Artwork in Malmo, Sweden, via Unsplash.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 19, 2021 | The senseless shooting rampage that killed eight Georgians this week tears at your very being. It horrifies us. Can’t we as a people do better than that?
It seems that shootings in America, and now in Georgia, are beginning to be routinely expected. Each week gives new accounts:
- Eight dead by one hand this week.
- Six shootings the week before in Atlanta.
- Another: 12 shootings in Atlanta.
- Next week: no telling how many more.
It is sickening and downright frightening for any community. While much of the local violence is concentrated in downtown Atlanta, it’s happening in other cities across the state and nation. Its results are unacceptable, but predictable. Families devastated by deaths are in misery. Police, up to their elbows in danger, are caught up too often in officer-involved shootings of black and white citizens. Parents rally to end gun violence. The whole Black Lives Matter came out of these incidents.
Yet for all the attention and outrage, the shootings continue. Lawmakers fail to close loopholes and fail to take proactive steps to curtail the outbursts.
These shootings take down people from all communities and races. They can only be called crimes against all humanity.
So far multiple outbreaks of random shootings haven’t routinely occurred in Gwinnett County, though it would not surprise us to see this happening in one of our Gwinnett cities. Certainly, Gwinnett has had individual shootings by its citizens. We can only hope and pray that the county is spared from random mass outbreaks, since there seems to be no easy way to stop these useless shootings.
Though the Georgia Legislature is in session, the interests of lawmakers seem primarily focused on other, somewhat less important, areas: limiting voting in one way or another, or raising their own salary, or trying to get a bill passed concerning the way we keep our clocks. No matter what the Legislature does in the last days of the session, state legislators don’t seem intent on limiting weaponry in any way.
Meanwhile, as we count multiple individual shootings, random drive-by killing of the innocent, or mass gunfire incidents, both the Congress and the individual state legislatures do nothing to curtail the power of the National Rifle Association and other weapons groups about the spread of incidents from firearms. Most Americans see as outrageous the ownership of high velocity automatic pistols or rifles. What use are these weapons except for hunting for game? They are useful if you want to raise an Army, perhaps to overthrow a country.
While our nation has recently seen more random shootings, the outbreak of violence around weapons seems to have intensified lately. This week’s death of eight people in Georgia from weapons redoubles our need to adopt measures to curtail this violence.
It will take years of hard work, and a sensible plan from community outrage. It will take increased funding of mental health programs, sensible patrolling by police of neighborhoods, and much communication and involvement by multiple groups, to halt such random shootings.
It’s obvious that a background check takes place before any gun is able to be purchased. This week’s shootings had the shooter buying a gun earlier the same day it was used to kill eight people.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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