Jacksonville: A Tragedy that Shooked the gaming community
Jacksonville.
A simple
word, but if you’ve been online in the past day or so, then you know about the
tragic incident which happened at Jacksonville, Florida. It started with an
E-sports event, which became something much more sinister for the ones to get
involved in what was supposed to be a simple gaming competition. After one
competitor lost, he pulled out a gun and caused 10 casualties and 2 deaths of
the other participants before he turned the gun on himself and committed
suicide.
David Katz,
the shooter who opened fire, is 24 year olds and is said to have struggled with
mental illness in the past. He has a history of issues, some of them dating
back as early as the age of 12, and though the police was dispatched to his
home 26 times, none of the reports ever reported violence.
This event
has stirred up many questions for gamers and non-gamers alike: how do you make
gaming events safer?
Did games
really play a factor in what happened?
How do we
make sure that mentally unstable people do not obtain firearms that could
potentially cause safety concerns for others and themselves?
How do we
stop the epidemic of gun violence?
This event
has also opened up the discussion in America about gun control once again,
because one has to think about the fact that these mass murders are made
possible by weapons which could kill droves of people within minutes. People
ask themselves: why does this keep on happening?
Is no one
safe?
So far, we
have seen these types of headlines again and again. The only difference is the
place and body count, but even then it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of the
news when it comes to the people whose lives are lost due to faulty gun control
laws.
Students
say: does your right to own guns go before my right to learn?
Parents
say: does your right to own guns go before my child’s right to live?
People say:
does your right to own guns go before my safety?
And the people in power never provide a conclusive answer.
Some say
that the problem is mental illness. The rising epidemic of mental illness is
leading to a rise in gun violence.
This is
false.
Schizophrenics,
one of the most fearsome of all mental illnesses according to the public
perception, is not actually something which typically results in violence. They
are 14 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime themselves rather
than being the perpetrators, and 10 percent resort to suicide.
So what is
the problem?
What is
causing these tragic occurrences?
There seems
to be one scarlet string tying them all together: guns.
America has
a unique problem with gun control laws, because although America hardly makes
up 5% of the world population, they own about 45% of private firearms. That means that it’s not that difficult for
someone to obtain a gun through legal or nefarious means; that means that it’s
painfully easy for people to do something that could end in another headline.
They’re putting in more security measures, sure, but that doesn’t prevent the
fact that there’s still too many.
For now,
there are no fixes offered to the public about this issue. There is no simple
fix, it seems like, but we sure hope that soon there will be a way to avoid
incidents like this from happening again in gaming and non-gaming contexts; our
prayers are with the families of the victims and we hope that they find peace
during these trying times.
WRITTEN BY: RAE DIZON
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