“I pulled the trigger” was a bold confession by mass shooting suspect Robert Crimo III following the tragic shooting of seven unarmed people at last year’s Fourth of July picnic in Highland Park, Wisconsin.
One might think Crimo’s chilling admission would force many to deeply consider what drove the 21-year-old to take the lives of seven innocent strangers, to question the culture and circumstances that produced a sick young man capable of unthinkable manslaughter, or to heed the cries of family members coping with unbearable tragedy.
Unfortunately, before we could blink, our more meaningful thoughts were silenced by deafening calls for more gun control, assault weapons bans, and police defunding.
This is certainly not the first time public debate about the weapon employed by a gunman eclipsed any meaningful discussion about the shooter’s motives, the victims, or our law enforcement’s ability to enforce the law. Too often, our elected leaders and mainstream media are quick to shift the public focus of gun violence from the gunman to the firearm.
I contend that our culture has a firearm much deadlier than the rifle that claimed seven people’s lives in Highland Park. In the last six decades of political discourse around mass shootings, our state and nation’s leaders have amassed a weapon of mass destruction: a politically motivated gun-control debate in which the far left would seek no solution beyond more firearm regulations and scaling back our Second Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.
This is a debate with little room for identifying and uprooting the underlying problem. It includes no compassion for finding resolve for victims and no patience for embracing loved ones struck by tragedy.
Most importantly, the debate has failed to stop mass shootings from claiming the lives of innocent men, women, and children.
We are now forced to grapple with a difficult question: Are we to believe it is better to blame weapons rather than the people using those weapons? Are we to consider the fatal device more than the person and circumstances that pull the trigger? Of course not. Evil is evil, regardless of the tool it employs.
Clever attempts to legislate our way out of that evil has done nothing to address the underlying problem.
Don’t take my word for it. Consider that since 1982, California has witnessed more mass shootings than any other state on record. In that 40-year period, our state legislature has passed more than 111 laws banning certain firearms, restricting gun usage, regulating firearm transactions, and screening consumers.
That is 40 years of new promises to end mass gun violence, and 40 years of new shootings that claim the lives of innocent members of the public.
It is 40 years of eloquent speeches about the effect of new gun control measures, and 40 years of faith-based communities facing open gunfire at worship services.
Those who remain unconvinced that more restrictive firearm measures do little to reduce mass shootings should consider the following comparison. Simple logic might suggest that California—a state with the toughest gun control laws in the nation—would have fewer mass shootings than a state with the least restrictive gun control measures: Arizona.
Surprisingly, California has about the same number of mass shooting deaths per million people as Arizona each year. That’s a sobering reminder that more law does not necessarily result in less crime.
Any genuine effort to reduce crime begins with our law enforcement’s ability to enforce the law.
By now, it should be blatantly evident that the problem is not that we do not have enough gun control laws. The problem is that the laws we have in place are not being enforced. What we need is crime control.
Following the aftermath of the Sacramento mass shootings that claimed the lives of six just three months ago, I had the opportunity to speak with a Sacramento police lieutenant about the challenges of preventing mass shootings. I was shocked to hear that two days prior to the shooting, the police officer arrested a man with 10 firearms on his person—8 being assault weapons and the others, two handguns. That man was released 24 hours later due to exceptions and loopholes under state law.
What saddened me most was to hear the lieutenant express that these catch-and-release arrests happen all too often.
After researching the law further, I am even more convinced that the problem is not that we do not have enough penalties in California. The problem is that we have a judicial system that seems to work against the very law enforcement we task with enforcing those penalties.
Beyond supporting our law enforcement, we must be willing to think outside the box and support less traditional methods to stop mass shooting deaths. We can support mass shooting survival trainings for our children, youth, and the public at large.
The trainings sponsored by organizations like School Safe are credited with saving the lives of mass shooting survivors throughout the nation. Through intensive mass shooting reaction trainings across the country, more survivors are coming forward attesting to the life-saving skills acquired in the trainings.
Trainings, screenings, and law enforcement are key to limiting mass shootings, but solutions cannot last if we fail to examine the conditions creating the underlying problem.
At the heart of the problem is an inconvenient fact: We, as a society, are not ready or willing to have a sincere discussion about the sickness in our culture—a sickness that produces a teenager capable of opening gunfire on innocent children at a grade school, and a culture where a young man like Dylann Roof might open fire on unarmed Christians in a worship service on any given Sunday.
We need to discuss the hatred that causes a young man like Robert Crimo III to shoot at innocent strangers at a parade, and the sickness that distinguishes us from our counterparts internationally as a nation home to more than 70 percent of mass shootings worldwide.
Indeed, the unseen evil that drives shooters to commit such atrocities has caused some to consider mental health resources to address the internal problems beyond our reach. From school psychiatry, early intervention, and diversion programs, to mental health screenings for gun owners, mental health cannot be absent from any solution to limit mass shootings.
In spite of our collective shortcomings, I am reminded of the matchless resilience of the human spirit and our collective means to overcome seemingly impossible odds. I am reminded that our collective light can outshine any darkness when we are united behind a single cause for humanity, rather than our individualistic and political motivations. Our sustained efforts to combat mass shootings can outlast any unseen evil that wages war against us.
The bottom line is that you and I owe a duty to each and every innocent life taken by mass gunfire, and to their families, to collectively address the underlying problem behind mass shootings.
Until that day, together we must resist the temptation to willingly overlook the sickness of evil in our culture. We must reject the mainstream and unconscious narrative that weapons are to blame more than human beings. Until we do that, we will never prevent mass gun slaughter or manage to truly heal our culture.
Instead, we will find ourselves intently watching for the employed weapon with each new mass shooting, only to miss the finger on the trigger.
