Mass Shootings: A Nation of Hostages

The mass shooting on July 4th in Highland Park, Illinois was the 308th mass shooting of 2022 (two days later, the number has likely already increased) and many Americans are realizing that, thanks to gun extremists and a Supreme Court that cares nothing about the safety or desires of the majority of citizens, we are literally not safe anywhere.  Students at elementary schools are at risk of shootings and death as are grocery shoppers, concert goers, and now attendees at a civic event in a quintesential American town.  All because of a sick - I would argue mentally disturbed - gun culture and right wing judges and justices who place the demands and fetish of a loud minority over  the lives and safety of the majority of citizens who are increasingly fed up with minority rule.  No other advanced nation in the world has the mass shooting problem that plagues America.  Not because other countries don't have those with mental health issues or societal resentments.  But rather because no other nation makes getting a gun easier than adopting a pet at an animal shelter or getting a driver's license.   Worse yet, estimates are that there are over 2 million assult rifles - a weapon with only one purpose, namely killing quickly and in large numbers, already in the hands of the public.  This is insanity as a piece in The Atlantic lays out:  

At the start of a different week, I might have written about many things, including politics. But not today. Instead, I am watching a group of my fellow citizens deal with a slaughter of defenseless people on a summer day at a parade.

We do not yet know why a shooter opened fire on a crowd in Illinois yesterday. Given what we know about the suspected killer, I think it is unlikely that the massacre in Highland Park was part of an organized terror plot, but rather yet another case of a young male loser attacking his own community. Nonetheless, the effect of these mass shootings is the same as terrorism: They rob us of a general sense of safety and turn us into a nation of hostages.

In the first few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I traveled to London and New York. That’s when I realized that the terrorists had succeeded in making an ordinary citizen—me—think about terrorism constantly. I wondered, on my first trips back to those cities and during almost every visit to any metropolis for a few more years: Am I here on the wrong day? Is this the site of the next attack? . . . . . Americans now have to feel this way all the time, in their own country, at almost any mass gathering, in even the quiet towns and suburbs that people once thought of as relatively immune to such terrifying events.

Such feelings are corrosive and depressing. They undermine our faith in our system of government. (This is often the goal of terrorist violence.) Worse, mass shootings undermine our faith in one another. And that loss of faith leads me to a thought I cannot escape: There is nothing we can do about such events. They will keep happening.

This is not because I am a pessimist. . . . . But when it comes to this particular kind of violence—a lone shooter attacking a community with a powerful weapon—all of the foundations for another disaster are already in place. A bizarre gun culture created the demand for millions of guns; an extremist lobby has attacked almost every measure to place any restrictions on those guns. (And the Supreme Court seems determined to roll back any limits on the ability of states to control access to these weapons.)

Add to this the final and necessary element: a group of young males who are determined to take their frustrations or delusions or fantasies out on others.

So what can we do?

We can choose not to despair. We can, as an act of will, keep faith in our society and our institutions. Just as we do not give up on living when we are ill, we cannot give up on ourselves because of these monstrous acts. We can do this concretely by demanding more changes to our laws, but we can also exert social pressure on an irresponsible gun culture. After all, we managed as a nation to make smoking a legal but socially unacceptable habit in everything from movies to public spaces. Do we really think we can’t collectively start pushing back against gun culture the same way?

This sounds anodyne, almost ridiculous, on a day like this. The guns will not disappear and another such attack is a near certainty. But we can and must try to mitigate the danger—and the damage to our democracy—by refusing to surrender to the anguish, by insisting that our fellow citizens come to their senses, and by affirming our faith that a great democracy can heal itself from even the most grievous wounds.

Those in the gun culture need to become social outcasts and insurance companies need to start refusing to insure homes with guns and/or make premiums extremely expensive so that gun cultists will have to decide whether they want their guns or their homes (most mortgages require insurance, after all).