Once again we’ve had a massacre on a U.S. military installation. Thirteen dead in the latest, including the shooter. This time it happened near our nation’s capitol. A 34 year old man with Fort Worth ties opens fire at the Washington Navy Yard, killing a dozen before he’s killed.
We have learned in the days following the shooting that Aaron Alexis went off because he had mental problems. Alexis said he heard voices in his head that kept him awake at night. Even though he had sought help with the VA he retained his security clearance to work as a civilian at the Navy yard. Friends said he had occasion temper flare ups, but was a practicing Buddhist, who meditated regularly.
Immediately some jumped in calling for stricter controls on gun sales. Is that the answer? I grew up around guns. My family is one of hunters, so I’ve always thought that guns themselves are not the problem. Guns are only as evil as the person handling them, in my opinion. If guns were evil I would have been dead a dozen times over at the hands of my Dad or my brother during many a hunting trip.
Would an assault weapons ban have prevented this attack or the one at a Colorado movie theater or the one at a Connecticut elementary school or the one at Ft. Hood? Who knows. Probably not. If somebody is bent on doing harm to others they’ll find a way.
Short of the government confiscating every firearm in the U.S. – and good luck even thinking about that – those on a mission will come up with a means to get the job done. If not a gun, they’ll build a bomb. If not a bomb, they’ll drive a truck into a crowd. If we ban trucks, then they’ll use a butcher knife to wound and kill their victims. Of we outlive knives, they’ll pour gasoline on their victims and light them on fire. If we ban gasoline then they’ll pick up a brick. Where do you stop with the bans once you start? I don’t believe we can “ban” our way into doing away with these horrible incidents.
What we have to do is make the safety systems in place actually work. And that’s the hard part.
Everybody talks about better screening of gun buyers and prospective workers. Yet, in a world where every business and government agency has been downsized to death, proper and thorough examination of each and every potential employee’s background and criminal record seems impossible.
And so we get this. We have the mentally ill or the radicalized take advantage of the system and do what they believe they must do.
And there’s the whole mental illness angle. And again, it’s a byproduct of too little funding for the care of those with mental problems. Even when identified as problematic and potentially dangerous, people fall through the cracks.
Is there really anything to be done?
I would like to think somehow, somewhere, somebody has the answer. I don’t. I continue to believe we can’t live in a bubble with our heads cowed, afraid to get out and work and live. Nobody can predict these things happening.
We all have probably interacted with somebody we suspect might “go off,” but what did we do about it? That’s the difficult part. Until somebody actually does something harmful it’s often hard to get troubled individuals the help they need.
It’s sad to say, but there are some truly disturbed individuals who should be feared. How we determine who that is and what we do about them is the tricky question and one not likely to be answered in my lifetime.
That’s what I’m thinking.
Rick Hadley
24/7 News