Mass shootings seem to happen every year more and more prevalently.

They personally terrify me and even though I come from a conservative family who is all for them, I believe we need stricter gun laws to help prevent future shootings.

However this column is not about that, this is about people who take to social media to turn these shootings into conspiracy theories.

It seemed to have started back with the Boston Bombings or Sandy Hook, but ever since then it is almost impossible to log in to Facebook and not see someone try to tie these tragedies to the government.

I am not saying the government is perfect, does not do anything shady etc, and they could definitely enforce stricter laws to prevent this type of thing.

But to be so worried about your guns that you start coming up with conspiracies that these are “false flag” operations by the government is just ridiculous.

People are suffering, their family members are dead or injured because of this tragedy but it does not end there.

People accuse some of the victims of lying and say these things never happened.

This is disgusting.  Keyboard detectives who were not there somehow think they’re in the right for “calling out” these people.

After every tragedy I always see a picture on Facebook of brunette girls who look slightly similar crying at the tragedy. And there is always text that says something like “wake up” or “how was she at all of these?” the truth is she was not, these are clearly different people.

The notion that every tragedy is an “inside job” baffles me.

People are so paranoid about their guns that they cannot believe that some gun owners would do something so vile that they have to pin it on the government.

Maybe it is hard to swallow but there are clearly gun owners who cannot be trusted, and blaming the government for it isn’t going to fix the shooting problem the US has right now.

I have had to remove so many people on social media within the last few years because of these types of things.

People I thought were smarter than to buy into this.

None of these people previously went on rants claiming 9/11 was an inside job or something like that.

It just seems that the conspiracy theories have come back with a vengeance these past few years.

And I know it is hard to believe that people would kill other people. And gun owners want to think other gun owners are safe. But clearly we have a problem in this country and it is not the government who is causing it.

When tragedies like this happen we should remember the victims in these situations.

Have some compassion for the dead.

Labeling the families as liars is ridiculous.

People have suffered great loss and need help. They do not need the Internet conspiracy team giving them more trouble.

Mace Mackiewicz is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or mmmackiewicz@eiu.edu.