The Sickness unto Death, Part I
It's the guns
[updated]
I started writing this piece in the wake of the March 27 mass shooting at a school in Nashville, TN in which three nine-year-old children and three adults were slaughtered. I had to put it on hold when the news cycle spun out of control—as it has been wont to do since the Fall of 2016.
Current events continue to unfold at an unrelenting and unsustainable pace and it is almost impossible to keep up. (Pro-tip: don’t try; note to myself: stop trying.) But that doesn’t mean the shootings have stopped. They never do:
On the 100th day of 2023, the country’s 146th mass shooting of the year occurred in Louisville, KY. Five people were killed. On April 13th, a sixteen-year-old boy named Ralph Yarl was shot in the head by a homeowner. Ralph was on his way to pick up his siblings and he accidentally went to the wrong house. The shooter pulled the trigger while Yarl was standing on the other side of the door.
Two days later, four people between the ages of 17 and 23, were murdered at a sixteen-year-old’s birthday party. The shooting was carried out by six gunmen, three of whom are teenagers. Seven different guns were used and at least 89 bullets fired.
That same night in upstate New York, a 20-year-old woman was shot to death for having committed the crime of pulling into the wrong driveway on her way to a party.
Last Friday, April 28 in a suburb north of Houston, five people were murdered by their neighbor simply because they asked him to stop shooting his AR-15 in his front yard. They had kids who were trying to sleep. He told them he could do whatever he wanted on his property, including, thanks to Texas law, shooting a weapon of war that requires no license, in a residential neighborhood at 11:30 at night.
Two of the female victims were found lying on top of children they died protecting. The youngest victim, a boy, was eight years old. All of them were in the same house, shot “almost execution style.”
Another neighbor said, "There's always shootings, there's always shooting. There’s always people calling the cops and there's nothing being done. We were in bed and my kids -- I have two babies -- they got scared, and we're like, 'it's normal they're always shooting.'" Anybody in Texas, of any age, can own an AR-15 without background check, training, or permits. The dystopia this woman describes isn’t inevitable—it’s here.
And last night, a man opened fire in a hospital, a place which according to one account is “traditionally considered safe,” and shot five women, killing one. I think at this point we need to concede that there is no place in this country that is safe from gun violence.
The subject of gun death in America is evergreen. Waiting for a respite in order to catch up is a fool’s errand. In the last month alone, while our attention has been distracted by indictments, the debt ceiling crisis, and the seemingly out-of-control corruption of the right-wing of the Supreme Court, the number of mass shootings in 2023 has increased to 160. There is no reason to think that number won’t triple over the remainder of the year.
I rarely address the issue of mass shootings in this country, especially when children are involved. I find the topic unbearable. My daughter was eleven when 20 six- and seven-year-olds and six adults were slaughtered inside their elementary school by a man armed with an AR-15 and ten thirty-round magazines. His mother had purchased the gun because the shooter was too young to own an AR-15 legally.
When the news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke, my daughter was at school. I spent the hours before I had to pick her up agonizing over what to tell her. I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to pretend nothing had happened.
I wanted to protect her from knowing because what use could that terrible knowledge be to a child?
Of course, the school administrators and teachers talked to the kids. What precisely they said or how they conveyed the information I don’t remember. And I don’t know the extent to which my daughter was able to process the news. She seemed OK and I didn’t want to press—probably as much for my sake as hers. All I could do was imagine what those children went through in the classroom and what their parents were experiencing now. I couldn’t help but put myself in their shoes and I felt inadequate, afraid, and vulnerable as a parent in a way I never had before.
The very fact of Sandy Hook broke something in me. And, if you’re an empathetic human being, it broke something in you, too.
What exacerbated the horror of it all was the almost immediate and defensive reaction from the right: the insistence that the massacre not be politicized, their useless and cowardly calls for thoughts and prayers—both, as we now know, obvious code for doing nothing.
What exacerbated the horror of it all was the almost immediate and defensive reaction from the right: the insistence that the massacre not be politicized, their useless and cowardly calls for thoughts and prayers—both, as we now know, obvious code for doing nothing.
Shortly before the recent Nashville shooting, the NRA, as evil an organization as has ever existed, posted this: “If you want to ban AR-15s, you are an enemy of the Second Amendment. That’s it. That’s the tweet.”
If you exist anywhere on the spectrum of those people who believe Americans should be able to own guns but that gun ownership should be regulated, this is an absurd statement. Given the frequency with which the AR-15 is used in mass shootings, it is a vile one. The first clause has no necessary relevance to the second.
It does, however, accord with my thinking around this issue: I support banning the AR-15 (and all automatic and semi-automatic weapons) and I think we should repeal the Second Amendment. It’s not simply that owning a gun shouldn’t be an unfettered right: I don’t think owning a gun should be a constitutionally protected right at all.
