Repairing the Breach that Leads to Mass Shootings

I have written about guns and mass shootings before.  I don't feel any differently now that my home county has experienced one of the deadliest school shootings on record.  In this story, The Washington Post gives this startling statistic:  "This is at least the third school shooting this year, and one of the deadliest on record. Beginning with Columbine 19 years ago, more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus, according to a Washington Post analysis of online archives, state and federal enrollment figures, and news stories. That doesn’t count dozens of suicides, accidents and after-school assaults that have also exposed children to gunfire."

At the end of last night's radio show Marketplace, the host said that there are more places in the U.S. to buy a gun than there are Starbucks across the world.  I have watched my spouse buy a gun; we both have concealed weapons permits.  I will tell you this:  it is not easy to buy a gun from one of those legitimate stores.  It's not difficult, but it's not as easy as buying a gallon of milk.

I also know that I grew up surrounded by guns, although my family didn't own guns.  I grew up in the U.S. South, where many people had guns for all sorts of reasons, mostly hunting.  I remember seeing trucks in the parking lot of my high school in Knoxville, Tennessee, trucks with gun racks that had hunting rifles in them, trucks that likely were not locked.  And yet we didn't shoot each other. 

In 1983, the year I graduated, most of my high school would have had easy access to a gun.  And we didn't have locked schools or walled-in campuses or ID badges that had to be worn at all times or metal detectors.  And we did not shoot each other.

I don't believe that stronger gun laws will make school violence disappear.  Once I believed that if we had more mental health resources, it might make a difference--but I know that we can't make the disturbed get help.

I don't know why a chunk of our population has come unmoored from whatever bedrock used to keep us from shooting each other.  I have theories, but nothing I can support with facts or research.  I went to a very sparsely attended Ash Wednesday service last night.  Would we be better off if we had more people going to church?  That change has happened since 1983, when I graduated from high school, when we did not shoot each other.

It wouldn't have to be church services, of course.  Once we had more groups which forged more social connections, for both youth and adults:  Scouts and community choirs and sports leagues of all sorts and various classes, on and on I could go.

Back in 1983, when I graduated from high school where we did not shoot each other, we didn't have as many screens to view.  Our T.V. shows and movies had less violence.  I do believe that the barrage of violent images has contributed to a culture of mass shootings.  But back in 1983, when we did not shoot each other in our high schools, sociologists were already sounding the alarm--but then, we didn't have those images and plotlines accessible to us every hour of the day.

The words of the prophet Isaiah spoke to me last night. We read from the 58th chapter.  The words "repairer of the breach" always leap out at me.  But how?  How do we repair the very serious breaches that have cracked our society open?

I don't think that stronger gun laws will help with that repair work.  I'm not opposed to trying, but I think it's like getting stomach surgery without addressing the underlying psychology that led to the obesity that necessitates the stomach surgery.

How do we heal that underlying psychology?  I don't know yet, but it's the question for this era.