Following each high-visible episode of gun violence in the United States, politicians and other community and national leaders spout their often-repeated worn-out platitudes and false claims regarding the actual causes of this lethal epidemic plaguing the country. Their words all-to-often result in the silencing of the root causes of the problem.

“Sending my best wishes and prayers.”

Of course, people of goodwill and compassion express this sentiment to people and communities suffering trauma and grief. This can help to begin the often-long healing process at a time of unfathomable tragedy by providing essential solace to survivors. This expression, though, falls far short of a solution, which morphs into mere platitude when those in positions of power fail to work toward real solutions.

“This is not the time to talk about politics.”

After virtually every firearms-related slaughter, a common pattern has emerged: when advocates rightly raise issues of safety regulations, politicians retreat to their deflective tactic of reciting that “now is not the time.” Moments pass leading to the next political issue (for example, healthcare or storm disaster relief) pushing gun violence out of the headlines as action is not taken. Then the next high-visibility gun massacre blares out while politicians again claim that  “now is not the time,” and the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

Some of these leaders offer their prognosis regarding the cause of the latest incident.

“Transgender people are to blame.”

I wrote an editorial commentary about the recent mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and school outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota killing two children, 8 and 10 years old, and injuring another 14 children and 4 adults. I listed several policy options for common sense for gun reforms that if taken collectively could severely reduce the carnage.

On one of my social media platforms, a participant summarily rejected my reforms and, instead, asserted his assumptions behind the alleged shooter’s motivations:

“No thank you,” he responded to my plan. “We do need to investigate why so many of these mass shooters identify as transgender and why they often select faith based institutions for their evil deeds.”

This respondent and several others have seen reports that the alleged shooter identified as “transgender,” and they have emphasized this to weaponize identity as causation.

In my attempt to decouple this man from his false conspiracies, I reported the finding from multiple reputable research sources,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)