The massacre in Connecticut is making some people say some really stupid things. You can’t stop gun-weilding mass murderers by training elementary school children to bum-rush them. You can’t explain the white male profile of spree-shooters by arguing that white men feel unneeded in modern society, nor can you plausibly argue that you can limit mass-killings by showing more empathy for the pain of eroding white-male privilege.
These women are idiots.
There are really only two main issues, and some ancillary ones to consider as well. Some of the recent shooters were severely mentally ill. This was certainly the case with the Tucson and Aurora shooters. We can do a better job of treating people with mental health issues.
Secondly, we can reduce the lethality of mass killings by making it much more difficult to obtain semiautomatic weapons and large ammunition clips. The Tucson shooter was disarmed when he was forced to reload. Unfortunately, his first ammunition clip contained 33 bullets. He killed six people and injured 13 more in just a few seconds. The Aurora shooter had a 100-round canister as well as a shotgun and handgun. He killed 12 people and injured 58 before the police arrived a mere 90 seconds after the shooting began.
It won’t always be possible to get people the mental health care they need, nor will it be possible to completely eradicate the availability of semiautomatic weapons or large magazine clips. That’s not the goal. The goal is to do our best.
We can consider, too, the role of violence in our culture, particularly in our popular entertainment. I don’t think it’s healthy. I think the producers of entertainment should make some voluntary changes. But we have to change.
We can’t tolerate this anymore.