So here we now have on us this unthinkable Newtown tragedy. And we know the cycle of our response to such events: first shock, then grief, then anger, then a slow fade until whatever news next rivets our attention. That’s how it’s done. That’s how we all do it.
Except this time it doesn’t quite feel that way, does it? This time it feels different. This time it feels like our cumulative grief and outrage might actually result in something being done about this raw insanity with our guns.
And we all feel the N.R.A. executives and the craven politicians they own out there, hunkering down together and strategizing about how best to weather—and, ultimately, capitalize on—what they’re no doubt shamelessly considering a PR problem.
And all of us have this fury inside of us. And that fury has nowhere to go, because we feel so impotent against a problem so huge and so bound up with stuff that we know is good and right, like our Constitution.
Constitution good. Capitalism good. Assault weapons easily purchased at guns shows bad.
It’s just one big knot we feel we can’t unravel. So we stew, and cry, and despair.
And most immediately we hold our children to our breasts, and desperately wonder how our country could have come to this.
We’re easily the most absurdly armed country in the world. There are three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American. No other country comes anywhere near that.
We’re simply crazy about guns.
Well, some of us are: a full three-quarters of people who own guns own two or more guns. Most Americans don’t own a gun.
Not much could more perfectly capture everything that’s mind-bogglingly ludicrous about the American gun business than this video, featuring two painfully immature boys masquerading as adults. “Everybody needs some kind of combat weapon,” says one of the boys somberly. “You could buy a crate of these [high-powered rifles], and about five crates of ammo, for about two thousand dollars,” says the other. “That’s a real good cheap way to arm ten men … you can be very deadly in large numbers. You can use this gun to kill elk, bear, moose, deer, two-legged game of all sorts if you need to. They excel at that.”
Did you laugh when he said? Did you think that was funny?
In an average year roughly one hundred thousand Americans are killed or wounded with guns. One in three Americans know someone who has been shot.
Not that at this point we need statistics to prove to us that we have a problem in this country with too many guns being too easily obtained by too many people.
But what to do about that problem?
Well, a decent place to start might be understanding that the N.R.A., which everyone thinks owns the gun control issue in America, isn’t anywhere near as powerful as people think it is. On NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this:
The NRA’s number one objective this time was to defeat Barack Obama for a second term. Last time I checked the election results, he won and he won comfortably. This myth that the N.R.A. can destroy political careers is just not true.
Here’s Paul Waldman, of The American Prospect, writing in February of this year:
We all know that the National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, interest group in Washington. With their money and their committed supporters, they can carry candidates to victory or defeat as they choose, just as they’ve done in the past. Right? Well, maybe not. To determine just how powerful the NRA really is on election day, in recent months I assembled a database covering the last four federal elections: 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. These years cover two presidential and non-presidential years, as well as two significant Democratic victories and two significant Republican victories. I gathered data on the outcome of every House and Senate election, including the margins of victory, the money spent by each candidate, the partisan character of each district, and whether the NRA made an endorsement in the race and how much money they spent.
The conclusion to be drawn from these data will be surprising to many: The NRA has virtually no impact on congressional elections. The NRA endorsement, so coveted by so many politicians, is almost meaningless. Nor does the money the organization spends have any demonstrable impact on the outcome of races.
Finally, here is Mark Glaze, director of the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns:
People are hard-pressed to find more than a handful of members of Congress who have ever lost their seat because of the NRA or because of a gun vote. But the NRA has spent a lot of money and a lot of years building up that very reputation, and a lot of Democrats have bought into it.
The N.R.A. is just a lobbying organization. It’s got four million members. There are three hundred eleven million people in America. The N.R.A. doesn’t own the freakin’ country.
Politicians are still elected—by us. They’ll still dependent for their jobs upon us. And anyone who thinks politicians don’t listen their constituents knows squat about politics. If more than fifty people in one day write any elected representative anything that’s the same thing, that representative stops what they’re doing and pays attention. Because they understand that the cost of failing to do so might result in them having to do what no politician wants to: getting a real job.
We’re not helpless to address the gun problem in our country. This is still America. We—the common person, the average citizen, the normal, everyday Joe and Josephine—still rule. We just have to speak as one voice.
If you want fewer Americans going batshit and grabbing ridiculous amounts of weaponry they then use to go on horrifying killing sprees, then here are some things that you can actually do to stop that from happening with the increasingly regularity that it is:
→ Write your elected representative. Use Google for .8 seconds, find out who represents you at the local, state, and national level, and write to them. Tell them this:
Dear [Representative who is paid out of my taxes]:
Like millions of Americans I am am sick of living in a society where buying firearms is as easy as buying toilet paper. I am begging you to make a priority in your daily work the toughening and tightening of gun laws. I want a ban on assault weapons and any gun that comes with or accommodates a loading system that can have no purpose beyond killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible. I want the gun-show loophole closed. I want penalties much more severe for gun “straw purchasers” (and if you don’t know what those are, I want you out of office). I want radical enhancements to our state and country’s background-check system.
