DAVE ROSS

Ross: Debate over Atlanta spa shootings misses the point

Mar 19, 2021, 6:46 AM | Updated: 12:45 pm

Atlanta shootings...

Officials stand in front of a massage parlor after a shooting, Tuesday, March 16, 2021, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

I’d prefer to keep it light on a Friday, but I have to say something about how the Atlanta shootings are being debated.

I keep hearing people trying to figure out what was in this guy’s head, which I think is a waste of time. What kind of useful information is in the head of a person who goes around shooting people?

The goal is to stop people like him, which means either you have to change what’s in his head, or track him down before he acts.

He told police he had a sex addiction. OK, if we believe that, are we going to eliminate pornography, which he watched a lot of and which is why his parents kicked him out of the house?

No, we’re not.

Are we going to close down massage parlors? No. Provide addiction therapy on demand? He was getting therapy and it didn’t work! Hand him a Bible? He was already deeply religious and his roommates said religion is why he felt so guilty. Dead end.

So, to the alternative explanation: He hates Asians and was inspired by Trump. If we believe that, what do we do? We’ve already un-elected Trump. We condemn racism. But let me ask you: Have you ever debated a racist? Does it cure him? I’m thinking that fixing racism is not going to happen until an entire generation of young parents make a deliberate decision to raise their children not to be racist.

While we wait for that to happen, there’s a detail worth considering. Police reported he bought the gun legally Tuesday just before the shootings from a gun shop that I’m pretty sure wanted no part of this.

So imagine if a family who has just kicked an angry, disturbed, and possibly racist young man out of the house could post his name and picture so that it pops up at every gun shop within, say, 30 miles? Get the word out!

We do it for missing children. My phone just about leaps out of my pocket when those missing children alerts go out.

If gun shops saw that face on their phone and then that guy walks in, asking to buy a gun? And if that cashier had maybe called the family and said, your son is in here trying to buy a gun, I bet they’d have said, “CALL THE COPS NOW!”

“But Dave, he could just as easily have bought a knife.” Well, then send his picture to the cutlery department, too. Every cashier in America has a smartphone.

It might be interesting to know what was in his head, but to stop a guy like this, what you really need is a heads up.

We have a system to alert us to missing adults and missing children. We may have to extend it so that families can quickly alert cops and anyone selling weapons that an angry, racist, sex addict was just kicked out of the house.

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