Mass Murder in the USA

The most dangerous place to be in America is attending a place of learning. Statistically it’s extremely likely that the place of learning will at some point be targeted by a murderer for a mass shooting event.

Mass shootings are daily events in the United States, proving quite a popular pre-suicide activity for the mentally ill who like the idea that their name will be ‘out there’ after the event.  Instead of being a no mark, alone, dispossessed and unknown, they rationalise that they will be remembered and immortalised, especially on TV programmes on ‘factual’ channels in the future. The TV channels love to ‘celebrate’ mass murderers from the past.

Indeed, they will be remembered for the rest of the lives of their surviving victims, and the families of those they killed. Maybe they’ll be remembered by those who live in the community just because of the localness of the event.

But away from this local area their name is generally lost in the noise of names. There are so many of them each year. Around 300 mass shootings have occurred so far this year.  Can you remember the names of all of all the shooters? Nope. Can you even remember the names of the places? Nope. So, beyond the local area, the shooter is quickly forgotten. Maybe overshadowed by the next. And then the one after that.

Guns are thought to be a problem in the US.  But the problem is people using the guns.

The paranoid pro-gun lobby say the solution to mass shooting is to arm the teachers or for all people to carry guns. Then as soon as a shooter starts you can shoot back.  This is a similar argument to holding nuclear weapons.  

In theory, if everybody holds nuclear weapons nobody will use them because of the mutually assured destruction that occurs after the first has pressed the button.  Well, that’s the theory.  And so far it’s held, despite it being quite a bizarre stalemate.

The argument against unilateral disarmament is that once you no longer have the deterrent, somebody who still holds a nuclear weapon can walk into your country on the threat that they can blow you to smithereens if you try to stop them.

Likewise runs the argument about arming everybody in a place of education.  Or indeed just arming everybody.

If the stalemate or reassurance of safety is successfully maintained by all parties holding nuclear weaponry then the same must hold true by arming everybody in America.

And that is a valid argument.  Except, I don’t like it.

I like the way we do things in the UK.  We don’t carry guns.  The majority of our police don’t carry guns. In countries where guns are not the ‘norm’ there are less mass shootings. Less killings. But this seems to go against the avoidance of mutually assured destruction that works between ‘powers’ all having nuclear warheads pointed at each other.  So how is it different?

Maybe because individuals have a tendency to be raving mad and impulsive, whilst ‘States / Countries’ are far less so.  Well, so far.

I mean, individuals get angry at other people.  If they don’t have easy access to guns, they have to get close enough to punch or kick at the person they are angry with. Or they use a knife. A knife needs close contact, so again offering the victim a better fighting chance than they get with a gun. A gun is instant. It inflicts certain death and it can do it from a fair distance away.  And it can be used in the split second of a flare up of anger.  A flare up which, without access to a gun, might have resulted in a bit of pushing and shoving, but not murder.

So, who’s to say that everybody in a school carrying a gun wouldn’t start using them during the slightest argument or disagreement?  And who’s to say that if everybody was carrying guns in a school that a very determined mass shooter wouldn’t just sit on the roof sniping at students and staff rather than walking around shooting them at point blank range? I’m guessing they could down a similar number of victims to the more one-on-one mass shootings of the moment.

In that scenario, arming everybody is not a deterrent.  So, maybe the pro-gun lobby are very wrong.

Maybe just like the international community tries to stop mad states / countries from getting nuclear weapons, the real answer is to make guns far less readily available in America. Until that happens the nutters will just keep buying them and the mass murders will never ever stop.