The mass shooting in Robb Elementary School in Texas and the deaths of 19 students and two teachers are heartbreaking. More troubling is that such tragic events occur so frequently. Since 1970 there have been 2,051 school shootings, resulting in the deaths of more than 600 innocent Americans. Furthermore, in the past two years the school shootings have increased by about 120%, which sadly proves that all these years we have not been able to effectively stop the carnage of our most vulnerable citizens.

Personally, I wish guns were never invented, but the emphasis on gun control ignores the fact that murder is a multifactorial phenomenon. Practically all school shootings have been committed by young individuals. Why a young man picks up guns, goes to a school and indiscriminately shoots the students? Millions of young Americans have guns (some of them quite deadly) but never harm another human being. Assuming a person buying a gun would use it to kill other individuals is nothing short of mind reading. Why not stop people from buying cars since a criminal can fill it with explosives or drive it through a group of bystanders and kill tens of people?

It is true that the majority of the school shooters had guns. At the same time, it is true that all these individuals had severe mental disorders, were raised in dysfunctional families, their abnormal behaviors were ignored and their prior criminal records were overlooked by the law enforcement. The voices for gun control are quite loud and its strongest support comes from the entertainment industry, whose business is the production and distribution of violent movies and video games. They claim what young people see on the screen is not promoting violence, but they spend billions annually to alter the viewers behavior by commercials on TV?

Hypocrisy has no boundary.

Mort Shahmir

Bowling Green