Three types of gun violence dominate the landscape in America. One is gun violence in the inner city connected to drugs and gangs. This requires a holistic effort for the inner city which I spoke of in another post on the Black Underclass. It also requires a massive community policing effort that is very expensive and which politicians have been unwilling to support.
The second is ideological hate crimes, either from white supremacy or from Islamic terrorism.
The third is from a deranged evil that simply hates and wants to kill people.
My daughter Rebecca wrote a very intelligent post on the issue of guns and violence, so I want to write on it more extensively. We do get the news of such things in Israel and Israelis are quite amazed that it is safer in Israel!
I am only here speaking on the second two types. It appears that the shooter in El Paso was carrying out an ideological hate crime and the one in Dayton, Ohio was carrying out a deranged hatred in general. I think these two provide a paradigm of killers that can be helpful.
In the first case, I think it is crucial that social media be surveyed to alert people to white supremacists and Islamic radicals who may commit crimes. We must not use political correctness about the latter to not track Islamic terrorists. We must not use free speech to prevent tracking white supremacist individuals and groups. All people who belong to such groups or who post their ideologies should be on a red flag list that prevents them from buying guns, though they can get guns from the black market. At least some acts might be prevented. In addition, people need to come forth to authorities when they have information.
In the second case, this shooter was feared in his high school days and suspended. He should have been on a red flag list. He constantly spoke of his desire to murder and rape. It was a non-ideological evil. Laws did not allow a minor to be in a database for red-flagging for the future. Youth crimes are expunged from the records. This has to change with regard to gun purchases. This evil individual was able to purchase the gun legally.
It is crucial that those who are mentally unfit not be allowed to purchase guns. In this regard, we need to have a system to prevent those with mental illness issues connected to violent behavior from ever purchasing guns.
Lastly, all who purchase should go through rigorous background checks. We can also preclude rapid-firing weapons with large magazines. Some will say that self-defense requires such firepower for fending off criminals. I don’t buy it. This is very rarely the case. Also, such weapons make hunting less of a sport and more of a killing spree.