It's hard to talk, or write, about gun violence. It's far harder still to live with it, and live with it is what we've been forced to do for decades. Which makes the need to talk and write about it perpetually urgent.
But it's exhausting.
Buffalo, New York.
Uvalde, Texas.
The list quite literally goes on, and on, and ON. Even the mainstream media, which has the resources to keep up with it, is hard pressed to do so. No sooner does Jim Acosta on CNN tweet news about eight shootings over a weekend than, twenty-four hours later, he ups the number to ten.
I don't want to use the sheer number of these systematic slaughters to numb myself, or anyone to the pain, suffering, and unspeakable cruelty that characterizes every one. Because every one is a senseless tragedy. Every one involves the unjustifiable end of lives, many of which had barely begun. Every one is a loss of unmeasurable dimensions to families, congregations, businesses, communities and, ultimately to our nation and culture.
So I pause here for a moment, to provide this link. Take a pause here. Click on it. Go through the list. Do so with reverence and respect for all that America has lost. No one of them is more horrible than the other. All of them are horrifying. And, at the same time, all of them need to be remembered not just for the souls we've lost, but as part of the process by which we need to start bringing this carnage to an end.
That process can be summed up very simply: a national program of gun control.
Yes, I know. If you're a Republican, or an unaffiliated conservative, or just someone who loves guns more than anything else in the world, and you're reading this, you're already screaming "Second Amendment," either out loud or in your head. I'll get to you folks in a little bit. You're wrong, of course, but I need to take a step-by-step approach in discussing this in order to thwart the irrationality of your position.
I will, however, start with one, simple proposition. You have no doubt already braced yourself for what I'm going to say by pointing out that many states, specifically ones with the good sense to be run by Democrats, have enacted various laws restricting the ownership and use of guns. And that, despite doing so, many of these states still experience high levels of gun violence.
But there's a problem with the argument you want to make from these facts. The guns flooding into these states come from your neck of the woods. You can complain all about Chicago, a very blue city in a very blue state, and its gun violence all you want. I'll complain about it too. But I'll also argue for a concerted effort to end the illegal trafficking of guns across state lines. And, by definition, that concerted effort, whether it involves federal officials, their state counterparts, or both, has to operate--repeat, has to--on a national scale, and perhaps an international one as well. (Remember that whole "war on terror" thing? Well, like it or not, this is a big part of it.)
Now you're saying that the level on which gun control is taking place doesn't matter. Gun control doesn't work. The bad guys will always find a way to get guns. The fact that I'm willing here to admit to the existence of interstate gun trafficking simply proves that.
I've encountered that argument for as long as I've been willing to advocate for gun regulation; in other words, fifty years (yes, I'm that old; in fact, I'm turning 66 on September 1, so make sure you shop early and avoid the last-minute rush). And I've always been alternatively amused and troubled by it. Why? Because no one advocates for the legality of homicide, even though homicides take place in the face of laws that prohibit them. No one advocates for the legality of theft, even though theft is as much an everyday occurrence as birth and death, again in the face of laws that prohibit its occurrence. Good grief, no on advocates for the legality of jaywalking, even though jaywalking is a potentially dangerous activity that nevertheless not only occurs daily, but is in some places a very routine aspect of life. I've lived in New York, so I know the latter fact from first-hand and even participatory experience.
Why is all of this true? We know that passing and enforcing laws doesn't prevent those laws from being violated. But law reflect not only how we want to organize society, but what type of society we want to be. We want laws that promote safety and stability, while still giving people the freedom to live their lives with confidence and without fear. And laws that regulate the ways in which guns can be distributed and use help to do that. Like it or not, experience has proven that to be true.
It has proven to be true in Australia, a nation that, like ours, developed from a frontier society to a modern nation.
It has proven to be true in the United Kingdom, a much older tradition, but one whose system of common law has been incorporated into our own legal system, and one with a long tradition of gun ownership and use in a wide range of settings.
