Mourners gather for a vigil at the scene of a mass shooting, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2019, in Dayton, Ohio.
Two mass shootings in 13 terrifying hours only days after another mass shooting at a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California.
Welcome to America 2019, where there have been 251 shootings in 216 days. Think about that. There have been more mass shootings than there have been days in the year.
Dayton and El Paso join the ranks of communities reeling from gun violence. We’ve seen it happen in churches and synagogues, schools, grocery stores, festivals and now at Walmart.
In the immediate aftermath, you see the same script unfold.
Tweets sending thoughts and prayers from our so called leaders.
Devastated police chiefs, first responders and mayors declaring that this will not break the spirit of the community followed by the inevitable political arguments between the left and the right.
But nothing ever seems to change does it?
Within a few days, the national press moves on although I suspect the communities and loved ones never do.
Then we have another mass atrocity and we repeat the cycle.
What seems to be missing are solutions or even efforts to seriously work together to tackle the issue of gun violence in our country.
Legislative remedies seem to be harder than splitting the atom—the gun lobby is too strong for our weak kneed Congress to stand up to so they won’t.
Congress has failed on every single issue of importance facing this country whether it’s health care, immigration, infrastructure, climate change etc.
They fail despite overwhelming support for common sense solutions. They’ve failed when high school kids were slaughtered in Parkland and they failed when kindergarten students were brutally murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
So what do we do?
Because accepting this as the new normal is unacceptable.
According to Axios, a digital news service, international research has found that U.S. mass shootings cannot be explained by a violent culture, racial divisions or mental health.
I’m not sure I fully buy that argument but I’ll listen.
We have all three in our country. And all three afflictions seem to be getting worse by the week fueled by a rotten to the core political system and lousy national “leaders” who divide, lie, preen and posture.
The reason why the researchers don’t blame our violent culture is because they believe the problem is caused by the sheer volume of guns in our country.
The United States has 270 million guns. It’s an astronomical number.
No other country has more than 46 million guns, according to Axios.
These stats will prompt the usual b.s. responses.
There’s no need to repeat them.
What is needed is real leadership and a desire to collaborate not divide.
Nothing gets solved when people go to their sides of the ideological divide.
So while I don’t think our violent culture helps and there is certainly rampant mental health issues plaguing our society, I think a main culprit is hatred and anger. Extremism is on the rise and if we have any sense we will pay attention to it and do something about it. Hate crimes are also on the rise, fueled by a divisive political system, the power of social media to sow hate and the immense power of the internet to misinform.
Foreign enemies are sowing division and so are extreme websites and chat rooms where the El Paso shooter posted his hate filled “manifesto.”
All of this is happening at a time when our press’ credibility is under daily attack and we are losing local newspapers by the truckload.
This is a recipe for disaster and violence. An uninformed populace can easily be led astray.
This space usually calls for local solutions to problems because local government is the government closest to the people and frankly because Washington has been feckless for decades.
But I think this particular issue requires national leadership.
What if the best minds from law enforcement, mental health, public health, sociology, government, business and academia rolled up their sleeves and worked together on a bipartisan basis to address gun violence?
What a concept.
It might even remind us that we are Americans before we are Democrats or Republicans. We can use that reminder.
What if they came up with a list of recommendations to stem the violence and we the people insisted that Congress act immediately. Sounds naïve… I know.
But does anyone else have a better idea? Tens of millions of Americans are all ears.
We can and must do something, including making a serious effort to stem the violence or we can wring our hands, blame our fellow Americans and meet again on the battlefield in the aftermath of the next tragedy.
There’s always one around the corner.
As for the local scene, the shootings in Gilroy felt personal. The news rattled me.
In 2006, Nancy Stewart-Franczak, founder of the local Garlic Festival, hosted a few of us on a trip to Gilroy to see first hand what she hoped our Garlic Fest could become.
We were moved by the community participation in Gilroy and by the fact that the festival funded local nonprofits for the year.
We got to know the organizers and our hearts went out to them when the recent violence occurred.
While the Garlic Fest is no longer in Delray—a loss no doubt– we do host other events and attract crowds to our downtown several times a week. You can’t help but think: what if this happened here?
We know it can.
Of course, we cannot stop living or the domestic terrorists with their hate filled manifestos will win. But we can do our best to prepare—like they did in Gilroy which had a model plan and response–but sadly they still suffered death and injury.
And we can insist that Congress and the president seize this moment to lead or at least get out of the way if the American people propose common sense solutions.
If you believe in America—as I still do despite its problems and division—you must believe we have the wherewithal to stop this carnage.
Do something, they chanted at the governor in Ohio. Do something…..
We better.
