Mass Shootings and Mass Ignorance

The conversation happening all over the place these last few days about the unfortunate and horrifying school shooting that took place in Florida has become a part of conversations every single day, and honestly isn’t anything new- the topic springs up every time an incident occurs in America. These occurrences are obviously tragedies, but the fact of the matter is that they now take place at a frequency that is exhausting, numbing so many people to even wanting to discuss it. I think the reason I’m writing this is to put my thoughts in a place to make sure I’m right about the world not making sense. Not only the events themselves, but the way we speak about them are indicators of the large problems that we’ve unknowingly come to terms with in American society.

Problem 1: Of course it’s people that are killing people, guns are inanimate objects, but I want anybody who makes this argument thinking its a legitimate indictment of pro-gun control positions to ask themselves how that person accomplishes their task. In Chris Rock’s Netflix special Tambourine, he makes this very salient point about mass killings where he points out any other kind of weapon (he talks about knives and stabbings) would not be nearly as successful at taking out large groups of people without allowing people to get away. In his example, he says that in a room with a hundred people, if they all die from a mass stabber, 97 of them are at least half responsible because they had to have just stood there and watched it happen. Look, its the political musing of a comedian and a lot of people are going to have a lot to say about that, but I really do think this is a legitimate think to consider- guns are faster, more discrete, and harder to evade than most other weapons. People kill people, sure, but I don’t have to know the specs of every type of gun to tell you that allowing legal access to guns is way more dangerous for people than allowing legal access to knives and bats.

Problem 2: Underground markets will sell guns to people who want them. That is a true statement, I’m pretty sure. I do think, however, that the logic behind why this is a good argument against gun control is a little shaky. I think having laws kind of assumes people engage in behavior we don’t like. We have laws against things like murder, and robbery, and insider trading, and lots of other actions people (I’m agreeing- guns do none of these things) do because we don’t like the way they impact others, or we don’t like the advantage somebody gains by doing those things. There also seems to be a presumption that individuals will still choose to engage in those actions, which is why we write punishments into the law as well. Punishments partially exist to hold people accountable for doing stuff society doesn’t like (even though sometimes it isn’t used well and can hurt people, but that’s a conversation for a different day) because we know some people don’t follow the law- it’s widely known that we as a species suck at following directions or playing nice with each other. I understand that somebody is screaming at me saying “punishments don’t deter everybody,” and so it wouldn’t make sense to make it harder for people to get weapons to save themselves from people who are going to potentially harm them, but the underlying assumption that argument makes is also what I’m presenting here. If the legal system and punishments within it (i.e. incarceration, the death penalty if you like that kind of thing, fines, etc) can’t deter people on a systemic people even though they are really terrible to experience, it seems like a really big assumption to think somebody would legitimately rethink their decision to take a violent action because they realize somebody else may have a gun. You can find evidence funded on both sides to support whatever conclusion you want about the impact of gun availability on crime rates, but at the end of the day, laws that make it harder to get guns just make more sense than continuing to allow easy-enough access to these weapons. At least this way, punishments can be preemptive instead of waiting until after something goes horribly wrong to hold somebody accountable. The only real argument here is that further restrictions on guns may put marginalized populations at risk because they may become subject to further criminalization from these laws, and I’m still wrestling with that.

Problem 3: Apparently, there’s constitutional precedent that people have a “right” to own a gun. So this is an interesting justification for not having gun control because it assumes no other “rights” are restricted. At the beginning of the Bill of Rights, we’ve supposedly got access to these things called free speech, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which is essentially trying to make a living and some extra cash on the side), and all of these things are restricted. Speech that causes mass hysteria or that harms somebody’s reputation is prohibited because it seemed important that you shouldn’t be allowed to shot “Bomb!” in a crowded airport or lie about George peddling child pornography on the weekends to make the neighbors hate him too. If you commit a violent crime, you can get put in jail because it seemed important that somebody who stabs three people couldn’t just walk around on the street with everybody else without having to face what they did first. We even have limits on pursuits of happiness via taxes because it seemed important that some of the money we bring in has to help us and the people around us have some tools to live more comfortably. Those are all limitations that restrict rights but they were instated for the good of people, and I think the justification for some regulations on gun ownership is largely in the same vein.

You don’t have to take what I say as “taking your guns away,” but I do think the larger problem of why we think people need guns in the first place should be explored in a social context. For some reason, we have convinced ourselves we need guns around us to either keep us safe or help us feel happy or allow us to feed our families, even though we can accomplish all of those things by a trip down to the local Albertsons (not an endorsement). Unless we can rid ourselves of this obsessive and gluttonous desire for false security, we really can’t make progress in having better lives. A lot about the way we view other people (i.e. how white people see Black/Brown people and Muslims, how rich people see poor people, how cis straight people view the LGBTQIA+ community, this list could go on for a while) stems from this weird insecurity we have that people who don’t look/sound/eat/drink/talk/act/behave/love/live/do whatever like us are out to get us. The biggest tell of the gun control conversation is that there are too many people in the world who are afraid that their own shadow might be somebody they don’t know standing behind them, and that fear is what needs to be challenged and investigated. No place is perfect, America is far from it, but this fear that stems from ignorance is a big contributor to the problems we face in the world (obviously some types of exploitation are just sinister and make life terrible for large groups of people and are not one I’m talking about here specifically).