Only truths solve problems
Solutionaries solve problems in a selfless manner and does so using truthful knowledge discovered through Education, Experience, and ethical / moral principles. This fact of knowledge is universal and applies equally to everyone.
Once again, countless families had to endure the loss of loved ones at the hand of one troubled individual by the use of a firearm. Reliably, many people are drawn to treating a symptom of the problem instead of solving the problem. Indignant cries are calling for our public servants to create laws that outlaw the legal sales guns, specifically assault weapons. And. once again, this will not solve the problem of people intentionally wanting to harm others. Even if they get what they want…nothing will change.
With very little effort, I crunched the data relating to mass shootings over the last 101 years beginning in 1920 through 2021. This is what I found:
1920 to 1970 – 25 mass shootings with 232 deaths; for an average of 9.3 deaths per event
1970 to 2021 – 237 mass shootings with 1614 deaths; an average of 6.8 deaths per event
If semi-automatic guns would have been the problem, we would have seen a rise in deaths per event. That did not happen. Instead, we see a substantial rise in the number of events.
The pressing question that should be asked is “What changed in society, causing nearly 10 times the number of people wishing to harm their fellow citizens?”
I found many contributing factors. The main ones would have had to change the mindset of people, the culture of society, and the attitudes of children and young adults over multiple generations.
In the 1960s, we began closing mental health facilities and the number of psychiatrists began to plumet. At the peak of admittance in the 1950s, there were over a half a million people who resided in these facilities. Now, it is rare and very difficult to have people committed due to mental health issues. Without a doubt, most mass shooter are not of their right mind.
In the 1943, we banded the requirement of the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools and in 1962, we began the band on prayer in our public schools. I’m sure I am not the only one who finds it interesting, when a public servant or a media spokesperson asks us to pray for the families of those affected by a mass shooting yet, these same people, when asked, if prayer should be allowed in our schools they reply loudly, of course not.
Then, in the 1970s, the annual number of shootings went above single digits for the first time and remained there. Were there any other societal events that coincided with this devaluation of human life in the American culture?
January 1973, a federal court ruled in favor of abortion on demand. As a Country, we turned our backs on the most innocent of people, our unborn citizens. We allowed intelligent people to rationalize the termination of a healthy pregnancy just because it inconvenienced the would-be-parents. Again, it makes no sense, that the same people who try to justify that an embryo is not a life would also protest in the streets the minute someone else killed an alien life cell found anywhere else in the universe. This is hypocrisy at its finest and the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The rise in the number of mass shootings have skyrocketed since the 1970s, and why not? We no longer pray as a united society, we no longer feel the need to teach our children to respect the sacrifices of the lives of our National heroes, and, in some states, you can now kill an innocent life, almost up to the moment of natural birth, for no other reason but that the new life will interrupt the mother’s plans.
The problem is not guns, poison, or explosives…it is the people we are becoming.
If this is my last post, I want all to know, there was only one purpose for all that I have written; to have made a positive difference in the lives of others.
Anthony “Tony” Boquet, the author of “The Bloodline of Wisdom, The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary” and the soon to be released “The Power of the Wisdom of Three”