Eighteen. Eighteen is the number of school shootings that have occurred since January 1, 2018. Eighteen in 43 days.

Three. Three is the number of school shootings each week.

438. 438 is the number of innocent human beings, shot in school shootings subsequent to the death of twenty children and six adults in Sandy Hook, Newtown on December 14, 2012.

As these numbers grow larger, numbness saturates our skin, then insidiously seeps into our deep tissue and muscles, including our brains. We detach ourselves from a crisis that is currently quintessential to society as a whole.

Another headline appears on social media, begging for some form of a reaction. These reactions lead to the creation of further polarization and the questioning of the Second Amendment, forbidding us to unite in stopping future massacres executed on children.

“Kids shooting kids.” “Teens killing teens.” “Students murdering students.”

How about, “boys killing kids,” “men killing teens,” “male students murdering students?”

Of the 96 mass shootings committed since 1982, all but two were committed by MEN. In the United States, MEN own guns at triple the rate of women. MEN murdered 1,600 women in 2013 alone. The most commonly used weapon was a gun.

There is an unspoken yet unmistakable link between men and gun violence. It decomposes down to toxic masculinity. Masculinity is arguably the most important entities for a male. It is the concept that defines his self-worth, positions him in his social hierarchy, and controls the way in which he is “sized up" by other males.

Yet, masculinity is the concept that leads directly to the inability to feel, the incapacity to express any emotion at all. Men are taught through the social learning process systematically practiced in each and every institution, that emotions interfere with masculinity and therefore harms male ego and virility.

Emotions, however, are an inevitable and imperative component of human existence. Nevertheless, for men, they are often rejected, suppressed, and avoided. This rejection, suppression, and avoidance is the recipe for gruesome violence perpetrated by aggressive males, that violence that feeds the mouths of too many innocent people…with bullets.

We speak of mental illness and guns. We speak of terrorism and guns. We do not speak of men and guns. In order to eliminate gun violence, it is beyond crucial that we spark a change in the culture of toxic masculinity. This powerful construct is so deeply interwoven into our mainstream American culture of patriarchy and male dominance.

Yet, it is indeed possible to start to change at a local or even individual level. Allow men to begin to feel. Embrace the sentiment. Allow for men to communicate. Allow them to share how they are *hold your breath,* feeling. Because men, like all other living beings, have feelings too.

It is the time that men are capable of immersing themselves in their feelings, without risking their self-esteem.

Aggression and violence are the byproducts of emotional suppression. It is on us to trigger the change rather than perpetuating the current stigma whereby men are prohibited to feel.

Let us alleviate the numbness and detachment from these numbers…numbers that signify the lives deprived of their time on Earth due to gunshots, for these numbers are far too detrimental to accept as “normal.” Let us unite and fix this societal epidemic of gun violence through the celebration of humane feelings, male or female.

Confronting the epidemic of gun violence should not be a fight over the Constitution, but a fight to save humanity. Let us be the catalyst of the modification in masculinity, from aggressive violence to the acceptance of feelings and a manifestation of our humanness.