Oakwood Library continued their “Let’s talk” series on October 19, to tackle the topic of mass shootings and mental health. The meeting was put on by Elizabeth Scmitdt, an adult services librarian and the coordinator of the “Let‘s talk” series.  Many social groups gathered to speak their mind on the topic. Along with many others to just listen and see how they could help in this situation.

According to Dayton Daily News, Schmidt said, “The mass shooting was really an opportunity for people to come and talk about it. What happened in Dayton just affected people so much and it was a chance for people to come together and talk about the issue in a safe space.” 

Many attendees were asked questions and gave some suggestions to Dayton Police Officer, Ronald Strehle. 

According to Dayton Daily News, Stehle said, “The biggest problems are identifying who’s going to do this? How do you pick an active shooter out of a room? And if you think about it, the targets are all over the board. There’s been schools, hospitals, churches, government buildings. A lot of them are just open doors. One of them (shooter) that got away was on the highway, started shooting out the roof of his car and drove away. How are you going to stop something like that? So you have to identify it before it becomes a threat.”

Stehle also said, “How do you identify a person, how do you take every threat seriously? When a 15-year-old posts ‘I’m going to blow up the school.’ Do you take that at face value? Do you investigate afterward? So now anyone that gets angry and says something like that becomes a suspect, which is not usually a good thing. You don’t want to look strangely at everybody.” 

Many police officers are trying their best to identify these situations. Currently there have been 21 mass shootings this year. This resulting in 124 people dead.