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McNiff's Riffs: There is no safe place in America. Nowhere. Now what?

Tim McNiff says he wasn't the least bit surprised that there was another mass shooting in the United States of America when he woke up Thursday morning. He's way past being shocked by them, something Tim says is both appalling and pathetic.
Thirteen more lives loss, including the man responsible for the carnage in Thousand Oaks, California. When will it end? (Getty Images)

This was supposed to be a story about the Minnesota Vikings rookie class of 2018 and their collective impact on the team at the season’s midpoint.

I swear.

I had done my research, looking at the number of draft picks that had not only 'made' the team but were making significant contributions.... not to mention that handful of rookie free-agents who had also either made the 53 man roster or are presently on the team’s practice squad.

I can’t do it.

Probably like you, I woke up Thursday morning to discover that a gunman had walked into a bar full of young people, mostly college students, in Thousand Oaks, California and opened fire. Twelve people are dead, as is the gunman himself, bringing the number of casualties in this incident to 13.

I’m also guessing my reaction was like yours, something along the lines of, “Oh my God, not again.”

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Notice there was no exclamation point on the sentence above? That’s because while I was sad to see it, I wasn’t the least bit surprised that there was another mass shooting in the United States of America. I’m not quite to the point where I expect mass shootings, but I’m way past being shocked by them, and that’s pathetic.

Even worse? I find that I now rate mass shootings on where they occur and by the number of people killed. “Four? That’s not so bad…”

Memorials to victims of mass shootings in American have become numbingly part of everyday life here.

I hate to admit that, but it’s true. I’m not OK with it, and you shouldn’t be OK with it either.

So, I stopped doing research on the Vikings and started to research mass shootings instead. Back in the 1980’as the FBI defined a mass murderer as someone who “Kills four or more people in a single incident, typically in a single location.” A common approach in the media is to adopt the FBI’s criteria for a mass murderer and set a casualty threshold of four fatalities by firearm, excluding the offender or offenders.

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If you dig deeper you quickly find that there are several issues with such a simple definition, but for the purpose this column allow me to go with the definition of a mass shooting being an incident where at least four people are killed, in a single location, by firearm, excluding the offender or offenders. I’m not trying to say it’s the best or only definition, just that it serves my purposes in the point I’m trying to make.

If you use that definition of a mass murderer, and apply it to the number of incidents that have occurred in the United States during 2018, you don’t have to dig deep to discover that we have had 307 mass shootings in 311 days. And counting.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that claimed 11 lives is just one of 307 mass shootings in 311 days in America this year. And counting.

What really sucks is that we shouldn’t even be surprised by any of this. Jump back to 2017, when we set the all-time record for most mass shootings in a single year in America with 346.

Americans are now more likely to die from gun violence than many leading causes of death combined, with some 11,000 people in the U.S killed in firearm assaults each year.

OK, I know you think you know where I’m going with this. But I’m not.

I know that if I even write the words 'gun control' it’s an immediate non-starter for so many people that they will immediately check-out... so I won’t go there. Instead, if you are one of those people who balk when someone says "gun control” may I ask you a question? “ In your opinion, what can we do about gun violence?”

Please understand... I ask that question sincerely. I’m not trying to back you in a corner or pick a fight. Instead, I’ m asking for your help and your opinion: What can we do about gun violence? What would YOU do to end gun violence? I know there are no easy answers because if there were we would have found them long ago.

But, can we agree doing nothing is no longer acceptable?

In a day and age where we seem so divided on so many issues, can we at least agree that the only way we’re ever going to find any answers to this dilemma is by working America's gun violence epidemic together?

Gun advocates and gun control advocates HAVE to sit down at the same table and agree to at least talk about this issue until they have agreed to do SOMETHING. Even if you’re the most ardent gun rights supporter on the face of the earth, you have to realize by now that in this country... where a mass shooting occurs on an almost daily basis... there is nothing you can do to protect your loved ones or yourself.

Believe me, I don’t think I’m going to solve this wide-reaching problem with this column, but if I don’t at least use this platform to foster a conversation that may lead to understanding, and an agreement to work towards finding a solution, then I am complicit to this never-ending nightmare.

I’m not OK with that, and you shouldn’t be OK with it either.

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