Photo credit, Joe Raedle/Getty Images

We're not being attacked by foreign countries, radicals, or extremists, but by our fellow citizens.   Mass shooters have haunted us for decades and assaulted Americans in places like public schools, offices, retail stores, and college and university campuses.   One of the most recent was the Oxford High School shooting in Michigan that left four dead and seven injured at the hands of a fifteen-year-old student.  CNN reported on December 8 that statistics from the Gun Violence Archive show there have been 650 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2021, leaving more than 650 dead and over 2,600 injured.  There are disagreements over what defines a mass shooting. Still, there can be no disagreement that even a single needless death is tragic, let alone twenty dead first-graders from the Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012 or fifty-eight Las Vegas Strip concert-goers in 2017.   The tragedy is not limited to the dead and wounded and their families, but the survivors, their families, and first responders, and the permanent mental scars left behind. 

No one is safe, and no one lives where it can't happen.  I thought it was highly unlikely to ever occur in my central Illinois community - a hub for farming, education, insurance, and automobile manufacturing.  A place where some people keep their cars and houses unlocked, and fine dining is considered a night out at Olive Garden or Chili’s.  Then, in September 2012, a student brought a gun into a local high school and held a classroom hostage.  We were fortunate the only bullets fired entered a ceiling before a teacher tackled the shooter.  But it was terrifying for everyone involved and unsettling for the community. 

After these horrible events occur, the finger of blame gets pointed in multiple directions, with little accountability or correction. Eventually, the outrage diminishes until the next shooting occurs, and the body count rises. 

The blame gets laid on the mental health system, gun laws, the availability and access to semi-automatic high-capacity weapons, weak early warning systems, and a permissive legal system.   Everyone agrees there’s collective culpability.  Some groups have come together to help address the problem, like Protect Our Schools From Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. What’s missing is strong government leadership to address the scope of the problem.  Active shooter drills, public education and awareness, people arming themselves, and gun laws are not protecting us. 

On December 7, 1941, the soldiers in Honolulu were prepared to defend their country and knew they might someday be killed or injured.  Students, office workers, and retail shoppers should not have to accept the same risks. 

Our government came to the defense of the soldiers attacked at Pearl Harbor.  In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, George Bush shouted to first responders at the site of the World Trade Center collapse, "I can hear you.  The rest of the world hears you.  And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."  The country is shouting for help and protection from being slaughtered in our schools and stores, but no one listens.  It’s disheartening to think we have a government incapable of keeping its citizens safe.