Tragedy in America (Again)
Another Shooting and America Shrugs
I remember vividly where I was on December 14, 2012. I was sitting in my cubicle saying hello to the guy who delivered the mail internally in the office. Normally, he was a relaxed, jovial, fun loving guy and the Christmas season always seemed to bring out the best in him. Not today. Shaking his head, tear running down his cheek. All he could mutter as he dropped off the mail was “What happened to those kids….it’s a damn shame. Damn shame.” I hadn’t heard yet. I asked him if something was wrong and all he could do was direct me to the news online.
That was the day Sandy Hook happened.
Just reading the (early) stories I could feel something in the pit of my stomach. As I read the stories of (at that time) an unknown number of grade school children massacred my eyes welled up. Who would do such a thing? Why? What prompts someone to do this?1
And the guns. Why does this country need so many guns? And not just any type of guns; guns that have no other purpose than to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Surely, now, something could be done to register, or limit, or even prohibit some of these weapons?
Nothing.
Then came San Bernadino. 14 dead, 24 injured.
[Crickets]
Then came the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. 49 people dead. 58 injured. The biggest mass shooting in American history until that point.
[Yawn.]
Then came a maniac shooting at a concert in Las Vegas. Sixty dead, 867(!) injured. SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN HERE, RIGHT?
[Some dithering]. Well, we’ll ban bump stocks.
And the list goes on, and on. Sutherland Springs. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. El Paso. Boulder. Uvalde. Every one of these names is a black mark on our ability of Americans to care for one another and do what needs to be done to keep our neighbors safe.
We have to do something about the guns.
There’s an ongoing headline that The Onion, a satirical newspaper that glosses itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” puts out after every mass shooting. It is depressing and honest accounting of America’s Shooting Death problem. When another school shooting occurred in Nashville, it was up less than an hour after the news broke.
Since Sandy Hook through 2022, there have been 492 mass gun killings, defined as when a shooter fires indiscriminately at victims and kills more than 4 people.
Of Course its the Guns
Everyone knows its the guns. The only people who fight against that point are either arguing in bad faith or intentionally oblivious because they want to have guns.2 But just to hammer the point home. Here is a chart that breaks down the number of gun deaths to the number of guns owned, which 1) not only demonstrates the correlation, but 2) shows how utterly disproportionate this problem is in America.
But it’s not JUST the guns. Its the way they are objectified and fetishized by a deranged culture of people in this country. Here is the U.S. Representative who represents the school district that just had a school shooting in Tennessee.
Here is Representative Lauren Boebert
Here’s Marjorie Taylor Greene
I don’t care who you are, this kind of performative promotion of guns and gun culture is as irresponsible as anyone could be in this world. There are an endless stream of people who go out of their way to show themselves shooting the biggest, fastest, most popular KILLING TOOLS on the planet. It would seem almost like a parody if it weren’t so sad.
And as news comes out about the events the most recent mass shooting, I feel that same pit in my stomach that I felt all those years ago reading about the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
Everyone will be outraged.
Everyone will say “Today HAS to be different.”
Nothing will get done because our political leaders are cowardly and have no will to do it.
And sometime, not in the distant future, even probably this year, we will have another horrible mass shooting, we’ll go through the same motions again, the Onion will post the same headline, and people will want something to be done to no avail.
How many times will America go through this until they say “Enough already?”
Those kids who died in Sandy Hook would be teenagers today. How long are we going to ignore that those kids had a future taken from them, and that we are going to do nothing to prevent the next shooting? How many have to die before we do SOMETHING?
Sometimes I think that is what that man delivering my mail to my cubicle all those years ago was actually crying about; that these poor kids paid the ultimate price, and nothing would ever come of it.
PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories
I graduated from the same law school as Chief Justice Warren Burger. The library at the school is named for him and was a member of the “Burger Inns of Court,” which is an exclusive campus group named for him.
As a Supreme Court Justice, I thought he was OK. There were some things I agreed with him on, others I didn’t. Historically, he seems to be a transitional judge as the Court pivoted away from the liberal Warren Court and became the conservative Rehnquist court.
Nonetheless, one thing I completely sided with him on was his view of guns. He made these statements at a time where there was a great schism within the NRA, which moved away from responsible gun use by sportsman, to an approach that guns were a Constitutional Right and priority and that every American should be armed. Here he is speaking to this:
You may not remember the 2007 YouTube debate. All the Democratic Candidates fielded questions from people submitted from YouTube. I actually liked it although most thought it was a little too gimmicky. People quickly mocked some of the questions and responses, largely focusing on Obama, Hillary, the War in Iraq and other items. But to me, the high point was then Senator Joe Biden’s response regarding Guns. The question was asked, Bill Richardson went first and then Biden. Biden gave the best line of the evening. I’d love to see him do this again.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Facts of the Day
I feel sick just posting these facts about America and guns, but here you go:
Four in ten Americans live in a household where there is a gun.
The US has roughly 393 million guns in America, or what amounts to 120.5 guns for every 100 residents. That means there are more guns than people in the US.3
The next closest country is India, with 71 million guns. But with a population that is four times that of the US, that amounts to a paltry 5 guns to every 100 people. The next closest in terms of population? Saudi Arabia, where 51 out of every 100 residents is armed.
Over a lifetime, the odds that you die from being shot are 1 out of 315. However, that is an average. The rates increase sizeably if you are male, a person of color, live in a city, and in particular, live in an area where the median income is below the poverty line. If you fit all of these criteria, your odds are better than 1 in 25. Think about that. If you are a black male, living in a poor part of a city, there is a chance that you or someone from your class will die from being shot. Scarier yet, the odds are 1 in 100 that they will be shot at the hands of a police officer.
PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner
After the last school shooting in Uvalde, I revisited the documentary film “Bowling for Columbine” by Michael Moore. It was a unanimous jury prize winner at the esteemed Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar winner for Best Documentary.
After watching it again, the styles seem dated and Moore’s star himself has tarnished a bit, but the film still stands as a solid piece of documentary filmmaking. Worse yet, the gun problems have only gotten worse since the early 2000s when the film was made (for starters, the Assault Weapons Ban lapsed 2 years after the film came out). You’ll be amazed at how much of this film is still relevant today, over 20 years later.
But one of the best bits from the movie came from the South Park guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. This satirical history of the United States is so on point, you can’t help but nod and laugh and even cringe a little about the whole sordid thing.
Outstanding Tweet
David Hogg is a school shooting survivor (Marjorie Stoneman Douglas) and co-founder of “March for Our Lives,” a gun control advocacy group. I’ve agreed and disagreed with him from time to time, but I do appreciate that he wants to see something happen and will talk to anyone (and I mean ANYONE) to help make it happen.
This is him today after the most recent school shooting.
Amen David. Amen.
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
Let me know what you think of the page. Please share and comment!
I would later learn that a client (and someone I consider a friend) had a daughter at the school that day who survived the event, in the very next room from where much of the killings occurred.
If you are being intentionally oblivous on this point, that should be prima facie evidence that you are incapable of responsibly owning a gun.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-25/how-many-guns-in-the-us-buying-spree-bolsters-lead-as-most-armed-country#xj4y7vzkg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership