Shooting Innocent Children

A regional variant

Published 2023-03-31

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Nashville

The recent Nashville shootings gained a brief moment of attention. Attention has not been given towards USA’s endemic gun violence.

A "mass shooting" means that 5 or more persons were killed in a single incident, not including the police potentially killing the person(s) firing.

This happens, on average, more than once every single day in the USA.

Every single day

Micheal Moore's efforts with Bowling for Columbine, two decades ago, has created no change.

Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida gained national attention for their brave and eloquent responses to the deaths of their friends. To this day, every day, these tragedies continue.

A member of the USA congress recently declared that he’s not going to fix this.

This is, thus, an endemic sickness. I am not a statistician. I don't work for the police, but I think I can see a few root causes.

There must have been thousands of academic articles gathering raw data and reaching conclusions from their data published by USA universities. Yet Tim Burchett says we can't do anything about it; 5+ civilians being killed every day in single incident gunfire?!

Something is broken

This plague cannot be solved by a single measure. It requires a spectrum of responses from the national and most importantly state governments to address it.

What are the roots, the core challenges? Not having read the academic research I may well be missing a bit here, but I'll fling a few obvious ideas into the discourse.

Historically, the mass shooting at Port Arthur in Tasmania led Australia to drastically change its gun laws. The result is that the most common weapon for homicide in Australia is not a gun, but a knife. With a knife you have to chase the person, which naturally reduces the volume of victims.

Australia has homocide. The USA gets mass shootings.

The Gun or the System?

One may say that the guns are not the problem, for they don't fire themselves. True. They are fired by people who need psychological care, which is denied to them via the design of the USA "health care" system. The problem is neither the individual nor their family which cannot afford to provide the required psychological help. It is the system itself.

One may call out rapid fire magazine type weapons like the AR-15. Yeah, sure. But is that the root cause or is that the mechanism?

One can throw racism into this mix, which is only a partial answer. Yes, it exists, the lynchings are well documented. I feel a deeper societal problem which is raising these animosities. It's called poverty.

So, if you don't want 3 innocent children and 3 innocent adults shot down at an event in Nashville, or an equivalent happening every single day across your country, how can this be achieved?

The answer is the people's house, the Congress. Policies need be implemented.

Here's a sketchy suggestion:

1. All military grade weapons are reclaimed, refunded and prohibited from sale, similar to the Australian case. Yes, there are grey areas. Is a nine magazine glock more or less dangerous that some other side arm? But, this is the job of legislatures. Get on with it.

2. National insurance based health care, so that people needing mental health care can receive the help they need.

This identifies why it does not happen. Two of the strongest political organizers, or bribers, in USA politics the weaponry and health sectors, are aligned against these remedies.

Profits are placing children in coffins.

Restoring The People

This is not insurmountable. USA's citizens can align and organize. Members of the legislature are not invulnerable, especially not at the state level. Ignore the national congress. Recall the power that each state possesses.

Use it!

Sources

Port Arthur massacre, National Museum of Australia

Nashville school shooting updates: Metro police release 911 calls from inside school, Nick Gray, Diana LeyvA, Craig Shoup, Kirsten Fiscus, Rachel Wegner, Melissa Brown, Andy Humbles, The Tennessean, 2023-03-30

Bowling for Columbine, Wikipedia

These are the Florida students behind the movement to end gun violence, Jaweed Kaleem, Nina Agrawal, Los Angelese Times, 2018-02-23

How the Parkland Students Pulled off a Massive National Protest in Only 5 Weeks, [no author], Facing History & Ourselves, 2021-01-11

Culture

Sinéad O'Connor - I Am Stretched on Your Grave - 1990, from the album “I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got”, uploaded by a fan, 2014-01-18

• The video is irrelevant. Listen.

Dedicated to mental health workers.

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