I want you to tell me what can be done to reduce gun violence. You’ve got the power. You know what you’re doing. You tell us (being me and my friends) what you’re doing to combat gun violence in our society. Come up with a policy or a plan about that, publish that policy/plan on your website, and then on that website keep us informed about how it’s going: about what you’re actually doing to help prevent tragedies such as the recent massacre of children in Newton.
Tell us who’s helping your efforts to combat gun violence. Tell us who’s hindering you. Tell us everything. You tell us who is and isn’t on your side in this crusade, and what they are or aren’t doing to help you, and I promise you that we’ll help anyone not helping you understand why it’s in their best interests to get on board, and with you start doing everything they can to stave the spread of gun violence in America.
Thanks! You rock. Show up properly on this issue, and I promise you’ll always have the support of me and my friends.
Your concerned and attentive constituent,
[You]
→ Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress is a petition on whitehouse.gov. Go sign it. If you don’t, then please never again complain about the gun problem in this country, since when you had a chance to do even the slightest thing to help with that problem you did nothing.
→ Part of the job of the Federal Communications Commission is to “maintain decency standards designed to protect the public good.” The chairman of the FCC is Julius Genachowski. His email is Julius.Genachowski@fcc.gov. Send Mr. Genachowski an email saying:
Dear Mr. Genachowski:
Please strongly encourage all television networks to cease publishing the names and photos of individuals who have gone on killing sprees. No one should ever know that committing a mass-murder is guaranteed to make them nationally famous.
Copy that email to:
Commissioner Robert McDowell (Robert.McDowell@fcc.gov)
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov)
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov)
Commissioner Ajit Pai (Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov).
Instant nationwide fame is a powerful motivator. Let’s make sure it becomes no motivator at all.
→ Refuse to go see or rent movies that are clearly extremely violent. Similarly boycott violent video games. Don’t let your kids buy or play either. Sure, that’s old-fashioned and square. The alternative is to continue allowing ourselves and our children to be desensitized to the reality of shooting others to death. Murder isn’t entertainment. Square up. (To be perfectly clear, I don’t think that in and of themselves violent video games cause violence. But I also don’t doubt that they can help trigger a person saddled with a particular kind of mental illness to actually do in real life what the manufacturers of video games strive to make seem as real as possible. I think such games are profoundly unhealthy and shouldn’t be in anyone’s home—but certainly not in a home with children. For more on this issue, see Do Video Games Make Kids Violent?, published today by ABC News.)
→ Encourage your elected representatives to tax the crap out of gun manufacturers and the people who buy their products—the same as we do with tobacco. And then let’s use that money to develop and implement in our elementary schools programs designed to teach children about conflict resolution; the ignobly cruel, long-lasting, and alarmingly dangerous effects of bullying; the fluid line between mental health and losing the ability to cope; and why the most heroic thing anyone can do is actively care about the well-being of others, particularly those burdened with less advantages than others.
→ You tell me. You tell everybody what thoughts and ideas you have about getting the American gun problem resolved. This is a collective problem calling for a collective solution. Let’s talk about this. Let’s get answers out and circulating. Let’s create all kinds of symposiums, conferences, public forums, and all kinds of events that we all put together right in our community centers or living rooms in which we actively and enthusiastically solicit all sorts of ideas on this issue. There are lots of people out there who really know this stuff, who’ve deeply considered this issue, who have solutions to crucial aspects of this problem that make sense and would actually work. Let’s get those people and their ideas the attention that they deserve and that we need.
→ Pray. I don’t care who you are or what you believe, pray. Send up to God, the Divine, the Universe, or however you personally understand The Large, and ask for more love to occupy more space more often in the hearts of more people. Ask that with all the intensity you have. Love is the only transformative power in the world: people change for love and no other reason. More love in the world equals less people killing other people. That is the inviolate, sacrosanct rule of life. Embed yourself in that truth.
Ask for—and thereby create—more love.
Please?
Also, share your thoughts and feelings. Share them here if you will. Tell us where you’re at with this whole thing.
Merry Christmas.
As the little boy said: God bless us, every one.
