As We End 2015
By Albert B. Kelly
There’s not been a day
that’s gone by in 2015 without a story or headline about a mass shooting, at
least it seems that way. 2015 can be remembered for a lot of things and no
doubt as we put the finishing touches on December, there will be
“retrospectives” with images from the previous 12 months.
Unfortunately, in America
in 2015, they say we basically average one mass shooting a day. If you take a
little time to check out the website “Mass Shooting Tracker” ( www.shootingtracker.com ) it seems to confirm it.
As of this writing at
least, assuming I understood the website, a total of 353 mass shootings have
taken place- 457 dead and 1,312 wounded. These mass shootings have happened in
just about every state in the union.
Here in New Jersey so far in
2015, we’ve had 11 mass shootings leaving 10 dead and 35 wounded - covering
multiple communities including Newark, Patterson, Trenton, Camden, Jersey City,
East Orange, and Long Branch
If these NJ numbers come
as a surprise, that might be because we only see news coverage for the really
juicy storylines- those involving larger numbers of victims, possible terrorist
motivations, or racial and ethnic overtones. Lacking these, the stories remain
largely local.
In the wake of these
shootings, there’s talk of tightening gun laws, implementing an assault weapons
ban, dealing with gun show loop holes, or doing universal background checks.
But then we’re quickly reminded by someone that any new laws would not have prevented…
Maybe a specific law wouldn’t
have prevented whichever mass shooting happened to be splashed all over the
news in a given week, but what about the shootings we don’t hear about?
Much credit needs to go to
Brock Weller (shootingtracker.com) and Mark Bryant (Gun Violence Archive) for
putting forth the effort to track down this data and make it available to the
public.
Maybe the next step is to
sift through the details on this year’s mass shootings and determine what, if anything
might have prevented or mitigated any one or more of the 350 plus mass
shootings that took place in 2015.
With society’s newfound
love of the algorithm, maybe someone somewhere with the right kind of technical
chops can write the thing in such a way so as to connect the dots between the
shootings and the proposed laws and help get us beyond partisan rhetoric.
If we’re honest about it,
most of us had no idea that we, as a society, are averaging about one mass
shooting per day. Most of us had no clue as to how many have been killed or
wounded, much less why. But are we really that powerless to change things?
Have we become numb to the
images of crime scene tape, grieving families, and stunned bystanders? I find
myself getting cynical reading the obligatory tweets with “thoughts and prayers”
from the folks who actually have the power to do something- Congress. Let’s at
least try something different in 2016.
If it takes a sunset
clause in new laws, let’s try- an expiration date means it has a beginning and
an end, but at least we’ll have a chance to see if something helps.
If the focus needs to be a
package of things like background checks, mental health screenings (where
appropriate), minimum liability coverage, tighter age requirements, storage
requirements- so be it.
In 2016, when it comes to
legislation, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good in dealing with
gun violence. A laws’ value can’t be that it has to prevent most mass
shootings- preventing one or two would do just fine- as any of the heartbroken
families might tell us.
I could be wrong, but I hope
we’re reaching critical mass as we close out 2015 - a tipping point, just as we
did with other things like food and drug safety, seat belt laws, and smoking.
Just as we’re doing with texting and driving and perhaps climate change.
None of the laws
regulating these areas is perfect, lawmakers often revisit legislation to amend
or revise statutes based on experience and the lessons we’ve learned. So it
should be with gun violence.
2015 can be remembered in
a lot of different ways, let’s hope it’s not remembered as the year we did
nothing in response to mass shootings except fight among ourselves and tweet
out thoughts and prayers for the victims.