The latest horrific school shooting occurred yesterday in Uvalde, Texas, where a lone gunman killed 19 children and 2 adults. It’s the 27th school shooting this year. What is it going to take for us to muster the moral courage to do something about it?
American Violence
The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, has counted 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter.
According to Education Week, the year 2021 had 34 such incidents at educational institutions (the highest since the organization started its database). In 2020, there were 10 shootings (we weren’t in school for most of the year). Both 2019 and 2018 recorded 24 shootings.
School shootings are on the rise and show no signs of slowing down.
When it comes to gun massacres, the United States is tragically exceptional: There are more public mass shootings in the United States than in any other country in the world, according to a five-year-old study.
Jen Christenson in “Why the U.S. has the Most Mass Shootings,” reports that although the United States has 5% of the world’s population, it has 31% of all public mass shootings.
Six Contributing Factors To Consider
The problem is multifaceted. The solutions are achievable. However, I am not optimistic that we have the moral courage to make the changes.
Here are six factors to consider.
1. Guns
There should be little doubt that we need an ongoing, sober assessment of our gun laws. Large majorities of Americans support universal background checks, permit requirements for gun ownership, and bans on the most dangerous kinds of weapons and ammunition.
Tighter gun control alone will not solve the problem, but it can’t hurt.
It’s sad that many people love their guns and their “rights” more than they love their neighbors. The gun fetish in our country borders on idolatry.
2. Mental Health
You don’t have to have a degree in psychology to know that anyone who would open fire on children is mentally ill. Some studies have shown that the estimated number of cases of mental illness hasn’t gone up significantly while the number of mass shootings in the U.S. has skyrocketed.
This seems to indicate that it is the combination of mental health issues with other factors that causes the rise in mass shootings.
Most of those dealing with mental illness do not shoot people. However, every health professional I have spoken with admits that we do a terrible job in our country with mental health and especially adult mental health.
I know from personal experience that after a child turns 18, the options for mental healthcare drop significantly.
3. Media Violence
The desensitization to violence created in video games, television, and the Hollywood screen has had a devastating impact on generations of Americans.
Mental illness has not gone up significantly, but television and movie violence has. Desensitization to violence combined with mental illness is a dangerous combination that has exacerbated the problem.
4. Drugs
The proliferation of drugs and growing acceptance of their usage in our youth culture has created a Pandora’s box of collateral damage.
Combine drugs with mental illness, hours of isolation escaping into a violent world created by a video game, and easy access to the most powerful guns on the market – and it starts to explain a lot.
5. Loss of a Moral Compass
The mass exodus from the church and other faith communities (which have historically provided some type of moral foundation) combined with a growing moral relativism creates a society with few moral underpinnings or core values that might give someone pause before pulling a trigger.
6. A National Rhetoric of Violence
The way we talk to each other is increasingly violent and offensive. The words used by our local and national leaders matter. A polarizing, demeaning, and dehumanizing national rhetoric gives every person permission to summarily dismiss others and treat them as non-entities.
We have had 27 incidents with guns in American schools so far in 2022 (close to matching the number from last year and it’s only May). It’s a growing cancerous tumor that is killing our young.
The Christian values of love and self-sacrifice demand that we put our political persuasions aside and attack the contributing factors.
I’m tired of feeling this sickness. I’m tired of grieving. It’s way past time to do something. Our children are too important.
