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In case you haven't heard, there's "No Way To Prevent This", says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. Also Mass Shootings [are] Just the Unfortunate Price Of Protecting People's Freedom to Commit Mass Shootings.
You shouldn't try to do something about guns right after another mass shooting, right? Clearly emotions are running too high, clearly we won't have the right answers right now. Lucky for us there's technically a mass shooting every day. So we never should talk about gun control, emotions are always running too high.
The first time I shot a gun I as around the age of 14, I was at a week long Boy Scout camp, it was fun. Obviously we were taught to be careful around a weapon, but kids sometimes still messed up. Pointing the gun somewhere other than downrange will get an instructor yelling at you instantly. And for good reason, guns are fucking dangerous.
Guns are deeply engrained in American culture. The Revolutionary War, our founding fathers fighting for their freedom, and the freedom of our country. The Wild West, living lawless and living off the land. World War 1 and World War 2, we are fed stories of Americans fighting for our and other peoples freedoms. You see guns in media all the time. One of my favorite video game genres is shooters. Guns are as American as apple pie and baseball. And that's a problem.
Americans can't even get over the fact that the South broke off from the North because they believed black "people" were inferior and should always be slaves. People fly confederate flags and still try to protect confederate monuments because they say it's part of their culture. Guns go even farther back than that. It's even written into our Bill of Rights.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Some people see guns synonymous with freedom; if you take our guns away you take our freedom away. It's hard to fight that image, it's hard to separate the idea of guns from the idea of American culture. We've been fed this image of America for all of our life, it's extremely hard to shake, and tragedy alone won't shake it.
If we do start to talk about gun control, and we all know we won't but let's entertain the idea, we all know it's a hard problem to fix. Even if guns and American culture weren't butt buddies there are a lot of challenges in order to enact gun control. How would we ban all guns? How would we limit gun sales? How would we decrease access to guns? How would we reduce the number of guns in the country?
We can also talk about mental health issues.
Because the actions of this gunman don't smear anyone else who looks like him.
However, talking about mental health issues is just as hard as talking about guns. Which is also probably why nothing has been done in that regard either. As always, the easiest thing is to do nothing.
I read comments online, which is always a bad idea, that always bring up the last portion of the Second Amendment, shall not be infringed. It's always then fun to remember that amendments can be changed, with other amendments. Just like how the Eighteenth Amendment, the prohibition of alcohol, was repealed with the Twenty-first Amendment. It's OK to have limits on things, even with the First Amendment it's illegal to threaten to kill somebody. America is still pretty free, even if we can't legally threaten to kill each other.
The sun rising in the east, Boston having the greatest sports dynasty, and mass shootings, we just accept these things to be a fact of living in America. But they don't all have to be. If we come together as a country we can put a stop to Bill Belichick and his henchman Tom Brady. Let us all follow in Roger Goodell's footsteps. But for real, if 20 children between the ages of six and seven can be shot to death without any change any subsequent shooting won't make a difference.