UPDATE: There has been a second shooting in Louisville, KY this morning (April 10, 2023).

So yet another mass shooting has happened. This one at a bank in Louisville, KY. This of course comes on the heels of the terrible shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. And once again the anti-gun crowd is demanding more gun control while people like Charlie Kirk try to balance gun violence with personal freedom.

Allow me for a moment to play the fence sitter. We have deaths from traffic accidents every day. Should we ban automobiles? People die from the misuse of legal drugs every day. Shall we ban legal drugs because of said misuse? Legal drugs and automobiles do not commit the crimes. People do. Same with guns. The problem with guns is that they are an excellent tool for killing. If I kill a deer during hunting season I have committed no crime. But if I kill my neighbor because his lawn mower is too loud, that is another matter. It isn’t the gun. It’s the person wielding it. After all, I could have just shot the mower instead of my neighbor.

All that said, our gun laws need an overhaul. Severely restrictive gun laws don’t work. Chicago proves this beyond a doubt. Lax gun laws don’t work either (look at MS and AL). So what’s the answer? A total gun ban won’t work in America. You can buy anything here, legal or otherwise. Ban the guns and only the “bad guys” will have them.

So what’s the answer? We need to kill the mindless hate that permeates our culture. Politics, religion, race, sexual orientation and other differences have us so fragmented and angry that we’re tearing ourselves apart. The pious among us will say that we need to “get back to God.” But that’s horseshit. Statistics plainly show that religiosity has no positive effect on crime. Harsh punishments don’t either. Many states employ the death penalty for murder but still have their share of murders.

It is our culture that must change. But how do we change the hearts and minds of millions of people? We could start by getting the media to stop grandstanding and sensationalizing violence. We must get our politicians to actually pass laws that work without kneeling at the altars of political correctness or the gun lobby. We must recognize and accept that different people have different beliefs and priorities. We must stop judging people according to our own self-centered biases (and we all have them).

In short, we need to learn to just respect each other and get along. It is not your place (or mine) to judge someone just because we don’t agree on… pick an issue.

Can we do that? I’m willing to (I’m sorry) take a shot at it. Are you?