One Way to Stop the Shootings Nobody Mentions

Is it Time for Psychological Warfare?

Our culture has set the stage for the tragic mass shootings we see in the headlines every day.

• Some of our best digital artists and musicians create video games that train young minds to release stress through first-person shooter games. The more people you kill in a game, the greater the victory. (Movies do the same thing, but more passively.)
• Our laws in the US guarantee everyone can own rifles of mass destruction. And even if they became illegal now, there’s too many of them already on the streets.
• The glue that keeps society together — family — has fallen apart after incessant lashing from all sides, and we just can’t seem to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
• Parents have lost the interest and discipline to bring their children to places of contemplation and worship, to spend at least an hour away from the clamor of the world and reach for something higher.
• There’s a lack of honest leaders, especially in government.

A bleak picture indeed.

It causes us all to be nervous at crowds at least for a few moments, wondering if “it” might happen…

So how do we push back against these constant shootings?

I’ve heard of wild ideas like having robots patrol schools to take out shooters… Sigh… a robot is just a computer that can be hacked.

And anyway, no amount of armed patrols (be they robotic or human) can win this. That’s because nothing physical is going to stop something rooted psychologically.

So, what to do?

If we look at a typical mass shooting, one thing stands out:

These shooters are mainly attacking unarmed people… In all cultures and narratives and especially deep within our subconscious, this is considered cowardly. But somehow we’ve forgotten that.

The modern “shooter” is projecting his problems on innocent people who can’t shoot back. There’s nothing glorious here, or honorable, or brave.

Courage would be putting these would-be shooters on a Hunger-Games set and letting them go at each other… Instead, they attack children and grandparents — like utter cowards.

So here is the only thing I can think of in this desperate moment: Equate mass shootings with cowardice in every medium possible.

Stop letting the shooters think they’re going out in a blaze of glory. If it’s seen more as an act of cowardice, they may choose another way to vent their frustrations.

Stop showing the videos of scared people running, which may feed the imagination of would-be shooters. Stop spreading their hateful manifestos and start recasting them as cowards, plain and simple.

Final thought: In the Old West, an outlaw would give an unarmed enemy a gun before he’d shoot him (to avoid being seen as a coward). If we could cast today’s shootings as cowardly, maybe we’d stop a few before they happen.