One of my least favorite
parts of the “Why does this keep happening?” phase after another American mass
shooting is the badgering of ideas on social media. Despite my personal
distaste for the practice, however, as an American school teacher with school
age children, I’m triply required to offer my thoughts.
With that in mind, I absolutely do think most people should have
the right to own and even carry around guns
The caveat, however, and the real sticking point for some folks,
is the word “most.”
Because not everyone should have a gun. Guns are dangerous and so
are some people, and just as not everyone should be able to drive a car or handle
complicated machinery, not everyone should be able to quickly purchase a weapon
designed to kill a human being.
Sorry. I know that makes me a pinko commie and, even worse,
uneducated about the Constitution, but since we brought up the topic, let’s consider
that document in the first place.
When the Constitution was written, no human on earth had access to
a firearm capable of killing many people very quickly. Perhaps more
importantly, few humans could fathom a society so broken this very reality
would become increasingly commonplace. An amendment from the 18th century need
not be repealed in order to engage a 21st century problem, but it does require
us to stop pretending as though the law was carried down the mountain by Moses.
Besides the legal argument, however, we also have the “Gun control
wouldn’t have stopped this particular incident” talking point, which gets much
traction but fails to recognize the inherent flaw in its reasoning. Just as
seat belts aren’t capable of saving all lives in all car accidents, gun hurdles
would not be capable of saving all lives in all massacres.
That much is true.
But the goal of seat belts is to reduce traffic fatalities, not
end them. Reasonable, nationwide gun purchasing requirements would absolutely
reduce deaths because it would make it more difficult for evil/insane murderers
to get a gun. Arguing against all gun control measures because it won’t work
all the time is the intellectual equivalent of a father telling his children
they need not wear seat belts because they wouldn’t help if the car rolled into
a lake.
Continuing, we have the “apples to oranges” line of
reasoning, which points out that states with strict gun control measures, such
as the one I’m sitting in right now, also have high homicide rates in many
urban areas. This violence, we are told, is the only evidence necessary to
prove that gun control doesn’t really work.
Gang-related gun violence, however, while a nauseating blight in
and of itself, is not the same criminal phenomena as a lone shooter blasting
away at unarmed people because he’s mentally ill. Just as tornado and hurricane
deaths are technically both weather-related fatalities, the strategies you
would use to decrease the number of both sets of deaths would not be entirely identical.
A final argument against gun control is that a well-armed militia
must be maintained in the event we get invaded by a foreign adversary, or, more
chilling, we must defend ourselves against our own federal government. In these
hypothetical scenarios, the America we once knew collapses and our only hope of
survival lies in the millions of weapons locked away in gun cabinets throughout
the nation.
Both of these predictions could certainly happen. According to
some theorists, the latter is already taking place. Both hypotheticals are,
however, just that - they are guesses about a future that may or may not occur.
Do you know what is not hypothetical?
Small town funeral homes running out of coffins.
In the spring of 1999, monsters walked into Columbine High School
and initiated the modern era of the mass school shooting. Two and a half years
later, monsters walked onto four separate passenger jets and started the global
war on terrorism. As we’ve been reminded recently, our national response to
that latter tragedy was not to ban airplanes, but we did make it nearly
impossible for the crime to be committed again. It was - and continues to be -
quite a headache to board a passenger jet, but it’s an annoyance and sacrifice
we’ve made peace with because it’s undoubtedly saved lives.
Many Americans found comfort after 9/11 in their faith, and, based
on church attendance, America continues to be one of the most religious nations
on earth. As such, we should be blessed with some of the spiritual fruits of
our collective piety: Kindness, for example…patience…joy…
Peace.
Unfortunately, when it comes to gun violence, the opposite seems
to be true. Whereas many developed nations struggle with mental illness, drug
addiction, and the disintegration of the nuclear family – scapegoats often
blamed for our violent crisis—we outpace them when it comes to gun violence.
Why is that? Despite all our moments of silence,
despite all those flags flown at half-mast, month after month and year after
year, why are we still having this sick conversation?
Partly it’s because we have chosen secular ideology over reason
and compromise.
We have deified the right for good people to own guns but have
neglected our responsibility to keep them out of the hands of evil men.
Why does this keep happening?
We know why this keeps happening. A better
question is, “When are we going to be bold enough to truly do something about
it?”
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