2007, Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, VA = 32 dead; 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, CT = 27 dead; 2016, Orlando, FL = 49 dead; Las Vegas, NV = 58 dead, more than 500 injured. According to The Wall Street Journal (Oct., 2015), The United States “leads the world in mass shootings.” Survivors of mass shootings frequently suffer post-traumatic stress. Think...

Last week, I wrote about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, (Why? When? What?). After the deaths of 58 individuals at an outdoor concert, my commentary was another plea for commonsense gun legislation. In a separate e-mail, a regular reader to this site wrote to ask me a good question: What would you do? Hey Jim: …Please write 5 suggestions...

After watching events unfold in Las Vegas last Sunday – now the largest mass shooting in U.S. history – I went to my archives to see how many commentaries I’d written about gun control. It’s an issue I have revisited several times, maybe eight or ten. I was surprised to discover twenty-three! (Twenty-four, counting this piece.) When I first heard...

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 Amanda Alvear, 25 Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26 Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 Martin Benitez Torres, 33 Antonio D. Brown, 29 Darryl R. Burt II, 29 Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24 Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 Simon A. Carrillo Fernandez, 31 Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 Luis D.  » Read more about: Memo to U.S. Senators:  »...

Spoiler Alert: This commentary may just come as a shock to gun rights advocates… maybe. Regular readers already know that I’m a fussbudget about facts and statistics. They also know that I’ve spoken out against assault-style weapons, and the need to do more when it comes to the epidemic of mass shootings in the country. Nonetheless, from an ethical standpoint,...

Before President Obama held a press conference Tuesday to announce that he was signing executive orders to help reduce gun violence, two Brooklyn New York legislators, Senator Roxanne Persaud and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, were threatened by America’s 1st Freedom, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association. Why? In a story reported by The New York Daily News (Jan. 5),...

Every time an attack, like the recent mass shooting in California, occurs too many of us react badly. Paralyzed by fear and anger, we retreat into a moral relativism that is simply breathtaking. It’s become a sad reality that after every such attack, gun sales rise. The working theory is: If I’ve got a gun, I can do something about...

Whenever another mass shooting takes place, we hear the same litany: “Not one more mass shooting. Not one more child shot. Not one more innocent life cut short prematurely by gun violence.” Blacksburg, Lafayette, Chattanooga, Charleston, Newtown, Aurora, Isla Vista. Look at the list of school shootings in the United States. On the media: interviews with police, students, victims’ families,...

Christoval, Texas has recently become ground zero for conspiracy theorists. Rather than keep a watchful eye for self-radicalized, domestic terrorists with real intentions of harm, the folks in Christoval are closely watching the federal government’s war games. Why? Many harbor the misguided belief that the games are a ruse to deflect attention from the government’s true purpose: taking control of...

My trainer Steve and I have a special relationship. I share ethical observations with him and he shares his considerable wisdom with me. I stopped during a session once to point out: “It’s not just what you say, Steve, it’s how supremely confident you are when you say it.” He nonchalantly smiled through his sunglasses, “That’s because you are in the presence...