Just thinking about mass killings

 

Killings like Columbine, Las Vegas, and Sandy Hook.  I’m wondering what could be done to impede them.  I’m not necessarily an advocate for gun control.  It might be a good idea.  It might not.  I don’t know.  I am however, an advocate for a reduction in mass killings.

 

The issue of gun control has become so polarized that in any discussion, we immediately go to opposite corners and demand or resist political solutions.  That’s clearly not going to get us to any consensus.  I wonder though, if we were able to step away from debating gun control, and just ask if we have any semblance of agreement, as a people, that large scale violence, and mass killings are a problem, if we could come to any agreement; not agreement on a solution, just agreement that we have a problem.  That would be telling.

 

If we were to agree that mass killings are a problem, could we then agree that we should look for a solution to the problem?  If we could achieve that, we would need a most logical, least political, way to approach it; a way that would not start out with predetermined positions, a way that would not immediately offend gun control opponents or proponents, just a search for a logical solution.

 

This isn’t a problem that can be solved by one person or one idea.  A committee could work on it though; a nonpartisan committee to study the problem of mass violence and mass killings.  It would have to be nonpartisan, not bipartisan.  Bipartisan would suggest opposing factions right off the bat and likely go nowhere.  A responsible group of people, not beholden to political parties, could study the problem, identify the factors involved, imagine solutions, consider what other populations have tried in an effort to curb their problems, evaluate their successes and failures, and make recommendations about possible solutions in our country.  The recommendations might include restrictions on the availability of guns or they might not.  There might be a greater emphasis on education, counseling, or self-defense.  The recommendations might include more guns rather than less!  Whatever the results, we could then have our conversation about mass violence based on observable facts and experience, not speculation, hyperbole, or political interests.  That’s my fantasy.

 

Of course, my fantasy study has probably already been done a hundred times.  What sets us apart in the United States is what I allude to in the second paragraph.  We don’t agree we have a problem.  How can we solve a problem that doesn’t even exist?