Most of the stats I used came from Jill Lepore’s exceptional New Yorker article, Battleground America.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
{ 174 comments… read them below or add one }
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“The family placed stuffed animals, a blanket and letters to Noah into the casket. Lastly, Veronique put a clear plastic rock with a white angel inside — an “angel stone” — in his right hand. She asked the funeral director to place an identical one in his left, which was badly mangled. Noah’s famously long eyelashes, which she spoke about in her eulogy, rested lightly on his cheeks and a cloth covered the place where his lower jaw had been.”
From an account of one victim’s funeral and his family’s life, post-massacre.
Not an easy read, but something that should be read by those who feel apathetic or who need more inspiration.
http://forward.com/articles/168277/noah-pozners-family-remembers-and-mourns/?p=all#ixzz2GHg1tBjJ
Matches didn’t set fire to my home. It was my child experimenting with them. In retrospect, I’m kind of glad I didn’t have any firearms there for him to learn about.
Frankly, when I heard about this, I waited for someone to call for tigher mental health laws. You know, make it easier to involuntarily commit someone (inpatient or outpatient), make it easier to force medication on them. etc.
But what I brought away from the response to the event is that although what happened was horrible beyond words, our reaction seems to boil down to one thing: “This should NEVER happen.” Well, that’s a nice sentiment, but it does. Everywhere. This isn’t a movie or video game where children are immortal and immune. We live in a universe where walking out the front door has risks up to and including death, mutilation, and horrible disease. Eating the “right” things, doing the “right” exercises, living in the “right” neighborhood or wearing the “right” bulletproof vest will not exempt you. We can reduce risk, but we can’t eliminate it. We can ease pain, but we can’t erase suffering. We can grieve for those who we lose, but we can’t keep them from going.
Some of the kindest patients I help care for are in horrific pain, all the time. Some of the nastiest enjoy perfect health. People make choices, and there is nothing we can do except our best. And I am sick of people pretending otherwise.
For those interested, mayors against illegal guns set up http://www.demandaplan.org/ where you can sign the petition and log in through your Popvox account, it will populate the representatives of your location to address the petition. Easy breezy way to make your voice count.
I have never seen a gun chase anyone… has anyone here?
interesting fact- suicide is the number one killer of our military. while we are in an active war. we have 33 million Americans that take medication that can make them potential suicidal and or violent and delusional.
more people are treated for mental health issues than for cancer and aids combined. At what point do we say we have a public health pandemic?
I have not seen a gun chase.
And I didn’t see the armed men who broke down my office door one night. I was supposed to be in my office. I was not. So neither did I see them use two hand guns, a rifle, and a baseball bat to blast apart my and my partner’s offices.
I didn’t know that earlier in the evening they had become lost in the hills, two blocks away from my home, while trying to execute a home invasion. My home.
And when members of an LA gang were hired to finish the job those guys left undone, and when those gang members (stupidly) tried to run me off of the road, I didn’t see the guns that were in their cars.
Had I seen a gun, I wouldn’t be sitting here.
The good news is that I got lucky and never came face-to-face with these would-be killers.
The bad news for me and others? Since I never came face-to-face with these men, their sentences were plead down. These men spent less time in jail than someone convicted of possession (not sales) of narcotics.
The guns used in the “incident” were confiscated, but at least two of these men – the primary shooters from my office – weren’t required to give up the other guns they owned.
We need common sense gun control. I picture simple laws. For example, perhaps a law that says if you’ve tried to murder someone with a gun, you shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.
But that’s just me.
As in most class warfare, the rich can afford their protection and the poor cannot. Sadly, the rich are the ones who are least willing to pay taxes so that the poor can have security as well. a bit of a vicious cycle one might conclude.
if you have people hiring gangs to kill you, I would think you night consider either a security detail or a new line of work.
You ask a question of us, John’s readers, and then respond with “… consider either a security detail or a new line of work?”
Rather than call you an insensitive fucking twerp, I going to assume I’m misreading your tone. Even so, that you’re making this about class warfare is insanity.
I’m work in what is pretty much a zero-danger career and had the bad luck to become the object of a crazy person’s paranoid delusions. What happened to me could happen to anyone.
But don’t worry, since the police and courts knew with certainty who was behind it all (he confessed,) they were able to help immensely. I got a lovely piece of paper, a Permanent Restraining Order, informing the bad guys that if they killed me, they’d be in big trouble.
On second thought, fuck you.
btw, private 24/7 security starts at about $25,000/week, but hey, I guess I’m so rich I shouldn’t worry about it.
