What we need to talk about when we talk about shootings.

Do we need to talk about this guy and his rampant misogyny?  Yes.  But we need to talk about more.

Do we need to talk about the role of guns in this culture and society?  Yes.  But we need to talk about more.

We need to STOP this culture of celebrity.  Where there is a flurry of activity and "another shooting! Ban the guns!", and plastering his videos over youtube and the Internet.

We need to treat every mass shooting as a terrorist event.

We need to do a better job of tracking psychopaths.   The evidence is always there, after the fact.

We need to track stockpiling guns, stockpiling ammo.

I read a comment from a doctor on one of the articles I read, where she had been treating an elderly dementia patient, who could no longer drive, yet still had a concealed carry permit.  Maybe we need to have recertification tests.  If you wish to have a permit, you have to pass an interview,

If someone is seeing a battery of therapists, maybe you revoke his carry and lock up the guns?

I just feel that we need better options, altogether.  

We need to talk about the idiots who "open carry" rifles/etc into Chipotle and such, saying "look at my big gun, haha".

If someone posts a video with stupid gun behavior, then they should have to explain that and go for training on how not to use a gun.

We are having a conversation on #yesallwomen, and even #yesallBiblicalwomen, which is something that has needed to happen for a long time.   We live in a culture, a world, where women are sexually objectified.  Most men don't realize how much.    And the women in the Bible are mostly referred to by omission, by afterthought, or as vessels.   The good and virtuous man who saw a woman bathing, had her husband killed, and then brought her to his home and raped her.  Or the omission of Mary Magdalene.  A priest was commenting on the radio that only one of Jesus's followers came to the Crucifixion.   I believe Mary Magdalene was there, as well.  And she was the first one Jesus showed Himself to.  And yet...  she is not considered one of the Apostles, because she is a woman.

I do think we need more checks and balances.  There was an article that said that Elliot Rodger was a misogynist because he was a killer, not vice versa.  And that Adam Lanza loved guns because he was a killer.  But I think that is too simplistic.  

These are complex things, and only by driving at the root, and being more aware, can we fight this.  We have to stand up to the stupid, to the scary.  Gun owners need to insist that people not behave stupidly.  Just because you are responsible, doesn't mean that someone else will behave responsibly.  And thus, to behave responsibly, call out the irresponsibility.  

Call out someone when they are behaving chauvinistically.  People say "Well, the crazy people are going to get guns".  Well, why not put laws in place to stop that?  Adam Lanza was apparently stopped from buying a gun by those gun laws.   But why didn't this carry over and create an alert that there was a potential problem?  If there had been some kind of follow-up, perhaps a shooting could have been avoided.

If Elliot Rodger had had some kind of follow-up, maybe that would have been prevented.