On the heels of yet another deadly and tragic U.S. school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas where an 18-year-old killed 18 elementary school students and two of their teachers, I can’t help but lament how very dysfunctional life has become. Right up the street from where I live in Orlando, Fla., is a place called Machine Gun America, which as the ominous name suggests, customers fire machine guns at cardboard cutouts of people for fun. Gun culture is ingrained in our consciousness, and somehow human life has turned into a video game.
It’s bizarre. It’s scary. It’s something that the United States, the only place on earth that regularly experiences this kind of nonsense, will continue to tackle with. Our country is so divided on the issue of gun control, but I can’t imagine anything more unifying than keeping our kids safe. We just finished another Mental Health Awareness Month, but we have to do so much better when it comes to educating people about the importance of mental wellbeing, especially America’s youth. Between firearms being so prevalent and the fact that there is no real release for mounting mental health issues that are still very much stigmatized, especially among Gen Z, it’s no wonder we keep repeating these tragedies. If there is any agreement at all about how do we can turn the tide, it is to get guns out of the hands of mentally ill people.
In so many cases, including last week’s school shooting, we read about how there were warning signs on social media or people were tipped off about threats. We have to do a much better job of building these concerns into our emergency response. But there also has to be an ongoing effort to monitor social media, which has had a real detrimental effect in terms of our youth. In addition, we have to be more thoughtful about diagnosing Attention Deficit Disorder and providing young people with the mental health support that they truly need. Until we step up our efforts to rid gun violence from our culture, we will be doomed to repeat this sordid chapter in our nation’s history.
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