We’re routinely told that mass shootings are unique to the United States, mostly because we lack the gun control laws that exist throughout most of the world. This is especially true when people want to compare the US and Europe.
Yet Europe often has its own issues. While mass shootings might not be as common, they still happen there, as we saw in Germany earlier this year.
But hey, Europe has gun control. There’s no chance of another mass shooting happening there, right?
A man fatally shot three people before turning his gun on himself, Portuguese police said Sunday, in what local media described as a dispute among rival pigeon racers.
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The four dead individuals were participating in a pigeon race, Portuguese media reported from the scene, and their disagreement also centered on an illegal vegetable garden.
Three people shot and killed by a single individual outside of the home? Sounds like a mass shooting to me.
Now, admittedly, this isn’t a common occurrence in Portugal. They report about 80 homicides a year in total, against a population of 10.33 million people and most of those aren’t with a firearm, apparently.
That said, despite the strict gun control laws in place–they’re legal for hunting but apparently not much else–it didn’t stop this guy from losing his mind and killing three people before killing himself.
There’s no mention of how the killer got his firearm or, apparently, what kind of firearm was used.
What we do know, however, is that this is another European mass shooting despite the plethora of gun control laws well beyond what would be tolerated here in the US.
The problem is that gun control doesn’t stop mass murder. At best, it simply shunts it off to become mass murder of some different kind of flavor, such as the Nice Truck Attack back in 2016.
Where you’ll actually find the problem is in people. There are people who are predisposed to kill people. If you can minimize them, you can minimize homicides. The best way to minimize them is to learn how to identify them before anyone gets hurt and help them so they don’t hurt anyone.
It’s not rocket science we’re talking about here, but it would take work. That’s something no one wants to actually try because it would require them to do more than pass a law and then pose for photos.
Our right to keep and bear arms isn’t the problem. The problem is and has always been that some people are broken. Until you acknowledge that fact and recognize that it’s the source of the problem, the problem won’t go anywhere.
Whether it’s Portugal or Monterey Park, someone will kill a mess of people simply because they want to commit a mass shooting. They’ll find a way and nothing will stop them unless you short-circuit the underlying desire.
No one seems all that interested in even looking at how we can do such a thing. They’d much rather look like they’re taking the issue seriously than to actually take it seriously.