There Are No Easy Answers

Every time we have a horrific mass shooting like we had in Nashville this week it is quickly followed by those who want to point to a specific cause.

Those on the left are quick to place the entire blame on "assault weapons".

One of Joe Biden's favorite talking points since he ran for President was that he wanted to ban "assault weapons".

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/27/biden-assault-weapons-ban-nashville-shooting-00089050

However, the problem is that it appears that the term "assault weapon" is a difficult term to define.

Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security could not define what it was this week in a Senate hearing.

Source: https://twitter.com/2Aupdates/status/1641194137507512320

Neither could two nominees that Biden put forth to be the ATF Director when questioned in their Senate confirmation hearings in the last two years.

Therein lies the problem.

Machine guns and other military types of automatic weapons are already illegal and have been since the 1930's. In fact, the use of these weapons by gangsters such as Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson and John Dillinger led to the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934 that made them illegal in the U.S.

The shooter in Nashville is reported to have used an AR-15.

This is not an automatic weapon as they are generally defined. An AR-15 does not automatically fire multiple rounds with one squeeze of the trigger. It requires one pull of the trigger for every round fired. 

Semiautomatic guns such as the AR-15 are widely owned by Americans. It is reported that there are 100 million semiautomatic handguns and 40 million semiautomatic rifles in private hands.

An AR-15 typically is configured with a 20 or 30 round magazine. However, it can also accommodate 5 and 10 round magazines as well. The popular Wild West gun, the Colt six-shooter, fired six rounds. Could that be considered an assault weapon? Where do we draw the line?

Does anyone also seriously believe that a law could be passed that 140 million guns owned by Americans would be declared illegal and required to be turned in or confiscated?

It would not seem so considering there is a 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that is part of our Bill of Rights.

In 1994 a federal law did ban the new manufacture of certain types of semiautomatic weapons and larger magazines but Congress did not see fit to extend the ban when it expired in 2004. There apparently was not enough evidence to indicate that the ban had been effective in the decade after its enactment.

The fact also remains that there were less than 500 homicides in the United States in 2021 (last year data is available) in which a rifle was the weapon used (automatic, semiautomatic, shotgun or otherwise).

That is less than half of the number of homicides caused by knives or fists.

We also hear people state that we never saw these types of mass shootings in the past.

It is true that the frequency has increased.

However, it is not true that mass shootings are a new phenomenon.

In fact, here is a graphic that shows some of the mass shootings that took place in the United States dating back to 1891. Notice that even the 1891 shootings involved school settings.

Source: http://behindthetower.org/a-brief-history-of-mass-shootings

This history of mass shootings also does not include what is still the most deadly attack on a school in U.S.history known as the "Bath School Massacre"  A series of explosions were set by a troubled man in 1927 which killed 38 schoolchildren and 6 adults.

Source: https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/05/10_things_you_probably_didnt_k.html

Unfortunately, there have always been demented, deranged and delusional people in our midst.

The problem today is that the actions of these maniacs are amplified by media and on social media which gives these people the attention many of them desperately crave.

For example, here are some messages that the Nashville killer sent to a friend the morning of the shootings.

The 911 call to police reporting the shootings came in exactly 15 minutes later.

Note the reference to being on the news and the fact that "more than enough evidence" has been left behind to explain the shooter's reasons for all of this.

Notice as well that the killer refers to themselves as both Audrey and Aiden in the messages to their friend.

Let's hope we hear more about the evidence left behind and the reasons the shooter did this.

However, it is difficult to imagine that the killer's transgenderism did not have a significant role in the mental and emotional issues that led to the commission of this heinous act.

Although you can be sure that there will be many in the mainstream media and progressive establishment that will do everything to downplay that angle. If it does surface they will argue that the shooter was pushed over the edge because they were discriminated against and marginalized by a cisgender society.

In fact, both The New York Times and USA Today issued statements effectively apologizing for referring to the killer as a "woman" because that is how the police identified the assailant. They stated that the police had misidentified her? him? I guess the police made the mistake of looking at her body after they had to shoot her in the school as three children and three adults lay dead because of her actions.

The media is concerned about offending the dead killer by misidentifying her? Really?

The sad reality is that the Nashville shooting is evidence that attempting to treat transgenderism as normal human behavior is dangerous.

These people need our help and compassion. However, they should not be celebrated nor their behavior affirmed as normal.

It is beyond me how we have gotten to this place.

If the DNA and physical attributes of the body do not match how the human thinks or feels about themself it is a mental issue, not a biological defect.

This reality had been accepted and established for centuries.

The human mind is very powerful. It can make us believe many things that are not true. 

For example, somatoparaphrenia is a type of mental illness or delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one's body.

We don't allow this person to amputate their own arm or leg merely because in their mind they do not believe the reality of their own biology.

The same is true of those who suffer with anorexia. These individuals starve themselves as they believe in their mind that they are overweight. We don't ignore the biology, agree with them and take their nourishment away to cater to their delusion. We treat their mental illness.

When it comes to transgender issues the thing I find interesting is that all of the work done today is to deny the biology and accept how the person "feels" or "identifies".

It used to be established medical practice in transgender issues to work on treating the mind rather than attempting to change the biology of the body.

Medical interventions today are focused on attempting to alter the biology. (Testosterone levels, gender reassignment surgery, etc)

That was not always the case. The prevailing medical opinion for centuries was represented by the views of Dr. Paul McHugh who was the psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University who believed that transgenderism was a "mental disorder" and sex change was "biologically impossible."

If the Covid pandemic taught us anything it was that the virus was not the only thing that was contagious.

Contagion also drives a great deal of human behavior.

The herd instinct is as strong in humans as it is in other mammals.

It was apparent in almost every response to Covid whether it was justified based on the science, facts or not.

I have written before about the seeming contagion of LBGTQ+ among young people, particularly women.

For example, how do you explain this?

1.7% of those born before 1946 identify as LBGT and 2.7% of Baby Boomers but 20% of Gen Z so identify?

Has something been introduced into the environment?

Did the hard wiring of our genetics change in the span of a decade or two?

Is it something else?

Is this evidence of mental abnormality rather than a physical one?

Why is it important to ask tough questions about this?

Consider this fact and what it suggests.

Is social contagion driving this?

I found this Google Trends data to be interesting when considering this question.

Compare how often the term "anorexia" was a topic of a Google search compared to "transgender" since 2004.

Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=anorexia,transgender&hl=en

Many young women are uncomfortable as their bodies change and mature. They can be insecure and vulnerable regarding their body image.

Social media has made this even more difficult for young women.

Have rates of anorexia decreased as transgender ideology has taken hold?

I have not seen any reliable data that this is the case but the trend above may warrant some additional study.

At least anecdotally it doesn't seem that we hear about anorexia and other eating disorders as much as we used to.

The bigger point here is that what we saw in Nashville and what we have seen in other mass shootings is the result of a number of factors.

Access to guns is certainly part of it. However, the media world we live in today and the deterioration of mental health are much bigger factors in the overall mosaic.

It is also true that in a free society we also always have to balance individual rights and the common good.

Do we take away 100 million guns from law abiding citizens to prevent something like what happened in Nashville?

Do we lock someone up with emotional and mental problems like that of the Nashville killer on the possibility that they may do something heinous? This is what was done fairly routinely a century ago.

Do we attempt to censor and limit the reach of social media?

Where do we attempt to draw the line on any of these?

There are no easy answers.

If someone suggest there is, you know they are a providing a political solution rather than a real, practical answer.

That simply does not exist if we want to continue living in a free society.