Yet Another Mass Shooting

Yet another mass shooting event in the USA ...

Mass Shooting And Mormon Church Burning

 ... this time, it wasn't a school but a Mormon church last Sunday.

As we have discussed before in this blog on a number of occasions, the USA appears to accept these killings as the price to be paid for owning guns. 

In this event, at least four were killed, and eight were injured. It's a sad event, and possibly some of the injured will not survive their injuries. The gunman, Thomas J Sanford was killed by the police in a shoot-out with his assault-style rifle, and was an ex-marine (motor pool and vehicle recovery), and had served in Iraq ... the only motive for the attack, which also burnt the church, that has been uncovered to-date is a failed relationship with a Mormon woman a decade earlier, and a growing hatred for all its members in the period since that relationship had ended. He had called them "the Anti-Christ" to a friend a week prior to the fatal attack.

However in the aftermath of the attack, I was struck once again at the fact that Republican politicians nearly never comment directly on the fact, that the ease of owning assault-style rifles and guns in general in the US (where it was reported in 2018, that there were more guns than people, with approximately 120.5 guns per 100 residents, or put another way, 393 million firearms), facilitates the number of major shootings in the USA. Addendum: Ten US States have bans on assault weapons and  three have some restrictions.

But rather, they will always comment on how sad they are and what a tragedy it was, and then always suggest that Americans pray for the victims and their families. President Trump, for example, asked people to " ... PRAY for the victims and their families. THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!" Vice President JD Vance said, "Say a prayer for the victims and first responders." While the Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, said, "Please join me in praying for the victims of this terrible tragedy."

Now, whilst there is nothing unusual in expressing these kind of sentiments and would be expected from politicians, it doesn't exactly tackle the issue of gun violence, or suggest any solution to the growing problem of gun killings in the country, nor even address the side issue of why assault type rifles are even available to the general public, when they have absolutely no other purpose other than to kill people. 

These repetitious calls for prayers by politicians, on an almost weekly basis in the US, can't really offer much solace to the victims of these ever more frequent events. Also, whilst these mass events take the national news headlines (for a day or so ... and probably with less coverage than a recent lone gunman killing has continued to attract), it's the smaller tragedies that take place almost daily, in areas such as the public housing schemes, where black on black gun crime is the blight of those communities, and often spills into the wider society, that are actually the real issue that needs addressing.