Opinion: A Five-Pronged Approach to Address Mass Shootings
Enough with the politicians grandstanding. It’s time to discuss an actual plan.
In the wake of another horrific mass shooting, this time in my city of residence, I find myself once again infuriated by the lack of any realistic proposed action plans. The pattern of response remains the same on both sides of the political aisle. The Conservative Right will send hollow condolences, emotionless “thoughts and prayers,” and attempt to continue on as though nothing is amiss and everything is fine. Meanwhile, the Liberal Left will launch an all-out assault on self defense doctirne, literally accusing people of Accessory to Murder for wanting to defend their family with firearms and targeting innocent gun owners while ignoring the actual perpetrators’ crimes. Mass shootings will trigger an emotional and panicked response; that’s the reaction of a normal human being. Even as the “Love over Hate” banners wave, I can’t feel anything other than hatred for the shooter. But after the shock and horror subsides, we have to start transitioning into an action plan. After years of listening to both sides’ arguments, concerns, and goals, I believe this five-pronged plan is a good step in the right direction.
End the fantasy
Heal the minds
Harden the defenses
Arm the citizenry
Punish the perpetrators
This is not a subject or a proposition I take lightly, and the issue is not one that I speak of with nonchalance. I am well-versed in both sides’ arguments, and would wager that I have studied this topic more heavily and from more angles than much of the general public. I read research studies; read through the actual bills, laws, and propositions; listen to figureheads and activists; study news articles; study crime statistics; understand the mechanics of the weapons themselves; and have an understanding of drugs and SSRIs. But more importantly and unlike pro-gun activist X or anti-gun activist Y, I listen to my fellow Americans on all sides of the political spectrum and from all different backgrounds.
The two sides at odds with each other on this issue don’t differ on their goals; they both want to protect lives. They simply disagree on how to go about doing that. But in digging their heels in, you end up with extremist politicians who don’t care about Americans in the first place grandstanding for views and votes. This leads to a gridlock and the reason why this problem keeps getting worse: we keep talking, and never actually doing anything.
This plan does not include a disarmament of the civilian populace. For an expanded article on why this website opposes that solution, you can read one of our articles here. For information on common miconceptions about the AR-15, you can read this article here. We are always working on more, so stay tuned.
I’m not trying to assert or insist that this plan is the plan; that would be short sighted and narcissistic. But I believe that this plan comes closer to balancing perspectives than anything the Republicans or Democrats have presented. The reason I believe this is because my plan is not paid for by a political party or external organization. I believe that this five-pronged plan is one of the first to address the mass shooting problem while simultaneously preserving the Bill of Rights, in its entirety, as it is written, as it was intended.
NOTE
The following article contains topics and descriptions that some may find distressing. If you are sensitive to the topics of death, mass murder, and firearms, please do not continue reading
Clarification on the term “Mass Shooting”
When you hear that 2021 experienced 698 mass shootings, that paints the picture that there were 698 “Columbines.” But in fact, the term “mass shooting” has a much more broad application, and includes events that the general public may never think would classify as a mass shooting. The term is defined differently across the world, but the U.S. applies it for a casualty count of three or more, and “casualties” include injuries as well as deaths. This means that the March 19th shooting in Dumas, AR classifies as a mass shooting; despite killing only 1, it injured 26 and therefore meets the criteria of a mass shooting. The term also includes domestic murder-suicides like the January 28th shooting in Goodlettsville, TN. Despite being contained to a single family home rather than targeting a random populated area like a school or theater, it claimed the lives of 4 and classifies as a mass shooting. It also includes gang war activity, like an April 3rd shooting in Sacramento between Crips and Bloods that killed 6 and injured 12, despite being organized gang combat and not random killing of innocent civilians. If we are going to arrive at a solution, we have to start being honest and transparent about the statistics we're touting.
End the Fantasy
The uncomfortable truth of western civilization is that we deify the bad guys. Look no further than our culture’s obsession with international supervillains like Adolf Hitler, or domestic psychopaths like Ted Bundy. I’m a firm believer that we can understand a perpetrator without supporting them. We should study the psychology and paths of evil people so that we can better prevent future ones from growing and defeat them if they arrive. But in that quest of understanding, we lift these sub-human savages to god-tier status with our media coverage, and in many cases, that’s exactly what they want. Few other subjects ring truer than mass shootings.
The Eaton Township Weiss Market shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter, and even the murderers of Cassie Jo Stoddart have expressed in interrogation and manifesto that they were inspired specifically by the Columbine killers. Columbine represented a horrific paradigm shift that spawned copycat criminals and kickstarted the modern American trend of theatrical mass killings. This incentive structure of achieving media immortality must be expunged. Why is it that everyone knows the names of the killers who perpetrated Columbine, but nobody can name Patti Nielsen, the teacher who alerted students to take cover while simultaneously giving 9-1-1 direct information while the massacre was still taking place feet away from her?
