To Change The Narrative, Stop The Blame Game In Regards To Violence, Mass Murders And Gun Control. Focus On What Matters. Tina Hui Follow Dec 3, 2015 · 4 min read

Where to even begin. This infographic is powerful and frightening.

Scroll. You’ll be doing so for a while. This cannot continue.

“Data compiled by the crowd-sourced website ShootingTracker.com reveals a shocking human toll: there is a mass shooting — defined as four or more people shot in one incident — nearly every day. (Updated on 3 Dec 2015)”

This is a painful reality that quite simply should not be happening and the truth is while there are a lot of factors that contribute to someone or a group of people picking up a weapon and destroying lives, whether it be in Paris, Oregon, Texas or California — wherever, it’s time to stop the blame game, it’s undeniable, there is a problem, the question and more important thing to focus on are solutions. How can we fix this? We can’t just sit here and say this is the next person’s problem because actually every person can start to help change the narrative within our own lives just by actually connecting and caring about the people around us, even strangers and lending a hand if someone needs one and protecting people if they are being hurt. It’s as simple as opening the door for someone at the coffee shop if their hands are full. (Incidently, I noticed someone not help open that door today.) Each act of kindness creates a ripple effect. So does each act of apathy or inconsiderateness of someone else.

This isn’t just about gun control, terrorism, poverty, crime rates, income disparity, prejudice, ignorance or politics. It’s about all of these things and more that contribute to every tragedy. This isn’t about weapons either, because I’m sure if we look at the data behind violence the world over and truly look at the data with an objective view, the realistic truth is that violence causes more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year (http://1.usa.gov/1Q3woxB.) If you want to talk about weapons (http://1.usa.gov/1XDeQwN), mass murders and crime, get the facts from real sources of reliable data like the FBI (http://1.usa.gov/1XDfoCS) and find relevant answers there, don’t just pointificate and say blanket statements like “all guns should be banned.” Even if you ban ALL guns, people will get creative and kill in other ways. Historical weapons of alternative choice? Poision, plague, bombs…people get creative if and when they want to kill anyone. The issue isn’t mass murders, it’s crime, murder, fraud, terrorism, scams, hacks and the alarming rate at which crime and violence, physical or not continues to happen increasingly. People are killed by people, using all sorts of means.

The conversation should be about culture and society. Real talk, if you want to focus on gun control, great read about how gun control is a universal problem as well even in countries that have banned guns (http://bit.ly/1XDgZbQ) and there is also a reality that countries which ban guns don’t have less violence, in fact there the violence can be even more brutal, people hacking at one another with machetes, bombing people, stabbing them — the list goes on . This isn’t about the weapons. Weapons are around us everywhere, any object can be a weapon. This is about environment and culture we nurture, tolerate or destroy. This is about people killing people.

Frankly, it boils down to emotional and mental health. How do we teach, nurture and sustain emotional and mental health as a starting point in the existing and future human race. What we can benefit from is kindness, goodness and health; emotional, mental and physical and building on that, at scale. That’s where we have failed people who are so hurt that they hurt others. Period. Generally, humanity is failing. On a large scale. Let’s put down the agendas and the blaming and get real. The world needs to heal and people need to begin understanding and caring about each other and ourselves. It starts with understanding our own selves and healing wounds. Life is both wonderful as well as challenging. Everyone has their issues and struggles, we need to wrestle our own demons and do the painful work to grow and be healthier and happier, it’s up to each person. That’s where we stop negativity, bullying, the taking advantage of and granted of people intentionally or not, the killing, the crime, the terrorism and hurt. It’s about choices and supporting each other. It’s important we try even with small things like attempting to understand someone else’s point of view as well as our own, to know we all have feelings and different perspectives, to lend a hand or to listen and be more honest with each other. To care and be vulnerable. We need to heal the pain, fix the broken systems where poverty and depression and bullying lead to suicides and killings and more bullying in the extreme. We need to connect and care for one another. It has to start today.

Violence, crime, depression, narcissism, bullying, suicide, poverty. It all begins someplace. In the work that good people like First Graduate are doing, there is a knowing that cycles of pain and poverty can attempt to be broken by empowering and supporting at risk students to be the first in their family to graduate college. Hence enabling positive change through opportunity, access, hope, socialization, vocation and perhaps a break in the history of poverty which leads to more poverty, crime and instability.

That’s just one use case. The point is, and there is no denying it in the wake of the tragedies just in this quarter around the world happening all around us, the world is in a bad state, people need to start helping, protecting and caring about each other. Speak up if something is not right or seems worrisome, care enough to try to make things better for ourselves and around us.