ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING IN THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA

Another mass shooting happened on Wednesday night.  This time it was at the popular Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California; a city that prides itself in being among the safest municipalities in the country.  It’s clear that crime statistics have no bearing on predicting mass shootings; as these atrocities have proven to happen anywhere.  In fact, most of them happen where they’re not supposed to happen – you know, “safe” communities like Littleton, Newtown and Thousand Oaks.  The identity of the gunman was just released, a 28-year-old male named Ian David Long.  By dinner time you’ll probably have forgotten his name – likely upstaged by some petulant tweet from our Narcissist in Chief or perhaps by closing your eyes in the hope that someday these horrific shootings will just end.  I’ve been trying it for years.  It doesn’t work.

So far twelve are dead in this shooting, including the gunman, as well as a 29-year veteran from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Ron Helus.  The remaining victims are presumed to be young adults, as the Borderline was a popular night spot among local colleges and universities.  As with every time this happens, the debate about guns will rise to surface for a day or two; though its voice continues to get drowned out for three main reasons: 1) This seems to occur now on a biweekly basis, and thus, we condition ourselves into a false denial that, statistically, our children are still more likely to get struck by lightning than die in a mass shooting.  What else can we do but block this out?  We probably won’t die eating dinner at Applebees, right?  2) That The Left offers nothing but rhetoric since they’re covertly owned by the gun lobby, while The Right takes a hard stand on protecting the Second Amendment since they’re overtly owned by the gun lobby.  And 3) Anti-gun organizations have been largely ineffective.  Most gun control legislation is completely toothless; written for the sole purpose of scoring political brownie points without enticing the wrath of the NRA and its lesser known brethren. Background checks do nothing.  Most of the weapons used in these senseless slaughters are purchased legally anyway.  Guns exist to kill people.  The old, tired arguments we’ve heard ad nauseum such as if only there was somebody armed at the time this happened, or that a good guy with a gun is better than a bad guy with a gun, or that a man with knife can cause as much carnage as a man with a gun don’t hold up.  They never have.   On the surface people may nod in agreement about these hollow points, but privately, when one takes a good hard look in the mirror, the fact that this is an utter lie can’t be denied.  You may fool your neighbor, but you can’t fool yourself.

To dedicate time, energy and resources to “understanding” what made Ian David Long tick is doing our society a disservice. Of course we’re curious, but the more these perpetrators get their names in lights, even posthumously, the more likely it is to motivate the next aspiring mass murderer in relatively short order.  It’s come out that Long was a former Marine and may have been suffering from Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder, or PTSD; only the world’s most convenient diagnosis to when former soldiers commit crimes like this.  You can see it’s already being set up that, once again, this latest mass shooting is about mental health instead of insanely easy access to guns.  No doubt our president will be tweeting that exact point soon enough if he hasn’t already.  And since we’ll never concede to the obvious truth that a society saturated with an estimated 300 million fire arms gets innocent people killed, we go through the perfunctory exercise of identifying other possible causes that fuel such incidents.  It’s just another lie, and yet we still look the other way regardless.  I’m sure you have the same percentage of violent sociopaths in Japan as you do in the United States, only they can’t get access to guns; which is why you never hear about mass shootings coming out of there, or anywhere else with similar laws for that matter.  Maybe they cold-cock some poor guy on the street, or stab someone on the Tokyo subway on a rare occasion, but the damage and frequency of such incidents is infinitesimal in comparison to what happens in America.  

This Picture Could Be Generic, However This Is From Wednesday Night In Thousand Oaks, California Where 12 Died

Mass shootings have become an outlet, an answer, a calamitously grandiose way for the angry and ill adjusted to end the dead end.  Everyone’s messed up to some extent, they’re just incredibly more dangerous when they get their hands on a gun.  You want an end to the violence?  Start by ending the denial.