My heart goes out to the victims and the families of the recent Oregon school shooting. When something like this happens, the first thing everyone wants is stricter gun control, with the exception of outlawing guns altogether, and confiscation everyone’s guns, which didn’t work too well for the Germans. The shooter was not known to have a mental issue; he was of age and bought the guns legally, what could have been done to prevent this? In a hunting community it is not unusual for people to have several firearms, so it’s not like he had an arsenal of weapons.
What the investigation did reveal was that he had studied recent mass shootings. If you haven’t noticed most school shooters have either committed suicide or suicide by cop, they never have an exit plan that keeps them alive.
I put a lot of the blame for mass shootings on the news media; they have it on the news for weeks following the shooting. They keep talking about the shooter and the incident, to people on the edge that is glorifying the event and the person responsible. It gives them their moment of glory. Maybe another solution would be to have a modified profiling program to identify possible mass shooters; oh, I forgot we can’t do that because it might violate someone’s rights, hmm.
A few years ago at MLB games you could see streakers run across the field and the cameras would follow them on the field, now they divert the cameras and don’t talk about it. Since they quit glorifying it you very seldom hear of it happening.
John Graham
Lynnwood
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
