I try not to watch the news sometimes because I am scared of what I might see and it gives me anxiety. The recent shooting in Texas broke my heart and I couldn’t help but wonder what is going on in our society. When did we lose our faith in humanity and stop seeing people as just people who are struggling to survive. Why does someone decide to aimlessly take the life of another without considering the the impact it would have the people left behind.
There is so much talk of tighter gun laws which have proven to be effective in some places like Australia where military style and semi-automatic weapons were banned after the mass shooting in 1996. Needless to say that there hasn’t been another mass shooting in Australia since then.
I do understand the second amendment and that some people need to bear arms. Can we also agree that we want to feel safe whenever we leave our homes? My question then is, do we need weapons that could take away so many lives in seconds in the hands of civilians? Even our law enforcement don’t carry these types of weapons. Things were different when the second amendment was enacted, so why aren’t we adapting and responding to change within the current state of our society? Would you run a business today the same way that you did 50 years ago?
Now let’s talk about the why behind some of these shooting. Most of the recent mass shootings have been target at certain groups. Why? What is influencing people to act this way? Do we need to evaluate the way we protect our people against hate crimes and speeches/words that promote hate?Is there an internal terrorist organization that is being overlooked? We are after all regarded as one of greatest nations in the world , so why don’t we live up to these expectations? What does it mean to be a great nation anyways?
From the look of things, waiting on our gun laws to change will be like waiting for a chicken to grow teeth, so what can we do to prevent these attacks before they even happen? In today’s society, most mass shooters use social media to drop hints or talk about their attacks before they even happen. What if social media companies had an algorithm which detected specific words and there was some way for them communicate with law enforcement, so that these attacks could be stopped before they happened?
What if we took it upon ourselves to be our neighbors keeper and call out the perpetrators before they carried out the act? Can we just be kinder to one another and strive to create a more inclusive society were people don’t feel so alone and alienated? Will some of the above make our society better?
Let’s strive to create a society that we can be proud of and want to live in!
Alieh Kimbeng 