The 24-hour news cycle and the internet clickbait phenomenon has played a huge role in the deifying of evil. The argument is to know the psychology behind someone that could commit such a heinous act. But I would argue that with how many mass shootings have occurred in the U.S., we have more than enough data and knowledge to begin an educated study of the psychology of mass murderers. There have been so many shootings. We don’t need to continue delving into these shooters’ lives, and plastering their manifestos across the news screen for the world to gawk at.
WHY DO WE CARE?
Why are we giving so much attention to people who have committed literal acts of terrorism against our family members, friends, children, siblings, parents, and lovers.
WHY. DO. WE. CARE?
Whether it’s Fox News or CNN, the commonality is painting the headlines with the killers’ names, and seeing these psychopaths have their names emblazoned on the ticker is infuriating. We have to be careful about approaching the extremes; there is a balance between literally reading their manifestos on air and literally throwing them in an unmarked grave. We need to know who is responsible and why, but we don’t need to give them the satisfaction of immortalizing them on our screens and in our minds. These shooters’ actions have far outlived them, and carried their name into the annals of the history books. The notoriety and fame they could never garner by themselves they reach for through the act of mass murder. We must put our foot down and send a clear message: History Will Forget You.
“Ending the Fantasy” means removing the incentive structure of media immortality, and ceasing to fulfill psychopaths’ dreams of fame through infamy.
Heal the Minds
It’s easy and tempting to simply write shooters off as simply “evil.” While some definitely fit the definition and are completely lucid during their attack, motivated by rage, hatred, and nihilism, there is also a huge commonality between these shooters; drugs.
In this part of the plan, I defer to people who are actual experts in medicine; I’m not going to attempt to assert that I am an expert in mental disorders or psychotropic drugs. But the correlation is astounding. The Columbine shooters, the Sandy Hook shooter, the Parkland shooter, the Las Vegas shooter. This does not mean that the drugs are a causation. There is no data to support that drugs are causing people to act in violent and murderous ways. But when the correlation is as staggering as it is, we need to look more deeply into it.
Not all mental health drugs are created equal, and the type with the highest correlations are SSRIs. According to the Mayo Clinic, an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) “treats depression by increasing levels of serotonin in the brain” and “[blocking] the reabsorption of serotonin into neurons. This makes more serotonin available to improve transmission of messages between neurons.” There are tons of people these days who are realizing that their “quirks” and “shortcomings” may actually be evidence of a biochemical imbalance. Things that yesteryear’s generation would have written off as “weird” or “pathetic” are now known to be medical struggles that do have treatment options. As a result, more people than ever before are on some form of medication.
On the current Form 4473 (the questionaire to submit yourself to an FBI background check for a firearms sale or transfer), disqualifying circumstances include being (21.f), “…an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance…” and (21.g), “…adjudicated as a mental defective OR [being] committed to a mental institution…”
Our current background check system takes mental health into consideration, but it definitely needs to be abridged and expanded as we learn more and more about the human brain in general, mental health disorders/imbalances, and the effects of the medications we use to treat them. It’s a delicate balance, though. If someone is prescribed an anti-depressant, does that instantly revoke their 2nd Amendment Rights? It’s a high bar to revoke a Constitutional Right. For example, everyone has a 4th Amendment Right to protection in their home against unreasonable search and seizure by the State. But if the bench signs a warrant and affidafit in support of that warrant ordering your home to be searched in connection with a crime, then the State is temporarily allowed to abridge your 4th Amendment Right in pursuit of justice, as that search and seizure is no longer unreasonable or unwarrranted. But that is quite the high bar. When it comes to our 1st, 2nd, and all the rest of the Amendments, we have to take a measured approach when we start talking about revoking them. I do not believe that being prescribed an SSRI should be an automatic “NO” on your 4473. But, if your prescription coincides with other factors, then perhaps it is worthwhile to do a deeper investigation before approval. If this simply means that background checks take longer for some people, I do think that is a worthwhile trade-off. And this is not adding another law; it’s simply executing the existing ones better.
“Heal The Minds” is about understanding the connections between medications and mass murder.
Harden the Defenses
Whether you talk to an anti-gun person or a pro-gun person, the assumption is the same; this will happen again. There are two perspectives in dealing with a future mass shooting. One perspective is to restrict the weapons through expanded and more detailed gun laws. I explore this topic in another article I will link here shortly. Another perspective is to strengthen soft targets. Let me explain the latter.
