Piling Up Teddy Bears

Oct. 9, 2015

Another day, another mass shooting in the United States. Literally.

In fact, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker — and how hideous such a thing exists — there are more mass shootings — incidents in which four or more people are killed or wounded — annually than there are days on the calendar; already more than 300 this year. The longest period we’ve gone this year without such an incident is eight consecutive days (the FBI uses different criteria requiring at least three fatalities before they consider it a mass shooting).

We not only apparently accept this carnage, we can predict with near certainty the sequence of following events. It’s almost as if it has all been scripted.

It starts with the news clips of heavily armed officers running into a building while people file out with their hands in the air.

That will be followed by sobbing witnesses and friends and family members, followed by a press conference of the local sheriff or police chief announcing the grisly details, followed by a spontaneous memorial created at the scene including flowers, candles and teddy bears, followed by a nondenominational memorial service, followed by a candlelight vigil, followed by grief-stricken friends and parents saying they are determined to change things, followed by the creation of a foundation, followed by demands for stronger background checks, followed by demands for better mental health services, followed by legislation being introduced that goes nowhere, followed by some committee wondering why we didn’t connect the dots of the latest shooter, followed by... well, by then more massacres will have taken place and the process just repeats.

These things don’t even make the news anymore unless they are sufficiently barbaric, rack up a big body count, or happen in a school. A fairly recent bar shooting in Memphis wounded eleven but didn’t make headlines because there were “only” two fatalities.

We’ve become numb to all the killing here at home and elsewhere. We blew up a hospital in Afghanistan? Oh, well. Another boatload of refugees sank? That’s a shame. Another bloodbath at one of our schools? Gee, maybe we should do something about that.

But there is nothing to do. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “well regulated militia” as specified in the Second Amendment includes an individual with guns.

Absent new court members with a different opinion or a constitutional amendment, legislation can do nothing more than nibble around the edges.

About the only thing the various sides of the gun debate agree on is there are too many unstable people who have guns who should not. There is little agreement on how to prevent that or any other related problem.

That nearly anyone can figure out how to get a gun, background checks be damned, is a symbol of freedom to some and a horror to others. That you can stockpile an arsenal is security and protection for some but nonsensical to others. More detailed background checks are demanded by some and cursed by others.

The obvious place to start here isn’t actually with the guns. There are already somewhere between 270 and 300 million guns in private hands in the United States so even stopping all sales tomorrow wouldn’t really change much.

The better starting point is with behavioral health services. When we decided about three decades ago that mental institutions represented cruel warehousing and should be closed, the trade-off was supposed to be more available counseling, housing, medication and other assistance for patients who could no longer be confined.

Instead, we’ve chipped away at funding, grotesquely overburdened the caseloads of those people who do try to help and let way too many people tumble through the cracks of a now fractured system.

We still warehouse those with brain diseases but instead of state hospitals they end up in prisons or homeless shelters.

Worse still, those on the cusp of delusions and dementia, like nearly every mass shooter, receive almost no help because, to use the crudest description, they simply aren’t crazy enough.

Current background checks don’t reveal behavioral health issues or treatment because that information is kept private by law. And that’s if treatment is available at all; our legislators both here and in Washington long ago decided behavioral health issues would be just fine on the back burner of priorities.

We don’t have the laws, resources or will to identify those who might be a threat; their demons remain their secret. We either can’t or aren’t willing to enhance background checks. There won’t be stricter gun laws.

So what are we going to do? Simple. We’re going to keep piling up teddy bears and pretending to be horrified by something that’s now a regular part of our culture.