If you were in charge, what's the first thing you would do about stopping mass shootings?

Here's my idea. Take it or leave it. No politics involved.

Let’s skip the monkey business. Since I could eat semi-cold Chinese food right now, let’s go for a quick afternoon sprint.

One topic.

A single sprint.

First off, NO POLITICS will be involved here. Bloodshed doesn’t have to let an angry Washington D.C. blowhard who watches too much news into an already pissed-off, saddened room. So, screw politics and any hint of religion. Those are out of bounds and painfully overused crutches in conversations about how to stop innocent people from dying.

Let’s get into it, **PAID** subscribers. Every once in a while, I have to lay down a wall in front of a post. To pay or not pay, that’s your choice. This is my brain and my brain only, so let’s run.

Did you spot that elephant in the room? It’s called the Fourth of July mass shootings. The first, and more publicized of the two, shooting on Monday took place in Highland, Illinois (the second later that evening in Philadelphia. In a city located approximately 35 miles from St. Louis, the Highland Park shooting claimed seven lives and injured many others.

Few can unsee the news of poor Aiden McCarthy, the young boy who lost both his parents in the shooting. They were very young themselves. Plenty of life left on the table past July 4, but instead they’re gone and their son is an orphan.

That’s the kind of crap that runs through my head after one of these awful but sadly not shocking events. I wonder about all those fucking plans those families had. Vacations, holiday get-togethers with the rest of the family, dinner plans for tonight, shit like that. All of that gets taken away instantly, like an avalanche of tragedy descending into people’s lives.

I have answers and a plan, but the powerful folks aren’t going to do anything about public safety or mental health, each of which keep finding themselves thrown together with carnage being the result. My answer would be to limit who needs to get their hands on an assault rifle. Run extra tests. Make them a little harder to acquire, because they are still falling into the wrong hands.

Look at other countries, and how hard or long it is to acquire a weapon. The other safer countries like China, who have the strictest gun laws in the world. The United States of America won’t get anywhere near that in my lifetime, but a nudge or two closer to “hey, there’s a big gun, let me get it” avoidance.

I don’t want to take away people’s guns. Let’s just take a country wide diagnostic check, and try to sift out a few of the real assholes. The dangerous ones, regardless of age. Keep a strict eye on young white males. They’re the angriest souls on the planet. How many times do mass shootings connect themselves to young white men? The answer is easy: many.

The latest asshat, whose regretful soon-to-be imprisoned sack of flesh doesn’t need to be named her, was a young white male. Boom! Checkmark! Same as it ever was, and what will they do about it? Little to nothing. A speech, moments of silence, thoughts and prayers, etc. All are good for one thing: stalling. Loud, public stalling of change.

Sorry amateur Rambos, but if you don’t pass a “is this person going to kill someone innocent during his life” test, the big guns aren’t for you. How many lives have to be taken before people find out that fucking with gun laws is the only way out of this shit. Does Joe Biden, or whoever is in office when the foot finally reaches the ground, have what it takes to mess with gun laws?

Come on, Democrat! Democrat it up. Let’s go. If not, who can do it in 2024?

Gun laws and a serious nosedive into mental health are the first two things I would do. Take some of the money that politicians and lobbyists are putting in their banks. Don’t worry. Not all of it. Just enough to put some real hours and brain power into finding out what compels a human being to walk into a parade and open fire while carrying five different weapons.

It’s not political or religious. That’s too easy. We need to talk to these people instead of instantly viewing them as endangered black sheep. If they are off mentally, let’s find out why. Attack the cause, and maybe the person doesn’t attack others.

The Highland Park shooter confessed today, and I would urge the judge deciding his fate to keep him alive. Don’t give him the honor of a quick, or delayed, death. He has some explaining to do. Make his room death proof in the meantime, if you catch my drift. Just get answers. Don’t beat him up. Okay, maybe one family member from each loss gets five minutes with him. Each week, every other month, daily, work it out.

If you have to get the “Mindhunters” from David Fincher, do it. Get somebody who can pry a useful takeaway from what course-corrected his path to that parade to set up carnage. It goes deeper than getting dumped or not asked out. It goes deeper than, “oh, he’s just different.” Why those studies stopped or got nowhere is beyond me.

Finding out why this is happening won’t be easy. The right causes never are. I don’t have any money to donate to the cause, but I have hands and words.

Hands and words aren’t nothing in a fight against preventing mass shootings, but they sure are better than mere thoughts and prayers.

What good are those doing?!