Yesterday’s tragedy where 21 people were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, has once AGAIN brought many of us to our knees, wondering what is wrong with our country and how to stop these murders. I have been struggling with what more there is to say that hasn’t been said already. My heart is breaking for those families and for our entire country…AGAIN.
However, yesterday, I asked someone, “what do you think would happen if all these shootings were perpetrated by WOMEN?”
He looked blankly at me as if I was sharing some groundbreaking information, but it’s widely known that almost all mass shooters are men, and white men. His perplexed reaction speaks volumes on its own, right?
If folks aren’t talking about that and the intersections with this type of violence with a culture that tolerates violence and treats women and people of color as “other,” then we are not going to get to the root cause to end it.
When we objectify people, treat them as objects in our way, violence becomes much easier to carry out. There is an intersection with hatred of women and history of domestic violence with mass shooters. There are many research articles you can google for that discussion. THEN, add in the fact that it’s so easy to get a firearm, especially a firearm that can kill a lot of people without changing ammunition magazines. Then you have a very deadly situation.
So we need to deal with how easy it is to access deadly weapons and how to reduce, limit, or eliminate access to deadly weapons to people prone to violence. AND we need to deal with root causes of violence (power and control that is linked with patriarchal systems) and work on changing the culture of violence that tolerates dehumanization and rewards violence in media, politics, etc.
If more than 80% of mass shootings are accomplished by men with domestic violence in their history, then pass laws to prohibit firearm possession for convicted domestic abuses at the misdemeanor and felony level. I tried to pass legislation in 2018 to do just that, but I lost that vote by five votes; it would have aligned state and federal law (the Lautenberg Amendment) to prohibit this. I have also tried to bring legislation to provide a civil protection order for sexual assault survivors and the NRA got involved and killed that because my GOP colleagues didn’t want to go against the NRA.
Locally in our state, It will take the Idaho legislature to STOP attacking the rights and very identities of women, people who are trans and gay, refugees and immigrants. The kind of fear and ignorance that has been included in recent years’ legislation just fans the flames of “otherness” which leads to misunderstanding, hatred, and violence. Violence occurs on a continuum that may start with attitudes, values and beliefs. It then leads to behaviors that dehumanize and laws and policies that back those attitudes, which will then create barriers for everyone’s opportunity to succeed.
We have to put down our own arms and come to the table with an open heart to solve these problems. There is a lot of research to already identify correlations and problems, now it takes the WILL and desire to actually solve the problems. That is going to take more than leaders in formal positions of government. It will take all of us to let go of traditional thought and approaches.