Opinion

Mass shootings out of control

By Bill Bowman

You may not have heard of it before last week. But in a small town in Alabama called Dadesville, a group of innocent teens were attending a Sweet Sixteen Birthday party. They were doing what teens do at such events, having fun, enjoying each other’s company.

Some of them may even have been looking forward to the day, in the not-too-distant future, when they would graduate high school and attend college. At the tender age of 16, they all still had a lot of life left to live.

Then all hell broke loose! And when the gun smoke settled, one thing became tragically clear. At least four of those innocent teens will never see sweet 17 or 18. They became the latest victims of America’s senseless, ongoing, seemingly never ending, mass shooting and killing epidemic.

At that same scene, at least 15 were shot and injured, six treated and released, five remained in critical condition, and four in stable condition.

Were they indeed the last victims of gun violence since last week? Because, in the few short days between the time this was penned, and the time you read it, who knows how many other innocent lives may have been lost in the carnage that has visited itself upon and inflicted the “greatest country in the world.” Hopefully the answer is none, because enough is enough already.

In a country where, not cancer, auto accidents, nor any other cause, but guns, have become the number one killer of children in America, no wonder kids are afraid to go to the movies or the mall anymore out of legitimate fear of getting shot or killed.

The mind-boggling stats speak for themselves. Defined as a shooting claiming five or more victims, close to 150 mass shootings have already been recorded in the U.S. in 2023, more shootings than days so far in this calendar year.

Where and when did these atrocities begin? Was it Columbine High School in Colorado, where 15 students were shot to death in 1999?

Or Sandyhook Elementary School, Connecticut, where 28 elementary students and their teachers were shot and killed in 2012, bringing tears to the eyes of a president (Obama).

The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history would take place five years later (2017), when 61 souls, enjoying a large open-air concert in Las Vegas, Nevada were mowed down by a shooter perched high above the concert crowd.

The following year (2018) Staneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida became the scene of a massacre where 17 students were gunned down.

And who can forget Uvalde, Texas, where 22 elementary school students and their teachers, last year (2022) became victims of yet another student/teacher hunter/predator. What made Uvalde stand out as the most horrific of all for me was that some of the young victims’ bodies had been so disfigured by the assault rifle fire, their own parents couldn’t identify them. DNA had to be used to make positive identifications.

On Feb. 14, 1929, four men, dressed in police uniforms, entered a Chicago garage, lined up seven members of George “Bugs” Moran’s Irish garage and opened fire, killing all of them. Was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre the inspiration for the Nova Scotia perp, who, three years ago, disguised himself as an RCMP officer and drove around in a decoy police cruiser, shooting men, women and children, night and day, until 22 lay dead, in Canada’s deadliest mass shooting?

While school mass shootings are rare outside the U.S. – only two have been reported in British history – Canada has not been immune to such wanton violence. Remember Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal where 14 female engineering students were shot and killed by a misogynistic male shooter in 1989?

Outraged by the carnage, Americans want their lawmakers to act on common sense gun safety reforms. But in a country so polarized, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on whether it’s night or day, or if the sky is blue or gray, that’s easier said than done. Democrats maintain the proliferation of guns themselves is the root cause of the problem, while Republicans counter, people with mental illness is the main problem, always avoiding the G-word (gun) whenever discussing the issue.

Aside from calling for more “thoughts and prayers” for the families of the latest victims, nobody really does anything about it.

In the film, Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood delivers a great line, when consoling the kid, who has just shot and killed his first man. “Hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Ya take away everything he’s got, and everything he’s ever gonna have.” Now all those trigger-happy ombres responsible for all those mass shootings, that’s precisely what they’ve done. And where do they think they got any right to do that?

Bill Bowman can be reached at: bill.bowman@hotmail.com

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