The usual political rhetoric we always see following highly publicized mass shootings as occurred in Uvalde, Texas is typically full of useless solutions.  Yet the most important question everyone asks that continues to go unanswered is, "how do we stop mass shootings?" 

The answers to that important question are not complicated, but they require unified participation without ego and emotion.  Leaving the Second Amendment alone, we identify the causes and then implement immediate and long-term solutions.  

Identifying the cause of increased armed violence and mass shootings:

Politics, careerism, and the leftist ideology are the destructive factors most responsible for the breakdown of society that runs parallel with a rise in violent crime over time.

From this analysis I have determined ten primary factors for the increase in armed violent crime:

1. Societal departure from a God-centered to self-centered life
2. Breakdown of the family unit
3. Hypersexualization and political polarization of children through the educational system
4. Forced societal evolution toward a leftist ideology creating gender confusion, reality dysmorphia, hypersexuality, anxiety, and depression  
5. Overuse of antidepressants to treat issues created by forced societal evolution
6. Social media creating and enhancing dysfunction in young people
7. Black-on-black crime as a result of the lack of family units and growth of inner-city gangs, combined with the increasing division between the black community and law enforcement
8. Promoted political division and extremism by activists, influencers, and politicians
9. The politicization and breakdown of law enforcement.
10. Social stress resulting from a failed government 

Immediate solutions:

Here are the top ten immediate solutions that could be implemented without spending lots of money.

1. Identifying experts with attack knowledge to analyze threats
2. Stop using smoke and mirrors for illusions of safety or playing the odds that an attack won't happen
3. Create volunteer school observer teams of veterans and former police (preferably armed)
4. Create police substations in schools
5. Update active shooter tactics, up-arm all police (including shields), eliminate reliance on SWAT
6. Eliminate policies restricting schools from notifying police of troubled students
7. Teach schools how to perform their own threat assessments
8. Use school staff to perform threat assessment using the attacker's and defender's perspective
9. Compile/analyze threat assessments information
   1. Shared versus individual vulnerabilities
10. Implement mitigation strategies of shared and individual vulnerabilities

Long-term Solutions:

It's important to remember that solutions include cultural, societal, and political changes.  What might appear to be unrelated to a solution for mass shootings can be directly effective in reversing the deterioration of society and eventually reducing violent crime.  

Here are ten areas that can actually be effectively mitigated over a longer timeline.  

1. Create a violent crime offender spectrum based on the known history of armed attackers, and in particular, mass shooters
   1. Create or use existing police databases to log information detailing individuals' interactions with law enforcement, nature of the interaction, and the behavior of the individual, spotlighting repeat offenders
2. Pass a Responsible Citizen Law
   1. Within any three consecutive-year period, any three interactions between law enforcement and an individual whose behavior fits in the violent crime offender spectrum automatically revokes his right to own a firearm for three to five years 
   2. Further interaction with law enforcement of a violent nature would increase the length of revocation 
   3. The individual's own behavior would be the measuring rod instead of a medical professional's opinion, putting the weight of the law on individuals most likely to commit a mass shooting
3. Mandated law enforcement interview of students and parents and place details of the interaction on violent crime offender spectrum database
4. Mandate the elimination of sexualization and gender studies (with the exception of health-related issues and reproductive education)
5. Eliminate political/ideological grooming from schools.  Teach U.S. and global history only 
6. Reduce antidepressant use in young people
7. Reduce its use by children under the age of 18
8. Create a gang designation list
   1. Make it illegal to participate in known violent gangs, with extremely high penalties
9. Initiate effective community programs between law enforcement and the communities
10. Enforce standing laws that prevent other forms of government being imposed on the people outside the United States Constitution

Mass shootings and violent crime can be mitigated and sometimes completely stopped.  It takes immediate and long-term action by political and law enforcement leaders and a citizenry demanding attention to the issue, just as we confronted terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attack.

Image: Pixabay.

Jonathan T. Gilliam is a career public servant with over 20 years of service as a Navy SEAL, FBI Special Agent, Federal Air Marshal, Private Security Contractor, Police Officer, Public Speaker, and Expert Media Commentator. Gilliam has extensive experience in crisis management, threat analysis and mitigation, small unit leadership, on-scene command, and special events/crisis management.  Gilliam has a BA in Psychology (emphasis in Developmental Psychology) and Political Science (emphasis on the Executive Branch) and he is the author of the best-selling book SHEEP NO MORE; The Art of Awareness and Attack Survival.