A “soft target” is a venue, building, or location that is easily accessible to the public and undefended. The local supermarket is a “soft target” because there is no barrier physically preventing people from bringing deadly weapons into the store. “Soft targets” also include locations that are lightly defended. Posting two security guards with pepper spray doesn’t cut it if the event houses hundreds of concert-goers or mall shoppers. This is in contrast to a “hard target;” a good example being airport terminals. Not only is traffic into the airport itself heavily controlled, but there are armed guards and armed police on standby at all times to respond to a threat that makes it past the security checkpoint or attempts to break through it.
Hardening schools is always dismissed because it would “turn schools into prisons.” However, there are many many strategies to make sure schools are fortifications, without looking like fortifications. Bulletproof glass, reinforced doors, and automatic locks are all passive defenses that can be dressed up to look like normal versions of them. Quick code-words or panic buttons amongst staff and shared with the local police department that would trigger an immediate response; that alarm is pressed, and instantly the police know to bring everything, all at once, NOW. Armed security guards on site also don’t have to be donning flak jackets and M4s like they’re about to raid Bin Laden’s compound. A plain-clothes resource officer with highly advanced training, slim body armor that fits underneath a light jacket, and a concealed pistol bearing armor penetrating rounds seems like a pretty good balance between effectiveness and invisibility. And before you go saying that renovating all 130,000+ schools would be a monumentally expensive endeavor, don’t forget that the feds funded almost 2 billion dollars to fortify the Capitol following the January 6th insurrection. A building that is already surrounded by private security and federal police received a budget $740 million GREATER than all 4 main Avengers films COMBINED. That money would have a long way towards literally anything else; fortifying our schools, working towards universal healthcare, student loan forgiveness, literally anthing else other than making sure the elites that already have private security have even more security while they strip our right to self defense.
An uncomfortable truth that gun owners must face is that Harden the Defenses includes their own accountability. Not every theatrical mass shooter stockpiles legal purchases like the Las Vegas shooter; many of them are obtained through theft within the home. It is absolutely, wholesale, unacceptable how many American gun owners do not possess a simple gun safe or safe room and restrict access to that safe within their home. I’m not suggesting we make safes a legal requirement or gun purchasing (mostly because such a law would be unenforceable), but they should be a cultural requirement. The argument I hear from the Right is that locking guns up makes it harder to access when it counts. Yet, I can name three right off of the bat; Vaultek, Stopbox, and Vara, and those aren’t even the only options or the best options. These safes are secure against unwanted access, but offer rapid deployment for an authorized user. My bedside home defense gun sits in a Vaultek, and with the biometrics I can access my weapon in just over one second; nearly as quick as my draw from a concealment holster with the weapon already on my person. There are ways to make your weapons easily accessible to you while restricting access to others. Failure or refusal to do so is simply laziness and complacency. If you’re lazy and compacent, I would tell you to seriously consider your priorities when it comes to firearms defense, because complacent people are exactly the type of people that gun-grabbers use to attack your weapons.
“Hardening the Defenses” is about erecting a barrier between citizens and terrorism, and making sure that barrier is an actual barrier.
Arm the Citizenry
2022 felt like it had been a hotbed of mass shootings, and the stats back up what could be written off as subjective horror or heightened media attention. From January through July 2022 there were 438 mass shootings, a staggering increase from the 329 shootings that occurred between Jan-Jul in 2021. May alone saw both the Buffalo, NY shooting and the Uvalde, TX shooting, and the year’s highest casualty count to-date occurred on July 4th in Highland Park, IL which claimed seven lives and injured a staggering forty eight. Two purported solutions stand at complete odds with one another; Disarm the Citizenry, and Arm the Citizenry. This plan stands on the latter.
The most talked-about gun control points are always magazine capacity restrictions, assault weapon restrictions, universal background checks, 10-day waiting periods, and Red Flag laws. Of the 508 mass shootings in 2021 as of September 1, 108 came from California (39), Illinois (44), and New York (25). In other words 21% of mass shootings came from three of the strictest states in regards to gun laws. Additionally, if you isolate only to New York City (14) and Chicago (34), then 9% of the mass shootings occurred in only two cities. These two cities, NYC and Chicago have all of those aforementioned gun control measures and more. Laws keep getting passed, but the problem is getting worse. Something isn’t working.
The purported solution is always some variation of “Get those guns away from me.” But with over 450 million guns in the U.S., we’ve long surpassed the ability to simply run away from these guns. Japan and Sweden have almost no guns, and as a result, almost no gun violence. So if we want their gun violence numbers, then it’s simple, right? Just take away all the guns? In a word, no.
