A 99% success rate in preventing gun violence is really a 100% failure rate. One mass shooting is one mass shooting too many. One life lost to a mass shooting is one life lost too many. The same goes with school shootings, too. There should be an absolutely zero tolerance policy for these kinds of things. This is a very high bar that everybody in the gun violence prevention community must all collectively commit themselves to.
Now fifty, I can chart a course through life that few even dream about:
(1) I am a Harvard graduate and a PhD holder, meaning that I can do world-class research on the topic of gun violence prevention.
(2) I am institutionally unaffiliated and no longer gainfully employed, meaning that there are no constraints on what I do with my resources.
(3) I have a mental health diagnosis and an arrest record, meaning that when I say forcefully that the mentally ill and felons should not have the right to bear arms, I know of which I speak.
All three points lead me to my life's work: 100% gun violence prevention. Of course, that is an ideal, which is never achieved in reality. But, it is in the striving that counts.
J.J.
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