Visitors pay their respects Oct. 29, 2018, at a memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue after a shooting there left 11 people dead in Pittsburgh.

On Oct. 27, a horrific shooting took place at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, claiming the lives of 11 innocents. The attacker, Robert Bowers, is known to have posted anti-Semitic jeremiads online, especially on far right websites with lax speech oversight like Gab. The attack shone a harsh spotlight on anti-Semitism in the U.S. and more broadly the intersection of religion and politics in the country.

Despite the frequent articulation of a separation of church and state first expressed by President Thomas Jefferson and endorsed by most presidents since then, religion is very much an active part of the U.S. public policy.

This fact should not come as any surprise: one of the U.S. founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, invokes a creator deity, the national motto since the days of President Eisenhower has been “In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance extols “One nation, under God.” Politicians are endlessly mentioning religion and religious values in speeches.

The U.S. is a much more religious nation than most of Europe, and religion has always played an active role in its politics. Religious groups have served a great benefit in the United States: religious groups helped drive the abolition movement and the civil rights movement. Though in fairness it must be said that while many northern religious groups helped drive abolition, religious groups in the South also helped defend slavery.

There is, however, a darker aspect to religion in the United States. Since the inception of the nation, Christianity has been the dominant religion in the U.S. and intolerance towards other religions has periodically swept the country.  

Christianity  has been used as instrument to incite hatred and fear of other religions. Historically, rampant anti-Semitism has raged through the United States at regular intervals, and since 9/11 there has been a surge in Islamophobia that has yet to dissolve.

Prejudice concerning religion has always occupied a role in U.S. politics. In the 1920s, one of the first major Catholic contenders for the Presidency, Al Smith was defeated, in part, due to a virulent wave of anti-Catholicism sentiment across the country. In 1960, the first Catholic president, President Kennedy had to repeatedly confront and address questions on how his religiosity would affect his actions.  

These divisive sentiments stirred up by demagogues, fearmongerers and morally debased politicians are definitely not representative of Christianity in the United States as a whole but can end in tragedy as it did in the shooting.  

President Trump’s victory in 2016 emboldened white nationalists and other fringe groups that advocate hate. That is not a partisan opinion, it is merely the fact that there has been a surge in hate speech, hate crimes and other similar reprehensible conduct since the election of the current president. The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville showed the troubling trend that has only accelerated with time.  

Anti-Semitism, specifically, and intolerance cloaked in religion, broadly, is once more on the rise in the United States and in Europe, and political entrepreneurs are stoking it. One just has to look at Hungary, where the authoritarian regime of Viktor Orban is blatantly harnessing it to incite hatred of Jewish philanthropist George Soros and of Muslim immigrants. In the U.S. one need only recall President Trump’s “Muslim Ban” to see religious-based intolerance growing.

There may be cause for hope if one turns back to history. As noted above, prior to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, anti-Catholic sentiment was, as historian Arthur Schlesinger puts it, “[the] deepest bias in the history of the American people.” The Bosses of the Democratic Party were reluctant to sign on to JFK’s campaign for just that reason, yet with the election of Kennedy, a seeming dissolution of much of the anti-Catholic sentiment seems to have occurred.

While the Catholic Church has still occasionally been the target of fury and outrage by the American people, most recently with sexual abuse allegations, anti-Catholicism as a significant political force has not re-coalesced since Kennedy’s 1960 victory.

If Catholic prejudice could be rooted out in such a way, it is not outside the realm of possibility that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia may be rendered impotent in the future as well.

Photo courtesy of Brendan Smialowski/Getty-AFP.

Officer Hamline instructs members of the William Jewell College community on how to respond in the event of an active shooter on campus.

Approximately 20 people dotted Yates-Gill Room 221/222 on the evening of Aug. 28 while Officer Kyle Hamline from the Liberty Police Department held an active shooter training course. The training was open to faculty, students and staff and was the second of two courses, the first being held Aug. 14.

Hamline began the course with a brief overview of past shootings and explained that the victim count in these events could have been reduced had victims received proper training to defend themselves against attack.

“The purpose of this course is to give you the mindset to take action,” Hamline said.

Liberty Police Department utilizes FBI tactics, based upon analysis of past mass shootings, in their active shooter training courses. Officer Hamline outlined three defense tactics that should be used in the event of an active shooting: “Run. Hide. Fight.”

The Department of Homeland Security details this three-point plan on their emergency preparedness site. The plan emphasizes the chronology of “Run. Hide. Fight.,” recommending that victims try to run from the scene before anything else and, if escape is not possible, to hide in a secure area with lights turned off, phone on vibrate and doors locked and reinforced against intruders by heavy objects, like copy machines or tables and chairs. If these options are impossible, victims should fight as a last resort using whatever objects available to incapacitate the shooter.