Even if we didn’t have a Constitutional Amendment that protects the keeping and bearing of arms, blanket gun confiscation is not a tenable or practical approach. Law-abiding citizens would comply, sure. But what about the rest? Will the rednecks in Alabama give up peacefully? Will the drug dealers in Detroit? What about the Crips down the street, or the Bloods up the boulevard? It’s simply not practical, and trying to do so would end in a hail of gunfire. You’re talking about SWAT teams rolling on armed American households all across the country. The cat’s out of the bag, the guns are already out there. Even if the government ordered every gun manufacturer worldwide to stop producing and importing to the US market, there are already enough guns for every single person in America to have one, with one hundred million left over. Unless we want to send hordes of police, SWAT, and social workers to their deaths on raids, then we have to deal with the fallout of being a country so armed to the teeth, and this includes the good and the bad. Yes, the downside is that people will use the Right to bear arms against us, but the upside is that we can use that same Amendment to combat and defeat those very people.
On July 17th, 2022, a would-be mass murderer entered the Greenwood Park Mall armed with a disassembled AR-15 style rifle. At around 4:54 the shooter entered a bathroom to reassemble the rifle, then exited and began firing, the goal being obvious. But before the shooter could even finish their first magazine, a regular civilian was present who assessed the threat. From around forty yards away, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken drew a concealed Glock, fired off all ten rounds, and eliminated the threat; all before law enforcement had even made it to the property. As a private business, the mall has the right to post “No Weapons Allowed” signs, declaring themselves a gun-free zone. However, signage is not enforcable by Indiana law. Thus, Mr. Dicken was not actually breaking the law by carrying, and the most the business could do against him would be to press a trespass charge. The shooter, however, was breaking both State and Federal law by attempting to murder people. Both people ignored the “No Weapons” sign; but one came to kill, and the other came to protect. Big difference. When violence presented itself, Mr. Dicken didn’t scream and run or roll over and accept his fate. He stood and fought. And he won.
As a permit-holding legal concealed firearm carrier, I can tell you that my CCW class was filled with a diverse array of people. Elderly people fearing their deteriorating body is no longer sufficient to stave off attack, young couples who want to be each others’ shield and sword, and a mother of three with a ferocious energy to defend her children against any threat. Not one person in my class sought out a CCW for the purpose of picking fights; nobody wants to have to actually use their tool for real. But people are scared, and when people are scared there are two reactions. One reaction is to barricade yourself and wait for help to arrive. But the other reaction is to take your safety into your own hands, and prepare to meet savagery with equal and overwhelming fire superiority.
The Uvalde Massacre should have been the final straw: we can’t depend on law enforcement for everything. Even when they do show up, sometimes tragedy still wins. There comes a point where we have to be self-sufficient, and we have to take our lives and our self defense into our own hands.
“Arm the Citizenry” isn’t about creating armed martyrs; it’s about making the hyenas fear the gazelles.
Punish the Perpetrators
To be fair, the criminal justice system in the U.S. is complex and complicated. To be blunt and crude, it’s a ****ing joke. People with minor drug charges get harsher sentences than stalkers and murderers, and career criminals routinely subvert justice to play the system, get a lighter sentence, or avoid the jury altogether. The fact that the “Toolbox Killers,” a pair of serial rapists and murderers, were formally sentenced to death in 1981 but still ended up living out the rest of their lives until dying of natural causes at a ripe old age in prison tells you everything you need to know about how broken, corrupt, and unfair the “justice” system is.
BRING. THE HAMMER. DOWN.
Our great Constiution ensures that everyone in America is entitled to a fair and speedy trial by their peers, but we have seen wrist slaps so many times that we’re all sick of it. When it comes to terrorists who reap death for the purposes of rage or fame, we have to make sure these monsters pay the full price. No more plea deals, no more wrist slaps, no more leniency and light sentences. You chose to use your breath to take someone else’s; the reckoning has come.
“Punish the Perpetrators” is a short section because it doesn’t even involve creating anything new; it simply means fulfilling the purpose of the existing justice system.
Conclusion
Allow me to offer a simple and concise suggestion to close: stop listening to political pundits.
When tasked with addressing the mass murder epidemic in America, the only solution a politician can find is blame.
A Liberal will claim that they have the solution, but those damn Republicans won’t let them do it.
A Conservative will claim that, no, they have the solution, but those damn Liberals won’t let them do it.
Politicians aren’t normal people. They’re protected day in and day out by fully-automatic suppressed short-barreled-rifles with high capacity magazines; everything they won’t let you have, they depend on for their personal security detail. They don’t have a clue what it’s like down here for us peasants, down in the mud and squalor, shadowed in the darkness of their ever-looming ivory towers. So, I invite you, talk to your fellow Americans. Share what you learned today, explain why you disagree with me, and start having the civil conversations that will actually start to finally solve the most horrific and uniquely American issue of the modern world.