May of 2022 was a tragically bloody month that will forever be burned into the memories of Americans. In Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, two different psychopath cowards sought out unarmed children and adults and slaughtered them in cold blood.
Instead of trying to understand what causes someone to want to harm innocent people, the state responded with reactionary measures to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens. New York led the way with tyrannical bills that outlawed passive resistance to bullets with a body armor ban. The feds followed suit with a bipartisan bill to remove due process with a national red flag law.
As TFTP has reported at length, red flag laws do little to prevent mass shootings and a lot to trample the rights of law-abiding citizens.
Citizens targeted by these laws are deemed guilty first, and only after their guns are taken will they have a chance to defend themselves in court. This is the de facto removal of due process.
Despite what officials and the fact-checkers claim when a person is stripped of their constitutional rights, albeit temporarily, without being given a chance to make their case based on what can be entirely arbitrary accusations, this is the removal of due process. It doesn’t work and is rife for abuse as there is no way to stop an estranged spouse from calling the police repeatedly and telling them their ex is threatening to cause harm to themselves or others.
What’s more, as we’ve pointed out, red flag laws do not stop mass murdering psychopaths from obtaining weapons and causing harm.
While guns certainly play a role in these horrifying murders, they are only part of the issue. Gun control laws that target law-abiding citizens will do nothing to stop mass murdering psychopaths from causing grave harm. If the government were truly interested in saving lives and preventing further tragedies like Uvalde, they would look into what causes a person to do such horrible acts.
Because the state’s reactionary nature is highly ineffective, the Free Thought Project has come up with three potential solutions to preventing mass shootings that don’t include disarming or trampling the rights of law-abiding citizens.
1. Stop idolizing the shooters in the media
The media all too often immortalize mass murderers in America. They have their photos plastered on televisions across the country and names burned into the pages of American history forever with the blood of the innocent.
Suppose the shooter fits one of the many divisive narratives. In that case, they get even more notoriety in the corporate press as the controversy drives traffic to websites, increasing revenue and creating profit from murder.
As TFTP has previously pointed out, a 2017 study found that the “contagion” effect of copycat mass shooters is real and usually occurs roughly 7 to 13 days after the original shooting. According to the study:
In instances of mass shootings, the media appear largely responsible for providing the model to imitate. Although there are a variety of strategies that could function in tandem to alter the likelihood of a mass shooting, changing the way the media report mass shootings is one important step in preventing and reducing imitation of these acts. Furthermore, it is likely that media-prompted imitation extends beyond mass shootings. A media effect has been shown with suicide, is implied in mass shootings, and may play a role in other extreme events such as home-grown terrorism and racially motivated crimes.
We watched this unfold after the Buffalo shooting.
2. Fund research into what makes a person want to cause mass harm to innocent people
While the right calls for hardening schools and the left calls for disarming Americans, neither side is proposing research into preventing a person from wanting to carry out such horrifying violence.
If it is a gun problem, why is it that other countries with well-armed citizens don’t see the same frequency of mass shootings? If it’s solely a mental health issue, why don’t other countries with higher rates of mental disorders see the same mass murders?
The United States spends roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars yearly on mental health care, but none of that money goes to psychological research. Instead, the nation’s $66 billion annual research fund funded psychological research, and a portion, 1.5 percent, goes to actual psychological research.
3. Come to terms that our society is rooted in, celebrates, and glorifies violence
Governments across the board kill a lot of people, plain and simple. And throughout history, most of the worst atrocities were carried out by the state against unarmed populations.
As a point of reference, in the 20th Century alone, governments were responsible for 260,000,000 deaths worldwide. That number is greater than all deaths from illicit drug use, STDs, Homicides, and Traffic Accidents — combined.
Yet still, Americans cannot see the elephant in the room.
This desensitization to violence has fostered a mindset in the average American to view life as disposable. Through massive propaganda campaigns, the state and their corporate masters have waged a war of dehumanization, bolstering an unhealthy environment in which people see their political opponents as subhuman.
When someone who has been desensitized to violence and taught to dehumanize their perceived enemy their entire life suddenly acts out, everyone is surprised. They send their thoughts and prayers, call for banning guns for a few days and then go back to sleep, condoning state violence and wishing for the deaths of their political rivals once more.
The entire time, both sides blame the other for the violence while ignoring that their government is the largest purveyor of mass violence throughout American history.
The three proposed solutions above are by no means comprehensive, and mass shootings are far more complex to wrap into a single article. There are still the issues of SSRIs, lockdowns that drove millions mad, and many other factors that could contribute to these scenarios. That said, we must begin focusing on these other conversations and get out of the rut of “ban guns” and “arm teachers,” as this has gotten us nowhere.
Instead of removing the means of self-defense for millions of Americans or turning schools into prisons, we need to have an honest conversation about these issues. Until we do, we can expect more of the same.