With the Santa Fe high school shooting, it’s a good time to remember that there have been more student deaths, 27, than deployed non-training military deaths, 13, in 2018 so far.
This, inevitably, sparked up debate again and after many studies on why the United States has such a high number of mass shooting per capita ,compared to other countries, the most important factor has shown itself to be the high number of guns in the country, according to the New York Times.
And yet, conservatives don’t blame the recent mass shooting on guns. Instead they blame it on abortion, the media, schools, a culture of violence, video games, and lack of religion.
The media, to me, seems to be the most reasonable one, with the issue being that it constantly shows images of the killer, constantly repeating their name, and as a result gives the shooter publicity and possibly inspires other to follow in their footsteps. In putting the face of the murderer everywhere, it almost glorifies their acts in a negative light, and leads to others gaining inspiration from them.
This criticism also goes along with a long-time campaign by some of the victim’s families and other to get the media to focus less on the shooters and their images.
The other reasons are more of a stretch and don’t have much backbone to them when compared to other countries. Other reasons include video games, and lack of religion in school. The Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, a Republican and gun owner, argues that video game violence leads to kids being surrounded by violence and getting ideas in their heads.
Jonathan Stickland, a Republican state representative in Texas, argues that sending kids to school is the problem and that parents should have more options for their kids schooling.
The last two officials arguments are easily disabled when comparing them to other countries that, coincidentally, also have violent video games and send their kids to school, but don’t suffer from the same mass shootings we do.
I think it’s clear to see that conservatives are gripping straw at this point as they still try to defend a lack of gun control.