Another Public Shooting and the Lessons Not Learned

There was another public shooting recently which took place in a shopping mall in New Jersey. There were no casualties in the incident except the shooter himself as he eventually took his own life. Already the story is disappearing from the media, probably because the story lacks the drama that comes with a high body count. This is one of the reasons why I have such disdain for mainstream media. There are many lessons that we could learn from this to help us tackle the real issues that lead to the tragedies that the mainstream media love to focus on. So what can we learn from this incident?

For starters, we can assume that the shooter could have killed some of the people around him if he had intended to do so, but apparently that was not his intention. He was not aiming at anyone in particular, but instead fired several rounds that struck an escalator, elevator, and the general environment around him. We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that this couldn't have easily resulted in a mass shooting if that was the perpetrator's intent. The biggest take away out of this incident is that it is not the type of gun involved that really determines the outcome, but it is the person and his motivations that play the biggest factor.

Secondly, after some time, the shooter retreated to a storage area in the mall, where he committed suicide by shooting himself. This scenario plays out time and again in these public shootings, where after the initial events take place, and law enforcement arrives, the perpetrator takes his own life. It becomes obvious that this person had personal issues, and perhaps mental health issues to some degree. In addition, the fact that he retreated at all, assumes he was expecting some type of armed response to his actions. Just like most other incidents, the mental health of the perpetrator comes into question.

One of the last major lessons that I see from this incident is that gun laws would not have stopped any of this from happening. The perpetrator did not buy his gun or obtain it legally. He had stolen the firearm from his brother who did obtain the gun legally. A universal background check or gun registry would have done nothing to prevent this from happening, and yet these are the solutions that gun control advocates propose for these situations.

Just as the we learned from the tragedy in Newtown, it did not matter that the perpetrator did not get their gun legally. They were already willing to commit a crime with a firearm, yet we are to somehow rationalize that someone willing to commit murder would make a conscious decision to not break that specific law? The only explanation that I see for gun control is that they want to take away the availability of guns. That would mean that in this instance, they would deny the legal owner access to a gun so that his brother would not be able to steal it. Perhaps that is the gun control advocate's unstated goal all along.

At some point, we all have to realize that it's not the gun that matters in all of these displays of public violence, but its the perpetrator, their intent, and their mindset that matters. A recent poll showed that most Americans identify the main issue that affects all of these public shooting instances is mental health, and yet we do not yet have a national conversation about it. Instead, we are drowned with mainstream media, pundits, anti-gun groups, and politicians talking about gun control and banning certain firearms.

The failure though is not just in our mental health system. The responsibility for this also falls on the mainstream media, pundits, and politicians who refuse to take up the issue of mental health because it does not benefit them monetarily or politically. The American people are aware that mental health is the key factor in all of these instances, despite being deluged by conversation from gun control advocates.

Gun control advocates' first priority, however, isn't in helping people or solving the underlying problems that lead people to lash out violently. Instead, they are more interested in spreading their hatred of guns and the people who own them. They label their opponents as those who oppose their spin on 'common sense,' but is it really common sense to not focus on what most Americans already identify as the problem in society?  Perhaps if the body count were higher, the talking heads might be blasting it on the airwaves 24/7.