I would be in touch with you local Police then- murder for hire is a federal crime, as is kidnapping. If you are in a position that lead to that, its WAY beyond a matter of random gun violence. If people want you dead like that, they will have many ways to accomplish it. I meant no snideness in the original comment, and if you need help contacting law enforcement resources I would be happy to assist with it.
on the crazy delusion front- 33 million Americans are taking anti-depression meds which might make them violent, delusional or suicdal…. just wanted to say that there is a lot of potential danger out there.
Care to cite some studies to back that up? Increased risk of suicide, yes, but violence or delusions?
(I also have to wonder how much the increased risk of suicide is cause directly by the drug and how much is an indirect result of a depressed person taking a drug that isn’t helping, since lots of people have to try five or six anti-depressants before finding one that actually works.)
God, I don’t even know how to respond to you, except to say, “Gosh, I wish my attorneys, the private security firm I did indeed hire, the police dept, the FBI agent in our family, and the county and federal prosecutors were as smart as you.”
Don’t worry, the next time I need “assistance”, you’ll be the first guy I call.
you know- whatever- your condition has nothing to do with the”gun control” issue at all.
happy trails , and I wish you the best in resolving your situation.
Why did you ask if anyone had seen a gun chase? I thought you were looking for insight into gun violence.
Was it so you could belittle the answers you got? Diminish a black chapter in someone’s life as their “condition?”
The violent men I described were allowed to keep guns they had not used in the course of their crimes! If you don’t consider that fact something that could and should be addressed via gun control, then you’re simply another blog troll trying for a reaction. Congratulations, dickhead, you got one.
first, I had no intention of minimizing your situation. so I apologize for anything that allowed that perception.
beyond that, I am sorry to hear about your situation and hope it is resolved peacefully.
I’m not aware of any states which allow felons to own guns. If these guys got off with misdemeanor convictions, sounds like you have a prosecutor problem, not a gun law problem. It’s not possible to make a law which will do any good if it’s not enforced.
Prosecutor was good, laws were bad. Trust me on this.
What I have seen…
Am I the only person here who has repelled a home invasion using a weapon? If you have also, please speak up.
Oddly enough, although I was in the room with a loaded gun at the time, the door the man came through put him between me and the gun. I ended up holding him off with a recurve bow I had just purchased at an archery competition that weekend. True story. I know it sounds absurd. Anyway. What I learned: first, self defense with a gun is very tricky. The gun and you and the bad guys must all be in exactly the perfect place at the perfect time, or it won’t happen. Second, I didn’t shoot the guy who came into my home, and I’m glad I didn’t, since he turned out to be a harmless mentally ill man scrounging for food. Third, I’m not sorry I had the option had he tried to rape or kill me. And fourth, I’m not sure, having the option, that I would have used it. Something I didn’t know about myself until the event. When Jesus said “Turn the other cheek,” I don’t believe he was kidding. I don’t want to kill someone, even a bad guy, even someone trying to hurt me. Which I guess brings me to fifth, that I would never ever try to make that decision for someone else.
Incidentally, I have also lost a close family friend (my riding trainer, who practically raised me and was listed as the person who would get me if my parents died) to murder. I guess you could call it gun-related violence, since she was carjacked by three teenagers with a rifle, but it’s an odd situation, since the rifle wasn’t loaded. They had no ammo for it. She was choked to death using the rifle and then driven over repeatedly with her own car. I can tell you what her husband feels about gun control: he wishes she had done as he asked and gotten her carry permit.
Then I’ll rephrase: when multiple people *use* swimming pools for multiple mass drownings, I will support a ban. Sheesh, nothing like taking your point to the ropes Charles.
I have yet to hear a *responsible* gun owner (yes, they do exist) coherently explain why any civilian *needs* automatic weapons. All the responsible gun owners I know (and I know many living in WI) are for better and enforced regulations.
And now I’m removing myself this gun control conversation. You can applaud if you like.
Jill, I think you probably mean semi-automatic weapons, those basically shoot one bullet per trigger pull, and reload automatically.
an automatic weapon is a machine gun- one trigger pull makes it continue shooting until either the trigger is released or it runs out of ammunition. there has not been a legally owned machine used in a crime on the United States since the 1940′s. The ones legally held are worth between 6 to several hundred thousand dollars per gun, and no gun of that type made after 1986 can be owned by a private citizen. There a many hoops to jump through at the Federal (ATF), State, and local levels. This information is simply for you to be able to talk with some facts behind you.
Thank you for correcting my faulty logic and typing skills today. Can’t take a nap when you’re on the job, huh? I hope you enjoy a peaceful holiday, Charles.
happy holiday wishes to you too….
