My thoughts on the Uvalde shooting

If you’re one of the 48 million children currently enrolled in American schools (or you happen to know and love one), here’s why you should care about Uvalde.?

One of the earliest reports of the incident to surface was the first-hand account of an 11-year old girl who smeared a classmate’s blood on herself and played dead, praying for her life. Saying this would cause her severe trauma would be an understatement.?

Incidents like these don’t just shock entire communities, they cripple them. Witnessing a massacre like this while trying to somehow get their lives back to normal ought to plunge Uvalde’s community into a severe mental health crisis.?

What makes matters worse is that it isn’t just Uvalde that’s going through this. Memorial Day Weekend saw 11 more mass shootings across the country, with at least eight people being gunned down and plenty more injured. It’s easy to assume that the grossly brazen gun culture prevalent in the U.S. is the sole reason for this, but that’s far from the truth.?

Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof’s lawyers argued that the jury for his trial was blatantly overlooking his autism, and sticking to the mental health plea would’ve even helped Roof’s case, but he decided to avoid it. The reason? He was simply unwilling to admit that he is, in fact, autistic. His words - “Autism is for nerds and losers. I’m a sociopath.” When a person would rather face more jail time than own up to their disorder, you know things are very, very bad.?

Robb Elementary gunman Salvador Ramos showed similar signs of suffering from complex mental health disorders. A person from his former school recounts incidents where he was “very rude towards girls and one of the cooks. He even sent inappropriate texts to ladies in the school. ” Ramos reportedly mostly kept to himself and was seen getting involved in aggressive fights at the park near his house very often.?

He was offered no help or counseling from his teachers and was constantly bullied by his peers for being “weird.” Mental Health America estimates that over 52.9 million Americans experienced mental health issues during the pandemic. More alarmingly, the rate of suicide ideation among adults has steadily increased since 2011.?

We are undergoing a severe mental health crisis that no one is willing to acknowledge, let alone help. This makes the commonly cited solution of teaching school teachers and children how to use guns all the scarier. The response to growing gun violence can, in no way, be handing more guns to the country’s mentally exhausted citizenry.?

A different kind of gun culture

Switzerland currently has over 2 million privately owned firearms for a population of 8 million, making their gun ownership rate an astounding 25% . Yet, the overall murder rate in the country is as low as 45 people per year (or 0.000005%). The NRA constantly cites this while arguing that more guns do not lead to more shootings, but they fail to acknowledge the difference in gun culture.?

To obtain a gun in Switzerland , neighbors and relatives are required to testify that the person is not a danger to themselves or anyone else and can be allowed to use a firearm. Further, Swiss gun permits are classified under 5 different types: no permit needed/common permit, shall use permit, may use permit, shall use exceptional permit, and may use exceptional permit.?

Each permit allows very specific people (hunters and professional security persons are awarded a different permit than casual owners) to obtain very specific firearms, which can’t always be carried with loaded cartilage.?

Sure, the Swiss own lots of guns, but they seem to respect them (and each other) - a thing the U.S. needs to adopt ASAP. The U.S. needs a healthy gun culture, and a healthy people culture that empathizes with others, understands the responsibility of owning a firearm, and, most importantly, DOES NOT choose to fight violence with more violence. Training everyone to use guns will result in a country-wide Mexican standoff that no one needs.

Police response

As for the actions of the Uvalde Police Department, I strongly condemn their response to the incident. Waiting for over an hour while an active shooter shot children was not the right tactical, logical, or moral response.

The department’s training manual states, "First responders to the active shooter scene will usually be required to place themselves in harm's way. ” Every single step taken by the officers and the higher line of command during the incident was a blatant violation of the principles a police department is expected to embody.?