There is not ONE solution to preventing mass casualty gun attacks.

On May 24th, 2022 an unimaginable tragedy occurred. I am writing this on May 25th for your reference. A disturbed 18 year old man killed 21 people with an assault rifle. 19 of them were children.

This event has impacted me much more and much deeper than any others because of the age of my own 3 children, and the fact that I now own a preschool where I am responsible for 150 amazing children under the age of 5.

I have spent all day thinking about this event and the question I think most of America is asking themselves right now is…

How can we prevent this from happening again? What are the right solutions?

Better Gun Control?

Armed guards at every school?

Better Mental Health access for people?

Social media companies doing a much better job picking up on these types of posts since most of the attackers post hints and pictures beforehand?

I believe the answer is “ALL OF THEM.” But with a caveat. We need our civilians to step up and own this problem rather than just putting it all on the politicians.

Why so many people believe one thing will solve a problem such as this is absurd.

I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this by any means, but seriously… if you think about it… most of the problems we as a nation face have common sense solutions. It’s the Bullshit, The Red Tape, and the lack of any real consensus from the politicians that lead to stalemates and a lack of any real results.

Let’s dive into each solution quickly and why I think that solution alone isn’t enough.

Better Gun control: Sure, this will help. Regardless of how you feel about guns and the 2nd amendment which I FULLY support, 18 year old kids should not be able to purchase assault rifles. If you think that is ok, then this blog isn’t for you. The sad reality though, is that there are over 400 million guns in the US, and 393 million of those are in civilian hands. If you think it will be impossible for a lunatic with a vendetta to access a deadly weapon just because they can’t buy one, I would say think again.

Armed Guards at every school: This could work wonders in preventing school shootings, but if you really look at most of the shooters who commit mass casualty events, they either target a certain group of people they blame for something, or they are in pain and their goal is to inflict as much damage as possible to as many people as possible. I believe that even if we had armed guards at schools, these evil people will just find some other public place where lots of people gather to carry out an attack.

Better Mental Health Access for people. I think this would be an amazing thing to focus on all around. Not just to prevent people from killing others, but to prevent people from killing themselves. The results of this however as the only solution I feel would be really hard to measure accurately. As a sidenote, a lot of the people who need help, won’t seek help.

Social media companies doing a better job. This for me is a big one. If you look at the patterns in many of the mass shootings, a lot of them post hints on social media ahead of time. Manifestos, Pictures of Assault weapons, Hate Speech, etc. There must be a way to do a better job at detecting these things quickly and reporting them to the proper authorities.

Here is my personal opinion of a viable solution to this problem.

1. We as regular people need to step up. We need to stop waiting on politicians and start doing what we can. I don’t mean every single person, but we need LEADERS. Every successful result or company or anything that happens… You better believe there is a leader at the helm.

Tim Ballard started Operation Underground Railroad in 2013 to put an end to Child Sex Trafficking and they have rescued thousands upon thousands of children and have expanded into 30 countries and in all 50 states. This is the power of what ONE leader can do when they take ownership and responsibility and start working on a solution rather than blaming others for the problem.

2. Create an effortless way for people to report others acting suspiciously. In many cases, the attackers give a lot of warning signs to those around them. Their peers are the first line of defense to set an alarm and report someone they know who is exhibiting signs of mental deterioration, an obsession with killing, or any other warning sign. Waze is a perfect example of community driven results. I can open the app and I know where every wreck and speed trap is. Why? Because it’s always being updated by other users. What if there was an app where someone could anonymously or not anonymously report someone exhibiting warning signs easily. An algorithm could be set to where if multiple people report the same person, they are flagged and that info immediately goes to the right authority. We have the technology to do this.

Just look at the Bark app. It’s an app that monitors kids texts, social media usage, etc. Since their launch, they have detected 629 thousand severe self harming situations and 2.6 million severe bullying situations in children.

3. Model countries that have solved this problem and use what works and try their solutions. While we do have more guns than any other country, there are many countries who have successfully eradicated this specific problem and I guarantee there is something we can use or take away from what they have done.

Not just any country, but a country that also loves their guns but has not had repeat mass shootings. Switzerland is a great example to pay attention to. They love their guns and most citizens own one.

They have not had a mass shooting in 21 years

Their murder rate is almost ZERO.

4. For schools primarily… MAKE THE BARRIER TO ENTRY MORE DIFFICULT. If you think this can’t be done at scale and quickly.. Bullshit.

When Sept 11th happened, I was just out of bootcamp in the US Navy attending A school. In a matter of weeks, every Military base in the world and every Airport in the US implemented unprecedented strategies that would make it 100 times more difficult to ever do something like that again. They put a blockade up at our base which had thousands of people and we had to go through many more hoops to get on base. We didn’t care if it was inconvenient. We cared about our safety.

When Covid happened, every country, every business and every organization enacted tons of new rules and policies to combat the spread of the virus. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it was effective.. My point is that mass change can be done at scale and quickly when it’s a priority.

5. A combination of everything discussed above regarding gun control, better training, better protection, more policies around the requirements of social media companies, etc.

With Covid and Sept 11, there wasn’t one solution. They required a multi-pronged approach and lots of different actions implemented at once.

6. Probably 20 things I haven’t even thought of that you reading this probably have.

While I may not be 100% right in everything I say.. Here is what I know for a fact.

1. Blaming politicians doesn’t work.
2. Thinking one single thing will fully solve this problem is ridiculous.
3. Doing something is always better than just arguing and talking about it.
4. Leaders have always and will always accomplish more than smart people or people just in positions of power. Being a leader is a decision anyone can make.

Conclusion: As with many of you, I am angry and I am sad. As a parent, this breaks my heart because this could have been one of my kids. I have been on social media all day reading the thousands of posts of who’s to blame and what the solution is and you know what I see in 98% of the posts?

Politicians are to blame and they have to do something.

Why are we helping other countries vs. using that money to solve our problems at home.

While these both may be 100% true, Do you know what these 2 points have in common? You and I don’t have much control over either one. The only control we have is our vote, and that is about as little control as humanely possible.

Despite this problem and the other problems we face as a country, Here is why I have hope.

In just 400 years of existence as a country, we have become the most powerful economy on Earth and an example in many ways for countries who have existed for thousands of years. The US is where the most brilliant companies in history have been founded such as Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix that have changed the world as we know it. I am so proud and honored to be a US citizen and I believe nothing is impossible when the great minds of this country work together to solve a problem.

I have hope that we will solve this problem as well.