No Mass!
You know, I was thinking about the recent string of mass shootings, and how eager some are to correlate a single factor (the gun) to the incident…and then advocate for the elimination of that single factor in order to end mass shootings. (Correlation be damned.)
It’s the old refrain…”If there weren’t any guns, there wouldn’t be mass shootings.” Perhaps that is true, but it is also true that if you eliminated water, there wouldn’t be any drownings. Both statements are true, but do not take into account the benefits of guns or water, and ignore both the difficulty and the negative impact of getting rid of them.
But if we’re going to oversimplify correlating factors in mass shootings, I’ve got one we might consider eliminating. How about no more mass gatherings of people? Yeah, yeah…I know all about the “right” to assemble that a bunch of white slave owners wrote down, but this is the 21st Century, and nobody really needs to assemble in groups.
With technology today, we can just start having most people telecommute to work, and get rid of big office buildings. Voila! No more mass shootings in offices! Shopping? You can buy literally anything you want online these days, so we can close down all those brick and mortar stores that are so tempting for mass shooters. Movie theaters? Netflix, baby. Live music, theater, or other live performances? Live stream it on YouTube. Schools? Since everybody will be working from home anyway, homeschooling should be no problem. There’s also all kinds of online education these days…make the virtual classroom the standard. After all, it’s for the children.
And don’t forget that less need to gather in groups in public means less traffic on the road, and that has other advantages, such as fewer accidents and less carbon emitted into the atmosphere. There plenty of benefits to banning crowds besides the most important one…no more masses, no more mass shootings. Problem solved!
Heck, we could get to a point where the only reason you’ll need to leave your house is to go to the range, am I right?
Range day! (Image from bossstrongbox.com)
