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Saturday 20 people lost their lives in an El Paso, Texas mass shooting inside of a crowded Walmart store.  Dozens more were injured.   Early yesterday morning nine people lost their lives (including the sister of the shooter) in a crowded downtown entertainment area mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.  Dozens more were injured as well.   And in California just last Sunday yet another mass shooting took place during a harmless outdoor festival.

Everyone agrees that all three incidents were terrible.   And everyone feels that all three incidents were avoidable.  But, were they?

Alexjandro Bedoya thinks so.   He told the crowd at the MLS game in Washington DC, right after he scored a goal, as much.  He wants Congress to do something to end gun violence. You can see the short clip here.

Elizabeth Warren and Don Lemon think that they have the answers too.  They blame Trump for fanning the flames of white nationalism.  We didn’t attach the clips because we feel like you have heard their cries before.  However, there is no concrete nor credible evidence that the Cali nor Ohio shootings follow that narrative.  The El Paso one does seem like a hate/racist crime at this point but attaching it to Trump is only a matter of opinion.

A few years ago a few mass shootings were blamed by many on radical Muslims that President Obama wouldn’t label as such.  And, there was the awful Sandy Hook elementary school killing when a deranged 20 year old who killed his school teaching mom, six adults, and 20 school aged children.

In June of 2017 during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, Virginia, James Hodgkinson shot U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika.  The Virginia Attorney General concluded Hodgkinson’s attack was “an act of terrorism fueled by rage against Republican legislators”.

In a tweet just minutes ago, Trump said: “We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain.”

“Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform,” Trump continued. “We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!”

How long do you think it will be before the Democrats chastise Trump for trying to tie immigration reform to strong background checks?  Will it be by the time you read this?  Sooner?

So, it seems, this past week like in past years everyone has an opinion on why someone opened fire on innocent people.  But, it seems like the reasons actually vary wildly.  And, the pleas for gun control, gun legislation, background checks, banning assault rifles, bump stocks, semi automatics, and automatics pour out loud into the national conversation/debate.

Gun control.  How do you “gun control?”  Or, how do you control guns?  The Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms.  There are 330 million of them in the possession of Americans the fifty states over.  All of the above debate doesn’t control and can’t control those already available.  And you can strengthen or lengthen background checks.  The Brady Bill mandates five days.  Does waiting, say, ten days vs five make any difference?  Bump stocks?  We banned them.  That mattered not this past week.

Weekly, one or two at a time, hundreds die across the US due to gun violence.  Some shootings are justified, while many, many are not.  But mass shootings get our attention because of their randomness and so many innocent lives lost in one fell swoop.

What all of the above doesn’t address is mental illness, pure and simple.  If someone is diagnosed as mentally ill and has easy access to a gun, they shouldn’t have.  But, we submit, that ANYONE who opens fire on innocent people anywhere is mentally ill whether they are clinically diagnosed as such or not.  Why?  Shooters choose to shoot.  Consciously they make a decision to load a gun, drive to a location, and open fire over any alternative available to them to do otherwise.  And they do so for any many different reasons.   Any of those “easy out” reasons makes them choose to shoot.  And, that makes them in our eyes mentally ill.

You can’t “control” the human mind.  You can’t “legislate” it either.  You can only attempt to make it feel loved.  You can only attempt to educate it.

It makes us very uneasy when we can’t diagnose a root cause of a problem and put guard rails in to minimize or prevent it from occurring again.  Even in this very divided nation, strong minds would find an answer if there was an answer.  And, we would implement it.

But, so far, strong minds have no solution for broken minds.