It can no longer be denied: Gun Violence is as American as Apple Pie

There were six shootings over the span of the last 7 days in America that got national media attention and only two of them were mass shooting events.

…Let’s review, shall we?

• Alabama: This was the mass shooting event that happened over this weekend. Four people were killed at a birthday party including the brother of the birthday girl. As of Thursday evening, five people have been arrested in connection to the shooting that shocked the small community where it happened.
• Maine: This happened within the last 24 hours. A man just released from prison killed his parents and two of their friends upon arriving home. Shell casings and many bullet holes were found inside the home by law enforcement. The suspect was arrested later in the day.
• New York: This happened last week. A 20 year old woman was shot and killed after her traveling party pulled into a driveway while lost to turn around. No one exited the car. The homeowner, who was sitting on his poarch shot into the car without saying a word. He was later arrested but only after 911 dispatchers called his residence while law enforcement was outside him home to help convince him to surrender.
• Texas: This happened on Monday. Two high school cheerleaders were shot after mistakenly getting into the wrong car. They were wearing their cheerleader uniforms at the time they were shot. The suspect has been arrested and charged in the shootings.
• North Carolina: This happened Tuesday. A six year old girl and her parents were shot by a neighbor after a basketball accidently rolled into their neighbor’s yard. The girl was shot in the face but was later released but her father remains in the hospital in serious but stable condition. Her mother suffered a major injury. The neighbor turned himself in to law enforcement in Florida on Thursday.
• Kansas City, Missouri: This is the incident from last week that preceded the previous three and ensured the country knows about all of them. A 16 year old boy was shot by a homeowner when he accidently went to the wrong neighbor’s house to pick up his younger twin brothers. The neighbor has since been arrested and charged.

The thing about those last four cases that should not be overlooked is in all four cases, the shooters were legal gun owners. It completely destroys the lie the Gun Lobby and the NRA have pushed for decades: “The only bad guns are illegal guns”. It also reinforces their other favorite narrative “The solution to America’s problems are guns.” These are four cases in which the shooters clearly took that to heart, pun intended.

One other thing the incidents in Missouri, Texas and New York also have in common is in all three cases, the shooter claimed they felt in fear of their lives. I don’t think they’re lying about that but it doesn’t justify what they did. I want to be clear about that. There is a lot of fear, hysteria and paranoia being fomented by both political parties in this country. That’s undeniable no matter who you ask or where you live.

One thing ALL of these incidents also shatter is the myth that’s been pushed since the 1980s you don’t have to worry about gun violence as much if you live in Suburban or Rural areas. Most of these incidents happened in Rural or Suburban areas on that note. It doesn’t matter WHERE you live anymore.

You also need to no longer fear criminals with a gun as much as law-abiding citizens with a gun. This is what decades of paranoia and hysteria fomented by the NRA and the Gun Lobby brought us. This is what the worship of the second amendment and the romanticization of guns has brought us.

All this is nothing more than the natural result of America’s love of violence. I don’t mean war obviously but violence in media. That can and should not be denied or ignored any longer. Let’s be honest, most Americans are desensitized to violence because of a lifetime of being exposed to it in TV Shows, Movies, Video Games, the internet and other mediums. It’s not the acts of violence or murder itself but the attitudes expressed before, during and after said acts of violence or murder.

The negative effects violence in media have on kids has been known since the 1990s at this point. Well, those kids have grown up. This is to say nothing of Far Right media outlets telling their audience every day they are under attack and soforth and so on. How else can you have a nation filled with people who can and will shoot children without a shred of hesitation or remorse? I’m talking about ordinary law-abiding gun owners here.

This isn’t a mental illness problem. This is a problem of morality and culture in our society. As a reminder, America was born from a violent revolution and conflict. This isn’t a secret but for all but only 30 years of its existence, America has been involved in conflict or war. It’s all we know and we need to stop pretending otherise. America spends more money on its military or weapons research than the next 12 countries combined. That’s not a secret either and is a point of pride in the eyes of the government in particular.

There is the saying “In wartime, parents bury their children. In peacetime, children bury their parents.” Since the 1980s, more Americans across all ages have died to gun-related violence in the streets of America than all the conflicts that have happened since then combined. Again: This is not happening in any other modernized nation. Only in America.

 

Forget legislation. We need to start talking to each other as Americans. NOW.

Things can’t go on like this. Our society is too divided right now and honestly most don’t even know why. We’ve allowed our differences to cause us to separate ourselves from each other long before the pandemic happened. We allowed media outlets, politicians and pundits to dictate who we shouldn’t like and why no matter what.

The fact of the matter is we need to start talking to people who don’t share the same views and beliefs as us. We are on the fast track toward Civil War and most of us don’t know the how or why. I don’t pull punches when I talk about the things that are going on in our society. I’m not saying this lightly but sooner than later we are going to start seeing incidents on the scale of the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995) and the Boston Marathon Bombing (2013) in cities and small towns across America. It’s inevitable. It’s just a matter of when and where.

I need to make sure I end with this. I am not wishing bad things on anyone regardless of their political beliefs. I look at what’s going on–and to NOT look at what going on is exactly what some wants everyone to do–and can’t help but think of the hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives trying to come into this country in search of a better life with irony.

On that note. There are people in or from countries like Venezuela, Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, Myannmar, China, Russia, Syria, Iran and Nigeria who are trying to flee REAL persecution. Europe has largely closed their boarders to the African continent, the Middle East and Asia. Japan is known to have some of the strictest immigration policies in the world. America is about to descend into Civil War. I could go on and on.

My point is things may look bad now but buckle up. Things are for sure going to get much, MUCH worse. I never thought I’d say this but now might not be a bad idea for people regardless of their political ideologies or bloodline to seriously consider moving to another country and more specifically, a developing country. I’ll speak to that in a lot more detail in a future blog post.

 

 

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