With approximately 390 million guns in America, however, it feels like we may have reached the point of no return. All of those guns are owned by approximately 30% of adults. Sixty percent of those people own more than one gun. A staggering 29% own more than five guns.
This is cultural now. The extent to which a growing minority of Americans is armed with weapons that are increasingly unregulated is antithetical to the idea of a democracy in which “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are foundational concepts. And the more intensely gun owners feel the “need” to protect their Second Amendment rights, the less willing they seem to be to acknowledge the fact that guns are responsible for the epidemic of gun violence in this country.
The gun lobby, the NRA, and Republican politicians blame everything except the one thing that is to blame. They blame buildings that have either too few or too many doors. They blame a lack of Christianity despite the fact that around 60% of Americans identify as Christian. They blame mental health problems (while defunding mental health initiatives) even though fewer than 5% of violent crimes are committed by people with serious psychological disorders.
They blame video games despite the fact other countries also have large video game markets. In Japan, for example, over 60% of the population uses them and the market for violent video games grows every year. Yet, there are, on average, only 0.3 deaths by gun per 100,000 people. In the United States, that figure is 5.3 per 100,000. To put it in simpler terms, in 2018 there were nine gun deaths in Japan, a country with a population of 125 million, as compared to 39,740 in the United States, a country with a population of 332 million.
The Nashville shooting was allegedly carried out by a trans women. Shortly afterward, Clay Travis, a Nashville-based radio host, tweeted: “This was a terror attack on religious people by a deranged lunatic trans person.” Many on the right followed suit. Trans people, especially trans women of color, are among the most vulnerable in America. Out of the 3,500 mass shootings that have been carried out in this country since 2016, three, maybe four of them have been carried out by trans or non-binary people. That works out to about 0.12%. You’ll never guess who carried out the vast majority of the remaining 99.88% shootings. Yet, I don’t hear anyone on the right talking about how dangerous white guys are.
Saying guns aren’t the problem is the exact opposite of the truth. We know this because we have clear, irrefutable evidence based on what other countries have done in the wake of mass shootings.
In March 1996, a gunman entered an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland and massacred 16 five- and six-year-olds and their teacher. All of them were shot within three to four minutes. The shooter used four legally owned handguns to commit the murders. The response of the British government (laid out in The Cullen Report) was swift and comprehensive. Significantly tighter controls on gun ownership were enacted almost immediately. Twenty-seven years later, Dunblane remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history because there have been no other mass shootings in Great Britain since then.
A month after Dunblane, Australia suffered its worst mass shooting at Port Arthur when a gunman killed 35 people. Within two weeks of that massacre, a sweeping National Firearms Agreement was announced making it much harder for Australians to own automatic and semi-automatic weapons. A country-wide gun buy-back program was instituted and upwards of 650,000 guns were retrieved. New guidelines for gun ownership were also established. All gun owners were required to have a license, and they had to demonstrate a need—beyond “self-defense”—for owning a gun.
Since 1996, there have been three mass shootings in Australia (two of which were familicides) with a total of 14 fatalities (not including the shooters).
We know gun legislation works here, too. Everytown for Gun Safety has compiled the statistics: States with strict control laws have significantly lower rates of gun violence and vice versa. (I strongly recommend that you click on the link. The graphics they provide are interactive and some of the data are fascinating.)
But too many elected Republicans pretend that, beyond thoughts and prayers, there is nothing we can do. Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee recently said, “We can’t control what [the shooters] do.”
In the wake of the Nashville shooting, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), stated, “We’re not going to fix it.” Presumably he meant to say “we can’t fix it” but it’s much more accurate to say they intend not to. “As a Christian,” he says “we need a revival in this country.” Yeah, that’ll do it.
There is so much we can do “to fix it” that it’s unbelievable public officials are allowed to get away with saying such disingenuous, easily discredited nonsense.
We can, for example,
make sure AR-15s or magazines that hold dozens of rounds are no longer legal.
tax bullets so they are almost unaffordable.
institute buy-back programs.
strengthen background checks and red flag laws while closing gun show loopholes.
The number of Americans who want background checks on gun buyers, a law preventing perpetrators of domestic violence from buying guns; raising the age at which one can legally buy a gun to 21; or banning AR-15s is staggering. Equally staggering is the lack of political will in some cases and political power in others.
There is literally no need to cater to the minority in this case. So, when democrats get accused of being soft on crime or plotting to take away people’s guns, it is the will of the American people they should defer to. Instead, many Democrats go out of their way to let everybody know they are proud gun owners who support the Second Amendment. This kind of defensive rhetoric feeds into the right’s narrative that gun ownership somehow confers political legitimacy.
