Treat mass murder as the unique crime it is


There are far too many responses to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — many seeking to defend some point of view regarding guns in general.

Both people and guns kill people. So do animals, accidents, weapons of all kinds and natural events. The tragedy at Sandy Hook was preventable if we accept that it was a complex problem. Mental health, availability of a particular weapon and a lack of security at the school all contributed to the specific incident. The inability to find a solution is because too many people are mixing too many problems and seeking a single cure-all.

The tragedy was another example of a mass killing made possible by a weapon capable of such an action. That is a relatively easy problem with a relatively simple cure: Ban such weapons and the ammo that makes their killing power so different from any other type or style of gun. They have no real reason for civilian use. If a valid reason is found, some regulations should be considered.

Seeking to find potential killers through better mental health rules and laws has always been a goal, but budgets and other practical issues that could standardize such identification and tracking have kept this from becoming universal. Obviously, the goal is to find better methods while continuing to find other solutions.

Separate out statistics regarding the many multiple killings we as a nation have witnessed, so we can know more about this particularly horrendous type of crime. What weapons were used by most of the perpetrators? How were the weapons obtained? What warning signs were common, etc.?

Mass murder is a separate problem from gun deaths in general. So are suicides, domestic violence, robberies, gang killings, drive-bys and so on. Once separated out, see what the similarities are regarding prevention. Then, see if there is value in lumping in similar results from accidental and other gun deaths. Establish universal criteria so that all reporting is similar and lends itself to analysis. Once all the statistics are available, we can look for regional and other anomalies.

And once the specific weapons are identified, we might find that it is, indeed, people not guns that are the problem. Lumping all the contributing factors together as if they were the same prevents any real action from taking place.

There are deaths caused by other weapons that have no real application to mass murders that kill many in a short time, so that interference by a bystander is not the general answer.

Bob Poris is a retired shopping center developer who now lives in On Top of the World.


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