Sunday, August 4, 2019 | EDITORIAL
~ by Mary P Brooke | WEST SHORE VOICE NEWS
To date this year, there has been more than one mass shooting per day in the USA.
This weekend there was a shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas on Saturday morning leaving 20 dead and 26 injured, and on the heels of that a shooting in Dayton, Ohio where nine people were killed in a 1 am shootout on the street in a popular nightlife area. These sorts of locations are called ‘soft targets’ … where there are lots of people and relatively low immediate security presence.
In the Texas instance, the shooter was apprehended ‘without incident’ and taken into custody. Authorities are describing the incident as domestic terrorism. The shooter Patrick Crusius used a military-style weapon. He is 21 years old. He traveled to El Paso at the Mexican border from his home in Dallas to carry out the shooting.
Reportedly Crusius posted a manifesto on social media indicating his distress with Mexican immigrants. The ages of the victims reportedly ranges from 2 years to 82 years. Crusius is now being held on a charge of capital murder.
In the Ohio incident the shooter was killed during the take down. He was 24 years old, of Bellbrook, Ohio. In that event, there were 27 injuries on top of the nine deaths. One of the victims was his own 22-year-old sister, according to the New York Times. Most of the victims were in their 20s and 30s, and there was a 57-year-old victim; all of them were local to the area.
It’s both good and too bad that police and other first responders are now well-trained to respond quickly and effectively to these incidents. It shows how expected these tragedies now are.
Contributing factors to the mass shooting phenomenon are spoken of in public commentary as being mental health, easy availability of high-powered guns, and also now hatred and racism. From that broad range of source issues can come a wide range of attempts to address the problem. All of it will need to start with political will, necessarily nudged by what is hopefully a mounting public outcry.
With current President Donald Trump almost certainly not wanting to rustle his grassroots Republican voter base for the upcoming 2020 election, he is not likely to change his position on gun control – in other words, no tightening up on those regulations. The carnage was swiftly and widely reported by media and on social media; Trump tweeted: “God be with you all!”
At a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas, Democratic presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, appeared shaken upon hearing about the shooting. The populist-style candidate said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.
A mass murder database compiled by American Press (AP), USA TODAY, and Northeastern University (i.e. four or more deaths in a short period of time by any method/means/motive) shows the median age of a public mass shooter as 28. Not including this weekend’s tragedies, 11 mass shootings (since 2006) have been committed by men who are 21 or younger.
Mass shootings having become part of the American way — they are experienced with horror, explored for details, political commentary is hurled about, and then families grieve while communities move on. People offer their thoughts and prayers, they make brave and important statements in the social discourse, the politicians hear it and some probably do try.
But until there is a shift in culture or mindset from ‘take and conquer’ through aggression and violence to one of moving everyone together forward in society in ways both sociopolitical and economic, these potholes of anger that lead to horrific outbursts of violence will sadly very likely continue to fester and burst without pause.
~ MPB
[Full version of this editorial is in the August 2-4, 2019 Weekend Edition as issued to subscribers]