Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Hanink offers some thoughts as to how Americans are increasingly treating mass shootings like natural disasters – events that are destructive, but unavoidable. The result has been a shift from prevention, towards preparedness, with government officials encouraging people to practice drills in schools like duck-and-cover for earthquakes, or run, hide, fight for school shooters.
But even for inevitable events like natural disasters, governments at various levels do push out regulations with the intention of driving prevention, whether via building codes, material selection, or zoning regulations, all designed to minimize both the extent of damage when the inevitable event occurs, or otherwise minimize spread. The question then, according to Hannik, becomes why mass shootings can’t be treated the same way, where actions are taken to help prevent them in advance, rather than hoping people can stop them quickly once they’ve started, at a cost of potentially thousands of lives a year. “Local governments establish building codes regulating everything from construction materials and building techniques to wiring standards. Even consumer goods from refrigerators to robot vacuums are inspected to make sure that they don’t pose fire hazards,” writes Hannik. “Focusing on prevention doesn’t stop us from preparing for disasters, it just makes them less likely. We can and should do the same for mass shootings.”
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