America has just seen another mass shooting incident inside one of its schools. Without a doubt, there are no words of condolence that can be given to the families that have suffered the loss of a loved one’s life. Even those who walked out of the school without physical scars will suffer from the emotional impact for the rest of their lives. Everyone affected will replay the moments of that day over and over, trying to come to grips with the illogic of it all.
Of course, the politics of gun control immediately came out. Senator Kamala Harris (D) from California immediately came out with a tweet stating, “This cannot be a political issue. We have to have smart gun safety laws – our babies are being slaughtered.” Yet this clearly is a political issue. I hate to say it, but guns are not the cause.
With that being said, I am all for sensical laws that protect my family and others. In fact, I would be all for the complete disarming of everyone in the United States and repeal of the Second Amendment. All that I would ask is that you show me how that would stop gun crime. Would enacting such a law ensure that criminals could no longer acquire illegal guns? What about explosives? After all, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children, with a homemade car bomb. Can we find a way to stop those weapons?
It is simply delusional to believe that gun laws will stop these sorts of attacks. The problem is not the guns. Nor is it the laws. I remember when I was a teenager (about 100 years ago or so) going on vacation out of state to visit my cousins. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they would take rifles to school so that, immediately after, they could go hunting. There were no worries about them going into school and shooting up the classrooms. No laws were needed to keep them safe.
After World War II, scores of veterans returned home with trophies from the war. Weapons that were taken from the battlefield were not regulated to any degree at that time. In fact, it wasn’t until 1934 that the federal government enacted the National Firearms Act to regulate automatic rifles and the like.
There is a conversation that needs to take place here, but it needs to be from a place of reason, not reaction. People with truly altruistic motives would like to see us enact laws to ban rifles and guns. On the face, this seems to make sense. After all, laws are what protect us…right? Of course not; it is biology that protects us. Laws just help to give us those nudges to keep us within the lines. We, like every other animal out there, are hard-wired to not want to attack and kill within our own species. If not for this, our ancestors would have never left Africa over 200,000 years ago and eventually dominated the globe. This is not to say that we cannot commit incredible acts of violence and hate, but this is not the norm.
It is simply delusional to believe that gun laws will stop these sorts of attacks.
It is for this very reason that mass killing events are so rare, which they really are. Killing in a moment of passion is completely different from the act of murdering numerous people without cause or pretense. Even killing people in the act of self-defense is near impossible for the majority of normal people. It is for this very reason that military and law enforcement go through extensive training to overcome this evolutionary trait within us.
What we are left with are those people who suffer from psychopathy, or as the psychiatrists call it, Antisocial Personality Disorder, as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is the mental health bible. Bottom line for this diagnosis is the inability to have empathy for others.
Here is where the conversation begins to break down. It becomes difficult for many to accept that there are people who are simply so broken they would go out and commit such horrific acts. To them, these people should be as physically scarred as they are under the skin. To them, someone who is charismatic and normal looking (or even attractive) could not be a monster capable of destroying entire communities. Yet that is exactly the case, and going after the effect (the guns) will do nothing to stem the violence they cause.
Gun control is not the answer, but I stand shoulder to shoulder with those who demand that we do something to address school safety.
You protect no one when you disarm law-abiding citizens. By taking away my gun, you turn me into a potential victim. In 2016, the Crime Prevention Research Center published a study that showed how rare it is for people with concealed carry permits (CCP) to commit gun crimes. In fact, civilians with a CCP are less likely (even than the police) to be involved in criminal activities. The data collected in Florida and Texas showed that firearm-related crimes ran at 16.5 per 100,000 for law enforcement. For those with a CCP it was only 2.4 per 100,000. Additionally, as the number of people with CCPs has increased, the number of murders has decreased. I am not going to try to claim there is a direct relationship between these two facts, but it is certainly interesting enough to give pause.
Emotionally reacting to this issue will not solve anything. Those with evil intentions are going to find a way to commit their atrocities. Taking away people’s ability to protect themselves is not going to stop these senseless attacks.
Yet clearly, we cannot simply sit by and allow this to happen. One child murdered at school should be enough to shock us into taking some sort of action. I for one believe that most Americans, just like the majority of economically advanced nations, have lulled themselves into a false sense of security about the state of our country.
I remember getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan when I was assigned to the 4th Infantry Brigade out of Fort Campbell. I was lucky enough to be able to hear LTC(R) Dave Grossman speak to us about his research into Killology, the study of how killing affects people. During his lecture he spoke about the Beslan school attack in Russia. This is where terrorists attacked a Russian school, raping and killing over 300 people, most of them children. He went into detail about the planning and execution of this event, which was horrific and terrifying. Yet the scariest part of his story was when he stated that this attack was supposed to be a trial run for a school attack on American soil. Let that sink in for a moment.
To date, our school shootings have involved one or two untrained teenagers. What would be the damage with even three or four well-trained and equipped terrorists? A multi-phased attack, involving several schools in separate states, would shut down America overnight. Parents would refuse to send their children to school, many would not be able to go to work, and the psychological and fiscal damage would be beyond anything this nation has ever had to endure.
Gun control is not the answer, but I stand shoulder to shoulder with those who demand that we do something to address school safety. Unfortunately, I simply cannot see our government coming together and actually working to solve this issue. After all, the lives of our children are much less important than the potential political capital to be gained.
