America, We Need To Talk About Our Gun Problem
We don't have an abortion problem, we have a "crazy-people-shooting-up-public-places problem"
America, we have a problem.
It’s a problem that Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents don’t want to talk about because it’s always “too soon” after a mass shooting. And since they insist that their 2nd Amendment rights are sacrosanct, inviolable, and ever-expansive, there’s never seems to be a “good” time to discuss gun control. And so we never talk about it.
In the wake of Saturday’s mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where 13 innocent people were shot and ten killed, the question again begs to be asked: “If not now, when?”
It’s the same question that’s asked after every mass shooting, now too many to list from memory. The tragedy is that this state of affairs is allowed to continue. The question will be asked after Buffalo, as it is after every mass shooting, and the answer will remain the same- silence. Unfortunately, too many members of Congress have been corrupted by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun lobby. They’ve purchased Congress’s steadfast refusal to take action that might protect Americans from random, senseless mass murder.
I’m not going to argue that new laws might’ve prevented Saturday’s tragedy, because not enough is known to make that case. But new laws certainly wouldn’t have hurt.
Congress refuses to allow federal funding to underwrite research that might help to shed light on possible solutions. America is flying blind because our leaders refuse to pay to remove those blinders. How does that make any sense? It doesn’t, of course, but there are too many people too heavily invested in the suffering and violent death of innocent people for Congress to allow for change to occur.
In the case of the Buffalo mass shooting, the shooter was a White supremacist who carried out his attack in one of the Blackest zip codes in upstate New York. I’m not going to give his manifesto more attention than it deserves (which is none), but there’s a question we should ask. WHY are people so unbalanced and addled by virulent racism allowed access to high-powered weapons? Surely the shooter must have popped up on some agency’s radar at some point?
In fact, he did, which makes this mass shooting even more senseless.
Since the victim had received a mental health evaluation after making threats last year, why was he allowed access to weapons? New York State has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet the shooter drove three hours to carry out a racially-motivated hate crime.
Oh, and he live-streamed the mass shooting on Twitch. Yay, America!!
Have we really reached the point where domestic terrorists are so proud of the hateful ideology and their handiwork that they’ve decided to broadcast their “accomplishment” live and unedited?
Yes, apparently we have.
When will the slaughter end? Or will this continue as our “new normal,” as it has since Columbine in 1999? As if we don’t already know the answer.
(And how do we know the shooter was White? Because he was taken alive, of course. But that’s another story best left for another time.)
The tragedy of America is the number of people who use the 2nd Amendment to demand and justify inaction when it comes to guns. Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents have no actual argument. However, they do make the most noise, and since the NRA has purchased Congress, they get to set the tone.
The deaths of innocents appear to be of no consequence to those in positions to make a difference. With the thousands deposited in their campaign war chests by the NRA, they’re the property of the gun lobby and expected to do nothing. So, while the deaths of innocents may sadden them, it’s not enough to break their silence and commitment to their owner sponsor.
Somehow, someday, we need to come to grips with our national addiction to guns. And it’s not just an addiction; in some states, our relationship with weaponry is entirely out of whack. In some places, it can be easier to obtain a weapon of war than contraception. Or a handgun as opposed to an abortion. It makes no sense, but many of the same Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents are also fervently pro-life anti-choice.
Yeah, they’re so “pro-life” that they’ll pitch a fit if you try “take away their guns,” which are in no way intended to preserve life. Not that they see any contradiction in this, of course. To Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents, the two issues are entirely unrelated.
To any rational person, they’re absolutely related.
I can’t in good conscience claim to have the answers required to solve this problem and save lives. That will require minds more agile, flexible, and well-versed in the data than my own. It will also require commitment from both sides to find something resembling a middle ground.
Or we can continue watching the death toll climb from yet more random mass shootings. We’ve been watching this problem metastasize as the rest of the world marvels at our inability/refusal to address it. It probably looks to those on the outside looking in as if we have a collective disdain for the value (and perhaps even sanctity) of life. If you listen to the arguments of Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents, it would be difficult to argue with that assessment.
A moral society that claims to value life can’t allow itself to remain awash in handguns and high-powered weaponry. Not even the 2nd Amendment, the most willfully misinterpreted 27 words in the English language, supports such a situation as exists now in America.
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The final 14 words don’t exist independently of the first 13 words. Yet if you listen to Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents, you’d think the only part of the 2nd Amendment that mattered was
“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
The 2nd Amendment was written in the late 18th century before the advent of the rifled barrel. In those days, it might take even a talented rifleman a minute or more to reload his weapon and be ready to fire. Today we have weapons that can fire dozens of rounds per minute and cut a human being in half in a split second.
We don’t live in the world that existed at the writing of the 2nd Amendment. Yet, Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents demand that it be interpreted precisely as written (and only the final 14 words). Unfortunately, because Congress is owned lock, stock, and barrel, by the NRA, that’s what has happened.
That can, should, and must change. It begins by electing people who will pledge not to suck at the NRA’s teat. Then, once Congress has been de-corrupted, it can begin addressing this country’s gun problem fairly and equitably.
Then, a conversation must occur among people of good faith from both sides of the argument. We need to proceed from the premise that mass shootings are horrific tragedies that serve no one’s interests. Once we agree that we have the ability to discuss ideas to help reduce, perhaps even stop, mass shootings, we can begin to test those ideas.
Good people with good ideas can find ways to save lives. It’s going to mean talking AND listening. It will also mean sidelining Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Opponents unless they agree to be part of the solution. They must be flexible and open to negotiation- or risk being left out of the discussion.
I have to believe that there’s a way out of this, that we won’t continue to tolerate random people being slaughtered randomly for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We’re better than this…aren’t we??