Charles is being ingenuous, since someone as well-informed as he is knows that many semi-autos can be easily modified to be full-auto, and that’s probably the all time favorite redneck hobby. I know three young men who own full autos modified from semis. All are “licensed gun dealers,” and frankly kind of nutcases as well. If you don’t like restrictions to buy a gun, the quick and easy solution is to become a gun dealer.
that is quite true Allie- I actually know one who is in federal prison right now for that offense. he was a decorated US army combat medic, and he was actually arrested on Camp Pendleton while doing weapons training for the Marines.
I’m not sure why we’re not noticing that we’ve been increasing gun control for the last two decades, and the problem hasn’t stopped. And according to this post and some articles, the violence is actually increasing. So why do we think more gun control will solve the issue? It’s like thinking that more education spending will solve the school problem.
These shooting sprees are horrifying and unspeakable, and one death is too many, of course. But drownings in residential swimming pools happen at a significantly higher rate than shooting deaths, but we’re not talking about banning backyard swimming pools.
Not to mention that the majority of these killers got their guns illegally anyway.
Fact is, gun control accomplishes nothing. We own 300+ million guns as it is (not including the ones off the books)…if we literally stopped gun production from now until eternity, do we really think that the already extraordinarily rare number (considering how many guns are available) of shooting sprees would decrease? Our problem is a moral one, period.
As soon as we acknowledge evil exists and will continue to occur and that the only way to slow it down is to kill it as soon as we can after it starts, we’re leaving our children unprotected. Is there anyone who doesn’t wish that the Sandy Hook custodian, or one teacher per floor, had been trained for an afternoon and had access to a locked but easily accessed (by combination or thumbprint) gun?
When someone’s swimming pool begins chasing kids down in the classroom, I will absolutely support a ban on swimming pools.
Right. Because nothing says “safety” like knowing the janitor at your kids’s school is armed.
There is a bad trend here (not the article but the country) of treating the symptoms, but not the actual problem. A trend to contain and control the problem rather than solve it. A trend to react to problems rather than prevent them. I am a teacher, and I was a sub for a while, and I can tell you a problem is a lot easier to prevent than it is to solve.
I can tell you there is no way to control another person at all times. And that until the problem is solved, containment will require increasingly large amounts of resources, and put is at increasingly high stress. Control is not the answer. Education is.
I am not opposed to gun control at all. I agree that there should be at least as much regulation of guns as there is of cars, and the idea of a gun owner license seems very good to me. And yes, making access to some weapons harder would make it harder to do this much damage in so short a time. But you’ll note that when the authorities find a motive, it will NOT be, that he had access to a few guns. Gun control is a band aid, and this problem needs stitches. I fear that what will happen now is there will be gun control laws enacted, and this or that video game or movie will be banned, one way or another, and everyone will go home content that enough has been done, or at least content to wait indefinitely for some kind of attempt to get around to those stitches.
We live in a society that is inherently violent. We say bullying is kids being kids. I once heard a radio talk show host going on about how Europe was mentally incompetent (yes, the whole continent) because they were trying to resolve a problem through diplomacy rather than bombing. We lock up someone who was found with a joint, and they serve more time than someone who shook their baby to death. We ignore and dismiss children. Let’s not even go into the cesspool that political discourse has become. I could go on all day.
The point is, the real problem is all of us. We need to change *us*, how we react to things, what we watch on TV, how we handle those who hurt us. We need to stop saying that if it’s not happenign to me, it’s not my problem. That people in need are lazy slobs. And we need to focus less on punishment and more on problem solving. We need to stop seeing malice behind every action we don’t like and instead see ignorance or helplessness whenever that explanation will sufice. And we need to stop treating health care as if it were a luxury. Especially mental health care. If a mother could take a child to a mental health care professional like she can take her child to an emergency room or a GP, when she sees signs of illness that she can’t address herself, and if treatment for that illness could be pursued without concerns about coverage and financial hardship, it would be a much nicer world to live in. And we need to understand that there are some people who are beyond help – ticking time bombs, who will, sooner or later, hurt someone. And we need to discuss what we’re going to do about them, when we’re going to do it, and how we’re going to go about it in a way that benefits everyone involved. The solutions aren’t easy and they aren’t quick. By all means let’s have some form of gun control. But let’s not fool ourselves that we can breathe easy then.
“We need to stop seeing malice behind every action we don’t like and instead see ignorance or helplessness whenever that explanation will suffice.”
Brilliantly stated! And how much more that matches Christ’s message. How much could that simple change create more compassion in the world?!?
I’m guilty of it, and then I know I’ve just put a wall up that I can hide behind. I may lament the violent culture we’re in, but I realize of late we’re in a perpetual state of distrust, which often precedes violence.
Bravo.
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