It has proven to be true in our neighbor to the north, Canada, a nation whose legal system also owes much to the U.K, and one which, like the U.S, and Australia, began life as a frontier society.
And, on those rare and short-term occasions where it has been tried here, it has also proven to be true. Unfortunately, when the political balance of power changed, so did our willingness to regulate guns that have absolutely no purpose except as weapons of war. And those guns are at the heart of our current parade of horrors. So much so, in fact, that there has been talk of reinstating the assault weapons ban, and a recent effort to pass such a bill has just succeeded in the House of Representatives. Will it become law? Probably not in this Congress. All the more reason for people to get out and vote in November.
You want to get in on a dirty little secret? Even the NRA thinks it works! Believe it or not, the NRA began life as an advocacy organization promoting the safe use of firearms, including regulations to ensure that use. That's reality, folks. Unfortunately, the NRA has over decades devolved into a trade association for gun manufacturers that exists solely to promote the "rights" of these companies to obscenely profit off of the carnage that they help to create. But have no doubt that the NRA still believes in the efficacy of gun bans. After all, they ban the possession of firearms at their own events.
But what about the "good guys with guns" argument? Doesn't that make it OK to have a society that's armed to the teeth, because then there will be so many good guys with guns that we won't have to worry about bad guys with guns.
Sorry, but it's not as simple as that. For one thing, how do you know who the bad guys are? I think this is one of the fundamental dilemmas of the gun-soaked world in which we now live. It's possible to go anywhere--a shopping mall, a movie theater, a fast-food restaurant, and see somebody armed to the teeth, with no fewer than three holstered pistols and a semiautomatic rifle that they carry as casually as one might carry a purse or a bookbag.
Help me out here: how am I supposed to know whether this person is a "good guy" or a "bad guy"? All I or anyone else can say for certain is that they're carrying instruments of destruction with all of the nonchalance that one might give to a Happy Meal. None of these people would pass muster in the military or with law enforcement when it comes to their handling of weapons. I have no way of being certain one way or the other and, therefore, from my perspective, my best course of action is using a cell phone to call 911. But that's because I care about preventing another Buffalo, Uvalde, or similar attack more than I care about the rights of someone to parade their gun purchases.
Which, of course, brings up the question of law enforcement and the military. They're the ultimate good guys with guns, right? You can always call them in and count on them to do the right thing and save the day for all of us, correct?
Well, from what we know so far, it doesn't look like that's how things unfolded in Uvalde.
Where the shooter entered the school despite the fact that the police fired on him.
Where the police showed a greater willingness to protect their own children than to respond to the concerns of nearly parents.
Indeed, where the police showed a greater willingness to use force against the parents than against the shooter endangering their children.
And where, as an agency of local government, the police can count on the government to cover up all of their, er, "mistakes."
Especially when there is one political party that calls itself the party of law and order. And that party is willing to engage in the covering up. Does the GQP really believe itself to be the party of law and order? Only for its opponents. They adopted Donald Trump's view that life is a zero-sum game in which law is just part of the game, and anyone who believes otherwise is just a sucker who deserves to be taken advantage of, or worse. This leads to a view of governing best expressed by a Peruvian general: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law." Thus, the GQP has morphed from being a political party to a crime syndicate, one that shreds the concept of civil society in favor of an authoritarian chess game between the powerful and the powerless.
Finally, there's your last line of defense: the Second Amendment. You know, the one that supposedly is more important than all the other amendments to the Constitution (in that case, why isn't it first?). The one that gives all us an unfettered, and otherwise absolute right to "keep and bear arms" in any and all circumstances.
Except that it doesn't.
There's that nasty "prefectory language," as the late Justice Antonin Scalia called it, about the "well-regulated militia," and the necessity for having it, being the rationale for the part about keeping and bearing arms. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow members of local and state militias ready access to their weapons in the event that government calls them to perform their duty.