Officer Hamline, using a table pre-set with items ranging from golf balls to fidget spinners, offered various ways to attack a shooter. He demonstrated with Jacob Shutts, sophomore Oxbridge: Institutions and Policy and economics major how an everyday item like a belt could make all the difference in preventing a shooter from entering a room.

Officer Hamline demonstrates using a belt for leverage to ensure that a door cannot be pulled open from the outside.

Shutts was one among the several resident assistants who made up the majority of the 20 individuals who attended the training. Officer Hamline noticed the dozens of empty seats in the room and explained that so many people choose not to attend training courses like this because, when considering being involved in an active shooter event, their mentality is “if” and not “when.”

“We have to be in the mindset of when it does happen,” Hamline said.

Hamline repeatedly emphasized the importance of awareness and said that, had people reported past perpetrators’ suspicious behavior, many mass shootings could have been prevented.

“When you see that kid that’s getting ready to explode – when they’re not having resilience …   You guys have got to be watching,” Hamline said.

Though the sole purpose of the course is to give students the knowledge necessary to defend themselves in an instance of immediate danger, Liberty Police Department makes an effort to connect mentally unstable individuals to the appropriate authorities to stem attacks before they are carried out.

“We’re actually talking to those kids that have the killing mindset, and we’re getting them help,” Hamline said. “They’re getting psychological help. They’re getting parental help. They’re meeting with school counselors.”

Among the community that researches mass shootings, a consensus has been reached that defines a mass shooting as an isolated, public incident that results in the death of four or more people by a firearm.

Besides defining what a mass shooting is, however, researchers have not made much progress in determining why they happen, most likely due to minimal federal funding and the classification of mass shootings under general homicide research.

Trends can be tracked, however, and one of the most concerning shows an evident uptick in the amount of victims per mass shooting.

Graph courtesy of sciencenews.com

Mass shootings have also increased in frequency over the past few years, though these increases are comparative to others in the past. Still, combined with the fact that they are getting more deadly, campus safety organizations believe it is more important than ever to offer training courses to prepare students to defend themselves in the event of a mass shooting.

Graph courtesy of nycrimecommission.org

Graph courtesy of nycrimecomission.org

College gun violence in particular has skyrocketed since the millennium began. The increase was most profound in southern states and states that had more lax firearm acquisition laws.

While safety organizations advocate the implementation of active shooter training courses and other safety procedures, it is hard to tell how effective these precautions are at reducing casualties and preventing attacks, especially as mass shootings become deadlier and more frequent.

Some psychologists have even raised concerns about the psychological impact of going through active shooter training courses. One psychological study showed that, though students felt more prepared after watching a training video, they also experienced increased fear about being a victim in an active shooter situation.

Researchers who fear the implications of exposing students, especially the younger and more vulnerable ones, to the prospect of being a victim of a mass shooting advocate the redirection of school safety funds away from active shooter courses and toward less tangible tactics to prevent school shootings at their source, such as anti-bullying and mental health initiatives.

Still, the debate over the best response to the increasing severity of mass shootings does not have a clear leading player. In the face of this epidemic for which science offers no concrete explanations, schools are attempting to protect their students.

Photos courtesy of Sofia Arthurs-Schoppe.

Other past deadly mass shootings include the Orlando Pulse nightclub mass shooting in 2016, the  Virginia Tech Shooting in 2007, the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012, the Luby’s Cafeteria Shooting in 1991, the McDonald’s Massacre in 1984, the University of Texas Tower Shooting in 1966, the U.S. Postal Service Massacre in 1986, the San Bernardino Attack in 2015 and the Binghamton Shooting in 2009.

The Harvest Music Festival that took place in Las Vegas Oct. 1 was the deadliest shooting in U.S. History. A gunman, later identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, opened fire on a crowd of at least 20,000 people from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Paddock was reportedly armed with around 20 rifles. He ended up killing 58 people and injuring more than 500. The shooter was later found dead. The authorities believe he killed himself.

On Nov. 5, 2017, a gunman later identified as Devin Patrick Kelley walked into a church in rural Sutherland Springs, Texas and opened fire on worshipers. He ended up killing 26 people and leaving several others injured. The shooter was later found dead by the authorities. It is unknown whether he killed himself. This was the deadliest shooting in Texas history.

The most recent shooting took place in northern California Nov. 14. A shooter later identified as Kevin Janson shot four people and started shooting at an elementary school before he was shot down by the police. It was later discovered that he also killed his wife and buried her under his floor earlier that day.  

Some argue that gun control would restrict gun violence-related crimes. Some rules have been suggested to limit the number of gun violence victims, including universal background checks, banning bump stocks and adopting micro-stamping of cartridges to track guns. On the other hand, some people believe that America needs more trained citizens carrying guns and argue that guns are not the problem and should therefore not be restricted. They blame mass shootings on mental illness and propose improvements to the mental health system. Still others believe that it is an issue of national security and propose the solution of having more armed forces in public events.

Photo Courtesy of Business Insider.