in college to be.
I am tired of hearing from friends and family members of these shooters about how they had no idea the person was planning to commit mass murder.
I get so tired of hearing about how these shooters attempted to seek, refused to seek or were undergoing psychological counseling before they went off the deep end. The red flags consistently were missed every time these tragedies occurred.
Most of all, I am sick and tired of politicians using such tragedies as a means to get on their political soapboxes about how more stringent gun control laws need to be put on the books to stop these tragedies from happening. It’s nothing but talk.
Three days after the shooting at Umpqua Community College, it was reported four students were arrested in northern California for plotting to carry out a similar Columbine-style attack at Summerville High School in Tuolumne. I don’t believe for one minute that if California had the same stringent gun laws that Illinois has such a mass shooting would have been prevented. If someone is intent on killing, it doesn’t matter how he got the gun. Nor does it matter how many rounds the weapon can fire so long as the person can take out a few people before his cowardly act of turning the gun on himself.
Let’s face it: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Politicians in Washington have been debating the gun control issue since the deaths of the Kennedys in the ‘60s, Beatle John Lennon in 1980 and President Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassination in 1981. Both of the last two assailants were mentally ill.
We have gotten nowhere. Every incident since Columbine has been, as Obama called it in his speech, “routine.”
In the coming weeks or months, though I hope it doesn’t happen (and that’s wishful thinking on my part), another mass shooting will occur on another campus. Obama and the rest of the country will express the same shock and go through that same routine all over again. Campus newspapers will do more predictable news stories interviewing campus police and administrators asking what are they doing to keep students safe and there will likely be more regurgitated editorials and columns.Treating the mentally ill is the only way these mass shootings will stop. I have always believed that, based on the treatment (or lack thereof) these mass murderers were receiving.
Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump said on CNN’s “New Day” this “…isn’t a gun problem. This is a mental problem. It’s not a question of the laws. It’s really the people.”
Commenting about the problem and actually doing something about it are two different things. I don’t think a presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, has ever said during their campaigns what they intend to do about treating the mentally ill in this country.
Maybe it’s time for them to start.
©10/14/15
No comments:
Post a Comment