We have to acknowledge there is a real problem, but until people stop pointing the fingers at the wrong cause and ignoring the right steps to take things like racism, bigotry, hatred, will continue to take center stage when we have mass shootings. It would be prudent for us to stop blaming guns for mass shootings, and get into the issues that lead people to those acts.

As someone that's been in life and death situations with guns in the mix, the gun's never the problem. We need to study the reason that there are so many mass shootings from a deeper perspective. Identify the culture of fear that's growing in our society that makes men, and some women, go for the gun so quickly. And, stop pointing fingers at the wrong cause.

I don't care who's holding the gun, if you're shooting people without just cause, you need to know the consequences are swift and the severest possible. There is no deterrent factor anymore. That, unfortunately, has come from excessively liberal views on criminal justice. The pendulum may have needed a push in the right direction, but it got pushed too far.

For us to address this will require open, truthful, and honest realities to be accepted. Some cultures in our country are ruled by the gun from teenage years forward. Others hatred forces them to pick up a gun. Only by bridging the divide, and holding all to account for violent acts they commit without trying to make guns, the gun manufacturers, or anyone else the fall guy, does this problem return to an event that hardly ever happens.