By now, you know the routine.
There’s another shooting. People die. Sometimes dozens.
Sometimes the victims are Black, sometimes they’re White, sometimes they’re Brown and sometimes it’s a huge cross section of America. Sometimes they’re innocent adults and sometimes they’re even-more-innocent children, which makes it all that much difficult to stomach.
Every time, it’s a sickening kick in the gut, a pointless act of hatred that leaves many people dead and a country more divided than at perhaps any point in our past 150 years.
First comes the shock. Then the outrage. And then, most of us skip right past the “Let’s find out what happened and why” stage and plunge head-first into the blame game.
Care to repeat after me? Shout along if you know the words, and I know you do:
“The NRA has blood on its hands for standing in the way of common-sense gun reform! And they buy off cowardly politicians!”
“Assault weapons account for barely any murders every year compared with drug dealers in the big cities! What about Chicago?”
“Ban all AR-15s! There’s no reason people should have these automatic weapons!”
“AR-15s are not automatic weapons, and automatic weapons are already illegal! Why don’t you learn about guns before you start complaining about them?”
“Oh, you think it’s OK to have these guns? They’re made to kill people! They serve no other purpose!”
“Then why do we protect politicians and celebrities with guns, but we send our kids to schools protected only by ‘Gun-Free Zone?’ signs? How’s that working out? How about more fences and security on campuses?”
“Oh, so you want to make schools like … a PRISON?”
And on. And on. And on and on and on.
Look. We’ve been having these same arguments for close to 20 years, and the numbers show nothing has changed for the better.
So today, I’m going to try something else. This will probably be different than any other “another mass shooting” column or editorial you will read all week. And you want to know why? Because unlike many others, I’m not going to pretend I have a one-size-fits-all solution to any of this.
All I do know is this: What we’re doing isn’t working.
So instead of trying to find “the answer” or point additional fingers of blame today, I’m going to suggest we do something totally radical. I’m going to suggest that before we can “fix” this we need to unite for something, anything, that feels like a step in the right direction. And how is that possible when we can’t even have a rational discussion about what the problem is?
I see only one place to start: We’ve all got to be better.
You. Me. The bully. And the kid he bullies, and the people who stand by and let it happen, until either the bully or the victim finally snap and take it way too far.
Let’s be better.
I spend a fair amount of time on these pages clamoring for people to find some common ground. And I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to find some — any — common ground on this topic.
I think I’ve found at least one thing that we should all be able to agree on, regardless of your stance on guns and the law (which, let’s face it, we’re not going to solve today). It won’t eliminate mass shootings today or tomorrow, but we’ve got to start somewhere in hopes we finally slow this cycle of anger and death.
Here goes.
I’ve read stories on dozens of mass shootings — about the killers, and their backgrounds, and their final thoughts and actions before their morbid rampages. Two things stick out. First, in a majority of the cases, the killer was a young male who had been bullied, and bullied badly, in school. (One study I read said this accounts for 87 percent of the young men who have committed a mass murder at a school.) Second, a surprisingly large number of the killers posted cryptic (or in some cases, flat-out obvious) clues on social media about what was going to happen next — warnings that, in my book, should be enough to lock up any deranged, dangerous individual before he actually causes any carnage.
But that almost never happens, and then these people go out and shoot other people to death, and everybody acts shocked. Isn’t anybody keeping an eye on them? Shouldn’t some of this be painfully obvious to anyone who was paying attention?
Of course there are other factors. But I can’t help but think that if more people made more of an effort to be decent to one another in the first place — and to stop inexcusable mistreatment of others while it’s happening, and that includes bullying at all levels — who knows what kind of impact it might have 10 years down the road?
Be better.
Because, what we’re doing isn’t working. Maybe we all need to be better. Maybe we should start by making more of an effort to treat others like human beings again, and call out unacceptable and dangerous behavior when we see it.
Along those lines, maybe we should strike more of a balance in our homes — more involvement with our kids’ lives, giving them a purpose beyond what’s on the screen of their cell phones — and spend less time working for a better life and more time living a better life.
Maybe we should be more concerned with blowing the whistle on questionable actions we see in our workplaces, and less worried about calling creeps on the carpet for fear it’ll hurt their career or some organization’s reputation.
Maybe — and here’s a novel idea — more of us need to stand up to people we agree with on social media and tell them to tone down their rhetoric instead of just attacking people we disagree with. And by the way, how’s that working out, everybody? Changed anybody’s mind on a hot-button topic with your brilliant insights yet? Or have you once again succeeded in further ramping up the hatred and division in our country?
Let’s be better.
It’s an angry country. It gets angrier every day and I don’t blame some young people for feeling like there’s no future, especially with the examples being set by so many so-called adults. Maybe we can show them that the world doesn’t have to be such a horrible place and that by condemning the kind of behavior that sends fragile minds off the deep end, we can make a difference.
I suspect in many cases, standing up to a bully might be the greatest thing to ever happen for some of these kids.
Meanwhile, by all means, keep screaming “do something!” at your hopelessly deadlocked government. At the same time, by vowing to stamp out bullying in its tracks at all levels any time you see it — and, doing your part to shun toxic discourse and tone down the overall levels of anger in our lives — maybe, just maybe, you can “do something” yourself.
I mean, what in the world could this idea possibly hurt?
Maybe I’m dead wrong. Maybe you’re dead right, depending on which of those above-italicized comments you agree with. And if you’d rather stick with reading only opinions that you agree with rather than stop and consider other points of view, by all means, go right ahead.
But I do have one question: How’s that been working out for you? Has it made the world a better and safer place? Have you changed anything? Or just added to the anger?
Let’s be better. All of us. As individuals, I’m not even sure where else we can start.
Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. You can reach him at mwolcott@chicoer.com.
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