The Absurdity Of The American Mass Shooting

Firearms didn't make a violent man kill 49 people in Orlando this week. But they did give him reach. And we have to decide, right now, whether our own need for reach, for supposed security and independence has produced a state of affairs in this country that we can be proud of.
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AR-15 rifles are displayed on the exhibit floor during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Friday, May 20, 2016. The nation's largest gun lobby, the NRA has been a political force in elections since at least 1994, turning out its supporters for candidates who back expanding access to guns. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
AR-15 rifles are displayed on the exhibit floor during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Friday, May 20, 2016. The nation's largest gun lobby, the NRA has been a political force in elections since at least 1994, turning out its supporters for candidates who back expanding access to guns. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If there's anything still bewildering about mass shootings in America, it's just how un-bewildering they've become. The front page of the New York Times went all-caps for this one, trying maybe to stir something in us. And yet, we can reread the headline, WORST SHOOTING IN US HISTORY, over and over without feeling much shock, or even surprise.

Of course this one was the biggest one. Nothing changed since last time. Why wouldn't it happen again?

In the coming days, we'll ritualistically stick our two cents into the national gunshot wound, making sense of this the only ways we know how. Some of us on the internet. Others in line at the grocery store, or in testy intergenerational chats. But the chances of real reform seem remote.

It's like we can't even agree that mass killings are preventable. We offer more prayers for the victims. More anger at the perpetrator. Deeper outrage toward the institutions that permitted the crime. But ours is the only country in the world that doesn't see the correlation between having a lot of guns, and having a lot of people who use those guns to kill people.

We've become a nation entirely clear on its feelings about mass shootings but totally unwilling to accept its responsibility for them. Think of the last handful of suggestions you've heard on the mass-shooting problem:

  • We've got to ban assault rifles, or maybe give them to 3rd grade art teachers in Ohio. We can't decide.
  • We need mental health reform, but also mandatory minimum sentencing for those same sick people who use guns. How would we know which is better? There's no data.

Americans are in agreement on wanting tougher background checks. But where they're not in agreement is on the question that really matters: If we finally realized that having a lot of guns is killing us, would we be willing to give them up?

I own a rifle myself, but if my right to range time on a Saturday, or my right to self-protection, or my right to defend against overreach from the federal government (depending on your argument) impinges on the rights of another human to be alive at a nightclub in Orlando, then our rights are unevenly balanced. Those are rights that need readjusting.

Firearms didn't make a violent man kill 49 people in Orlando this week. But they did give him reach. And we have to decide, right now, whether our own need for reach, for supposed security and independence has produced a state of affairs in this country that we can be proud of.

Forget what you believe about guns and freedom, guns and masculinity, guns and self-sufficiency. Could you explain to the families of the dead why you deserve your right to bear arms? Why it had to be -- to paraphrase Jefferson -- the blood of their sons, their daughters, their partners and friends that watered your own personal Liberty Tree?

I don't entirely understand why I'm suggesting this. Gun ownership is the most reflexive, deeply entrenched issue in our country. More than freedom of speech. More than abortion. And the case for sensible gun control has been made a hundred times before, by people more eloquent than me.

But I can't find myself not saying something. We need sensible gun regulation now. We needed it last week. And if you agree, then we share a collective responsibility to demand it. Because silence in the face of a tragedy this preventable is complicity.

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