Too Many Mass Shootings in America

I was going to start by saying that this is completely out of hand, but I think it actually was completely out of hand many years ago. 

It was already completely out of hand almost two years ago, when 58 people, plus the active shooter, died in Las Vegas. 

It was already completely out of hand after the Orlando club shooting that killed almost 50 people.

It was already completely out of hand after the Sandy Hook shootings, which happened almost nine years ago already.

Frankly, you could go down the list. We should have learned that it was already completely out of hand after the Columbine High School shootings, where two kids, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were fixated on Hitler and Nazism, and then went into their high school just months before they were set to graduate, and killed 13 people, before killing themselves. 

We certainly have had plenty of other shootings in between those that I already mentioned, which could have warned us that this problem of seemingly having senseless mass shootings every couple of weeks or so, at most - and lately it seems to be every couple of days, frankly - was unique to the United States. No other country has this problem, particularly peacetime countries, and especially advanced, wealthy nations.

Not that they have not happened in other countries. Of course they have. 

But nowhere do they have the level of relentless gun violence and seemingly random (or white supremacist inspired) mass shootings as we do in this country.

Of course, gun rights activists suggest that it is crazy and unlawful and unproven that making ownership of semi-assault rifles would finally curb this problem. Yet, it worked in Australia, and it worked in the United Kingdom, and in other countries. Common sense gun legislation worked, demonstrably. 

How can I make this claim?

Because you almost never hear about these kinds of major mass shootings in other countries. More than nine times out of ten, they seem to happen here in the United States, where there are more guns than people, and where less than five percent of the world's population owns nearly half of all of the guns in the world.

People who identify themselves as conservatives tend to suggest that mental health is the issue. It might be one of the issues, but it certainly is not the only issue. Also, they believe that making mental health care more accessible and/or affordable is socialism, so they are dead set against that, too.

This stalemate has been going on for years, really decades. And with the powerful gun lobby still incredibly powerful and influential in this country's government - both state and federal governments, actually - that is not likely to change, even though statistics show that an overwhelming majority of Americans actually favor commonsense gun control. 

We can only fix the problem once we begin to admit that it is, in fact, a problem. But our problem is that, collectively, we seem to have accepted this as the "new normal."

Tragic. 

And headlines like these of more mass shooting are the results.

Really, when is enough enough? When do we admit that his was completely out of hand long ago, and that the continued mass shootings that have become so commonplace in this country - and only in this country - are not only tragic, but also a source of great shame and a failing before an entire world that is watching, and unable to figure out why we keep tolerating this.