Only Shooters Are to Blame for Mass Shootings

Normally when it comes to the topic of mass shootings I try to keep my mouth shut. Mostly because I really don't want to get into the topic of gun control. It's just a slippery slope of misinformation and bad beliefs on both sides of the debate.

Yet today I find myself unable to stay silent. I just have to unload what I've been thinking.

It's time we stopped looking for scapegoats and just put the blame where it belongs - with the shooter and the shooter alone. They chose of their own free will to kill people.

It's not guns, religion, music, video games, YouTubers, or "vaccine injuries" that cause mass shootings - and yes, anti-vaxxers have been blaming their fictional vaccine injuries for mass shootings - it's just the shooter.

It's not even fair to blame mental illness. With over 7 billion people on this planet there has to be millions of people who are suffering from some form of mental illness, many undiagnosed for whatever reason, and none of them choose to kill people.

I was bullied - still am to a degree, for awhile on YouTube I had to turn off all commenting on my videos due to a cyberbully (whom to this day I still believe to be my own brother and/or his mistress) and of course I often get sent random hate from anti-vaxxers for hitting them with the truth of their evil. I still didn't choose to pick up a gun and kill my schoolmates. Even when I had teachers on the bullies' side, saying I was "asking for it" for "reading too much," "acting too weird," "listening to the wrong kind of music," and "not trying to fit in." Even though I was suffering from undiagnosed depression and have always been prone to panic attacks - I still did not pick up a gun. Did I have a violent fantasy once in awhile? I'd be a liar if I said I didn't. But the most I thought about was waiting until no one was at school and burning it down, not killing anyone or even hurting them, just destroying the buildings where I was tortured - and I still chose to not act on those thoughts, even when I became a victim of repeated sexual assaults in junior high. Because my free will gives me that choice.

That's what it comes down to. Choice. Mass shooters choose to kill people. Any mass killer chooses to kill people. Here in my hometown of Costa Mesa, CA, one day a man named Steven Allen Abrams decided he was going to kill as many kids as possible. Instead of buying a gun he instead drove his car through the fence of a preschool at what was, at the time, known as First Baptist Church, successfully killing two kids. He chose to do it after a fight with his girlfriend. It wasn't his girlfriend who caused him to kill those kids, it was his own free will.

Be it a gun, a knife, arson, stealing a tank or other heavy duty vehicle and driving it through a building - killing is always a choice and it's always the killer and the killer alone to blame.

Yet we look for any excuse to not blame them. "It's their parent's fault, they didn't raise them right." "It's (Insert religion here)'s fault." "They were sexually abused." "They were bullied." "VACCINES MADE THEM DO IT!" "Guns are too readily available." "Heavy metal did it!" "Video games desensitized them to violence!" And on and on.

No, it was the killer. The killer CHOOSE to do it. You can be the most mentally healthy person in the universe. You can be raised by the most loving, supportive parents. You could've never experienced any form of bullying. You can be rich and good looking. And you can still choose to kill. You have that capacity. We all do. Like it or not. And it would be 100% your fault if you did kill.

So stop looking for scapegoats. Put the blame where it belongs.