Anytime a person indiscriminately decides to shoot and kill another human being, it is a horrible tragedy. It’s even more horrific when the person maliciously opens fire on groups of innocent people. Violent shootings have become a problem in America.
We have a higher prevalence of such catastrophes than any other country in the world. But what’s to blame for this heinous urge to go on a shooting rampage? As soon as one of these terrible events happens, the radical left is ready to obliterate the Second Amendment.
“It’s the gun’s fault,” they repeat ad nauseam. Liberals insist that guns are the sole reason why so many people in America are dying. This is simply not true. When these progressive leftists start screaming for everyone’s guns, it shuts down the conversation about what can be done.
Guns do not kill people by themselves. Someone must pull the trigger, regardless of the style or design of the weapon. Anyone who opens fire in a crowd of people is mentally ill. That’s a fact. Trying to argue that point is fruitless, but some will try.
Mentally unstable people should not own weapons. A vast majority of Americans support that aspect of gun control. Dangerously violent criminals fall into this category as well. So, how did two obviously unstable 18-year-old young men legally purchase a gun?
The breakdown is not within current gun legislation. The breakdown is with the mechanisms in place to enforce these laws. Both Payton Gendron and Salvador Ramos slipped through the cracks. There were obvious warning signs of each one’s emotional instability.
However, the guns that they used to murder innocent Americans were purchased legally. After the fact, it’s plain as day that neither was emotionally stable enough to own a firearm. But they both did. Even worse, they both bragged about their purchases.
As well, both of these mentally ill 18-year-olds sent out multiple red flags about what they were about to do. By using techniques and technology that were readily available, over two dozen lives could have been saved. The tools were not used and lives were lost.
A retired federal agent may have known about one such red flag. Investigators are looking into an online chat room where the Buffalo mass shooter, Payton Gendron, frequently participated. Reportedly, six people were aware of Gendron’s threats to murder black people.
One individual was a former federal agent. The Buffalo News reported, “Law enforcement officers are investigating whether a retired federal agent had about 30 minutes advance notice of a white supremacist’s plans to murder black people at a Buffalo supermarket.”
Again, these killings are terrible tragedies. But it’s even worse when considering the possibility that they could have been prevented. A similar situation happened in Uvalde, Texas. There’s a social media trail that should have been a red flag about the mental instability of Ramos.
If someone, via social media’s already inherent algorithms, had alerted law enforcement, 19 young children and two teachers might still be alive. Guns are not the problem. Ineptitude is both the ineptitude of those who failed to secure Robb Elementary School and others.
Likewise, an unmotivated sense of community awareness allowed an insane Buffalo teen to execute black people at a Tops Supermarket. Each of these tragedies was horrible. However, each one could have been prevented. Blaming guns is just a convenient scapegoat.
America doesn’t need more gun control. America needs a system that acts on obvious red flags (not abusive red flag laws). These killers are mentally unstable people. If our politicians will stop focusing on the guns and focus on the crazies whose fingers pull the triggers, we might actually fix the problem.