“An armed society is a polite society,” is a fallacy often perpetuated by the right. It may sound like the motto for the NRA but the quote is actually from a book written by Robert Heinlein. It’s not Heinlein’s sentiment—that belonged to a fictional character in his novel Beyond the Horizon. And it was never meant to espouse the idea that giving everybody access to guns is the solution to making us more peaceful and loving towards each other. That’s a logical absurdity. But it suits the narrative of those who advocate against all gun safety legislation.
After all, it’s easier to get your way if people avoid confronting you because they don’t want to risk the chance that you might blow their heads off. And thanks to red states that continue to change legislation in order to protect shooters and gun manufacturers—making all of us less safe—if you’re a white guy, you’re increasingly likely to get away with shooting somebody on the thinnest of pretexts.
Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children and teens in the United States. We need to stop acting like this isn’t a hair-on-fire emergency.
We need to stop being worried that the gun lobby or Republican officials or the NRA will accuse us of wanting to steal people’s guns or scheming to repeal the 2nd amendment simply because we demand adequate gun safety laws. They’re going to accuse us of those things anyway.
So, let’s stop pretending that the right is willing to negotiate in good faith—because they’re not.
When you’re forced to negotiate with people who aren’t operating in good faith—as Democrats always seem to be—you must always stake out a position that is the diametric opposite of theirs. Every elected Republican supports the idea that all people should have unfettered access to every kind of gun in all places at all times. The Democrats’ opening bid, therefore, should be that nobody should be allowed to have any access to any kind of gun in any place at any time ever. That’s not just the position I’m starting from, that’s actually what I believe. One of the tragedies of modern American politics, however, is that the Republican position is considered unexceptional mainstream Republicanism, while mine—which is publicly embraced by no elected Democrats that I’m aware of—would be considered insane by some and political suicide by almost all.
Think about that for a second. Just think about it.
Links:
Nashville, TN
Louisville, KY
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/louisville-kentucky-shooting-04-10-23/index.html
Ralph Yarl was shot
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170479923/ralph-yarl-kansas-city-teen-shooting
a sixteen year old’s birthday party
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/20/1171075390/alabama-birthday-party-shootings-fourth-arrest
a 20-year-old woman was shot to death
five people were murdered
There's always shootings
https://abcnews.go.com/US/5-dead-texas-shooting-suspect-armed-ar-15/story?id=98957271
opened fire in a hospital
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/us/atlanta-midtown-shooting-suspect-thursday/index.html
mass shootings in 2023
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081
Sandy Hook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
defensive reaction from the right
390 million guns
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
door
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/28/republican-party-texas-school-shooting-doors
lack of Christianity
https://onlysky.media/pzuckerman/of-god-and-guns/
mental health problems
fewer than 5%
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/04/ce-mental-illness
video games
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/trump-violent-video-games-studies.html
gun deaths in Japan
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/asia/japan-gun-laws-abe-shooting-intl-hnk/index.html
Clay Travis
https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1640827601290756098
Trans people
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/18/united-states-transgender-people-risk-violence
3,500 mass shootings
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org
Dunblane, Scotland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane
The Cullen Report
https://minutes.stirling.gov.uk/pdfs/scouncil/Reports/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201bn96r06.pdf
Port Arthur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)
National Firearms Agreement
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2796929-1996-National-Firearms-Agreement
compiled the statistics
number of Americans
https://apnews.com/article/gun-violence-covid-health-chicago-c912ecc5619e925c5ea7447d36808715
An armed society is a polite society
number one cause of death for children
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
I was never afraid of gun violence, personally. Horrified, yes, at what was happening in this nation for the past 30 years. I'm 70, and I well remember the shooting by a 25-year-old mentally ill man from the bell tower at the University of TX in 1966 where 15 died and 31 were injured. No one could believe it. I still remember the shock of the adults around me. A dear friend lost a niece in the shooting in 2012 at the Aurora, CO movie theater. My own niece, a teacher in KY for 25 years, goes to school every day, frightened -- as are her 6th grade students -- that "is today the day?" Despite all of this, I personally experienced no fear, UNTIL. A couple of months ago, I was sitting in the large waiting room of a Social Security Administration office. I suddenly found myself having a panic attack (first ever), thinking, "OMG, what if there's someone in here with a gun who decides to start shooting??!! There's no way out!!" And that is when I realized what has become of the America I once knew, as a child, as a teen, as a young adult. What a HORROR we are forcing our younger generations to experience!!!
I think the position you outline is a very reasonable strategy and therefore good. I also believe that if the Equal Rights Amendment were published as part of our constitution NOW it would move us along toward detoxing extreme masculinity and sexism and dismantling patriarchal, violent gun culture. I have been watching and studying this since I was very small. The use of force and toxic patriarchy have always been linked.