MARCH 27, 2023 – In the aftermath of 9/11, my spouse remarked that if terrorists really wanted to hit us hard, they’d hit us where we live—everyday places in random communities across the country: our neighborhoods, shopping malls, churches, offices, amusement parks and . . . that’s right, schools.
Here we are, more than a generation later, and the terrorists have finally caught on. Armed with automatic rifles and other firearms, the terrorists have found us. But they aren’t members of ISIS or Al Qaeda with names like Mohamed Mohamed. They’re white Americans with names like Payton Gendron and Audrey Hale.
If you poke around a little on the Internet, vetting sites by general reputation (e.g. Pew Research Center; The Trace; AFT; CDC; Brady Campaign), you soon find your lower jaw going unhinged. The statistics—number of firearms in circulation in the United States; the number of annual suicides, accidental deaths, homicides occurring at the end of a gun barrel; trends in all of the foregoing categories—are enough to send you into a tailspin of despair. If you’re outraged but not discouraged, try contacting your gun-control-friendly Democratic legislators, state and federal, as I have (a total of five: state house rep; state senator; congresswoman; both U.S. senators) and await their canned, milk-toast responses after you’ve drummed your fingers on the table for several days after hitting the message submit button.
Republicans, of course, go directly to “thoughts and prayers,” followed by “we need to address mental illness,” yet oppose government spending on much of anything except the military, which, of course, is all about lots of really big . . . guns. Or worse, Republicans advocate more guns, arguing that if only every coach, teacher, lunchroom worker, administrative staff member had a loaded gun, our school children would be safe. Or worse yet, we simply need to become a full-on police state, lavishly funding the police (and their firearms) but not much of anything else.
The nub of the problem is cultural, manifest in the AR-15 lapel pins sported by Republican Congressmen (I kid you not). No other country not in the midst of a shooting war has the same level of gun violence—or is it mental illness?—or gun proliferation that exists in the United States. Has any Republican legislator asked or been asked why this is so? After an initial shrug of the shoulders, I can hear the likes of certain well-known House Republicans say flippantly, “No other country is blessed with a Second Amendment; gun violence is the [acceptable] price we have to pay for gun rights.”
But perhaps the solution is cultural as well: apply the quintessentially American solution to everything. Throw money at the problem. Lots of money, just as the NRA has thrown lots of money at inflating the problem. The question is, in following the effective Australian model of a comprehensive government buy-back program, how much would incentivize thugs, the mentally ill, people with a gun fetish, et alia to exchange for cash a meaningful number of the estimated 354 million guns in circulation? Here’s where the Australian experience might not be analogous to the scale of the American reality.
Other approaches, of course, could be adopted: clamping down on ammunition production, sales and distribution; repealing the liability immunity granted to firearms manufacturers; “red flag” laws backed by robust and reliable data systems and enforcement mechanisms; and dedicating billions to mental health support services in every nook and cranny of this gun-toting culture of ours. Did I just say “billions”? Yes I did, just as I said “354 million guns in circulation.”
Surely America’s children are worth more than millions of cheap “thoughts and prayers.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
