Why Root Causes Matter

[Sedalia Dave]

Root Cause: The fundamental reason for the occurrence of a problem

 

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And finally, spree killings/mass shootings.

 

 

Our readers might wonder, why did you wait until the end to talk about this? Isn’t this the most pressing issue we have in front of us right now?

It is the most sensational. Plastered across every news site on the left and the right, you’ll find things that go as far as saying the 2nd amendment is a relic and should be done away with, we should take away everyone’s guns, to the equally absurd “Crisis Actor” memes (no, we’re not linking to those) or arm all teachers on the right.

If we’re to be honest about these horrific events however, we need to, as rational individuals, realize that of all the subsets we’ve listed, the number of deaths every year from them range from 220 in 2016 on the low end, using the FBI’s definition, to the highest end estimates from the Gun Violence Archives (They use wildly different definitions, and the latter has only been tracked for the last several years) at 344 in 2017. These incidents account for 2% of overall homicides and under 1% of overall firearm deaths. It’s important to keep things in perspective.