EXPLORING THE CAUSE
I would imagine you are as upset as I am about all these mass shootings, especially in our schools. They are so horrific, people clamor for immediate solutions, and even if they could be implemented, their effect would almost certainly be limited.
I wonder if some of the problem-solving and troubleshooting tools often used to improve performance in industry could help. Time is of the essence, and they need the right solution(s). If the problem(s) doesn’t disappear, the solution didn’t work.
Prior to the last 20 or 30 years, they were nearly unheard of. What are we doing differently to produce so many kids and even adults who want to kill as many people as possible?
Following this line of reasoning, we can’t say guns are the cause. We’ve always had guns. They’re not a new phenomenon.
Even if we could get rid of all the guns, the killers would simply use different tools, and there are many that are far more destructive.
Remember Timothy McVeigh blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995 with a bomb he created using easily obtained materials? In seconds, he killed 168 people. How about the guy who drove a truck into a crowd on the French Riviera on Bastille Day in 2016? He killed 68 people. The ultimate example was on 9/11 when Islamic terrorists commandeered Boeing 757s and flew them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Over 3,000 people were killed, and guns weren’t even used.
Do we really think our government, which can’t keep illicit drugs, child pornography, human trafficking and other illegal activities out of our country could magically make the guns disappear? Gun control tends to disarm the honest people, and the bad guys love it.
We need to find out what we’re doing to produce so many people that want to kill others. What has changed over the last 20 or 30 years?
Church attendance has dropped off considerably. These things weren’t happening when the churches were full, and our religious leaders are missing a golden opportunity by not reminding us of that.
A recent article asked, “Where is God in all of this?” Well, we took God out of the schools. Shouldn’t we know the absence of God is evil?
Going back a few decades, most children were raised by a mother and father living together. They lived as families having dinner together each evening. For thousands of years, we’ve known that eating together helps us to bond with each other. Yet today, many families living together seldom eat together.
How about all the violence on TV and in the movies? While we’re at it, do you think the violent video games could be playing a role? The internet and social media can be used for a lot of good, but we’re sadly learning they can be used for a lot of bad as well.
These are the kinds of causes we need to explore. The best way is to list what we know for each of the mass murderers and look for common causes. If we find that growing up in broken homes, for instance, is common among them, that’s not an easy problem to solve. Even so, these are the kinds of things we have to address and mitigate to stop these terrible mass murders.
We can never keep all the available tools away from them. To be successful, we’ve got to work on decreasing the desire to mass murder, which has become far too common.
Ronald J. Bourque is a consultant and speaker from Salem.