And that's the point about militias that everyone, particularly gun nuts, seems to have forgotten about militias. Militias are not spontaneous assemblages of people with all manner of firearms, ready to enforce their ideas about right and wrong upon an unarmed, unsuspecting populace. Those groups are not militias. Those groups are mobs. And, in fact, at certain times in our history, militias have been called up to put the mobs out of business. I repeat: militias are created, trained, and directed not by random citizens, but under color of law in times of emergent or other circumstances to supplement local law enforcement and otherwise maintain the pre-existing public order.
Don't believe me? You don't have to, and I don't care if you do. We've got a little thing called the text of the Constitution--the thing the Second Amendment is designed to amend--that explains in detail how this whole militia process works. And I'll wager anyone that none of the so-called Second Amendment absolutists have read the provisions to which I'm referring, as described in this video. None of the groups describing themselves as "militias" fit into this definition.
Indeed, their existence constitutes one of the very reasons a government militia may need to be called up. The idea that the Framers envisioned the repulsion of national tyranny by random mobs acting outside of the law is ridiculous on its face. It flies in the face on the language within the Constitution itself, which provides not only for the process of amendment but also for the calling of conventions that would have the power to replace the entire document.
As a society, we are now so awash in guns that they are being used to settle the most absurdly tiniest of conflicts between people. But the conservative movement in America, and specifically the GQP, has ridden the lies about the Second Amendment to success, in election cycle after election cycle. And it has done so to the point at which gun violence, and mobs calling themselves "militias," are a regular feature of our political life, as well as political life in other countries; there is no more ghastly example of this than the Trump-sponsored assault on our Capitol on January 6 of last year.
And the most recent spate of shootings illustrate how the GQP has become the party of domestic terrorism. The Buffalo shooter posted an online manifesto in which he spewed white-replacement-theory nonsense that presumably formed the basis for his choice of target: a supermarket in a Black neighborhood. In fact, it turns out that he had given thought to opening fire at a local school, but thought that it would be too hard to enter. How has the GQP and its funders responded? Well, for one thing, they've posted a list of potential school targets online. And their Senate cohort has vowed to filibuster a domestic terrorist bill focused on white supremacists.
It's probably not reasonable to expect any degree of consistency from a political movement that cares more about tracking Sudafed use than it does ammunition. But is it reasonable to expect that its members would be willing to shoot their own children to make sure that all of us are armed to the teeth? It may not be reasonable, but, as it turns out, it is much more than possible.
And the more one examines their behavior, the worse the hypocrisy and cruelty gets. As it turns out, they don't even believe their own rhetoric about mental health and its role in gun violence. Or even any of their rhetoric about being "pro-life"; rather than do anything meaningful to remember the victims, they throw away the evidence of their fate, preferring instead to focus on arming both children and teachers. Indeed, far from attempting to reckon with the consequences of their failures on gun policy and their embrace of domestic terrorism, conservatives use the consequences of their rotten ideology to promote even more of that rottenness.
And their allies in religion? The ones who are supposed to bless the peacemakers? They're doing exactly the opposite. They're openly encouraging more violence in the name of G-d.
Well, I believe in G-d. I believed in G-d when I was a Christian, and I believe in G-d as a Jew. And, literally in G-d's name, it is time for the dishonesty, the hypocrisy, the racism, the violence, and the fraudulent misappropriation of the Second Amendment to STOP.
And I mean RIGHT NOW.
So that children can go to school, and come home worrying about nothing more than homework.
So that all of us can work, shop, play, and enjoy the things the Declaration of Independence said that all of us are endowed with by our Creator: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So that we can return to an honest construction of our most basic law, and craft public policy that balances responsible gun use in civil society with the need to protect everyone from senseless violence.
So that we can go back to having a government of, by, and for the people, and so that none of us can perish from the Earth until that time that G-d has appointed for each of us.
As a nation, we were founded on the premise of forming a more perfect union. At this point, I'll settle for a more peaceful one.
The gun bill recently signed into law by President Biden is a good first step. But a small one. Let's hope and pray it's not the last one.
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