Wish That We Might, and Wish That We May
We're three weeks past the shooting that killed 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. By now, most of us have likely moved that incident from our "working memory". We may have already forgotten that just over three weeks prior to the Parkland shooting, a student killed two students and injured seventeen others when he opened fire at a high school in Benton, Kentucky. If our collective attention span of a current event is measured by how often we search for it via our favorite medium, some have suggested that it takes us about a week to get over a mass shooting^ like the ones in Florida or Kentucky, or the one in Texas last November, or the one in Las Vegas six weeks before that one.
If you've read some of my earlier stuff, you may be aware that I am a self-labeled pacifist. I've never owned a gun (besides a BB gun) or even fired a gun, and have absolutely zero intention of doing either in the near or distant future. Ever. Thus, I was naturally somewhat surprised when I received a mailing from the National Rifle Association (NRA) a month ago encouraging me to become a member. My membership would instantly enter me into a sweepstakes where the grand prize was a cache of a dozen different guns, ranging from AR-15s to Glock pistols to some that looked like they were used in the Revolutionary War. The grand prize also included enough ammunition to shoot (at least) one round from each gun for a month straight for an entire calendar year. I'm guessing that my friends who exercise their Second Amendment Rights with much more frequency than I do may have been behind my receiving of the membership invitation.
Like a number of things that manifest from our developmental socialization, I was not raised in a gun-owning household. My Dad probably had a gun somewhere, we lived on a farm multiple miles from our nearest neighbors. But he never showed it to me and I never saw him use it. He didn't hunt, and neither have I. This is not to say that I never played Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers as a young kid. I had my fair share of toy guns, and even that BB gun, but real guns where never apart of my childhood, and subsequently they have not been apart of my adulthood in way.
Because of this, there is no part of me that would feel any safer owning a gun or having one in my house as a means of protecting my family. Especially considering that having a gun in your home significantly increases the risk of that gun killing one of your own family members, accidentally or intentionally. It also increases the likelihood of someone in your house committing suicide. Not to mention the empirically studied "weapons effect", that shows that the mere presence of a gun makes people more aggressive. For these reasons, I've made if very apparent to our young kids that our's is a household that does not celebrate guns or violence. On more than one occasion, I've redirected my three year old from using something in a gun-like fashion. Any "squirt guns" have been reclassified as the more PBS-friendly "water squirters".
Because of this, there is no part of me that would feel any safer owning a gun or having one in my house as a means of protecting my family. Especially considering that having a gun in your home significantly increases the risk of that gun killing one of your own family members, accidentally or intentionally. It also increases the likelihood of someone in your house committing suicide. Not to mention the empirically studied "weapons effect", that shows that the mere presence of a gun makes people more aggressive. For these reasons, I've made if very apparent to our young kids that our's is a household that does not celebrate guns or violence. On more than one occasion, I've redirected my three year old from using something in a gun-like fashion. Any "squirt guns" have been reclassified as the more PBS-friendly "water squirters".
This past December marked the five year anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. I vividly remember the increased unease I had when hearing about this tragedy in comparison to other similar events. Sure, I was alive, and even in high school when Columbine happened, but as a high school freshmen, it was hard to imagine that anyone would ever walk into my school and start shooting people. Newtown was different though, as I now had a kid, and one more on the way in a matter of weeks. In a few short years, my kids would go to an elementary school, which, until that horrific December day, seemed like an unfathomable target for a mass shooting.
Following the shooting in Parkland, which had been the 239th instance of a shooting at a school since Newtown, a number of politicians, including the President, pointed out the mental state of the assailant and decried America's "mental health crisis". Critics suggested this was done to shift the focus away from the unique gun culture that exists in the United States, which is the only developed nation where these mass shootings happen with alarming regularity. I will agree that there are certainly issues related to mental health that need to be addressed to help prevent future tragedies. It's worth pointing out that those who want to place the blame squarely on mental health have done much to exacerbate* the crisis.
But even if we could "solve the mental health crisis" (I'm not even sure what that would look like), or ban all of the violent video games and media, another scapegoat of the those opposing any, seemingly common sense, gun control measures, we'd still have guns, and the primary function of a gun is to induce harm, most often fatally, on something or someone. Nevermind the fact that rates of mental illness diagnosis are relatively consistent across the developed countries. The US has a mental illness rate comparable with the Netherlands, which has a gun death rate nearly 10 times less than the US. I'm guessing they also play their fair share of violent video games in Holland, including the popular Killzone series games, which were developed there. Like the US, they probably haven't yet found a way to block all of the violence portrayed in Dutch movies and television (or those salacious American imports). I do wonder what gun sales would look like if we managed to get rid of all of the violent video games, television shows and movies, a concept I've become much more receptive to in my crotchety old age.
Following the shooting in Parkland, which had been the 239th instance of a shooting at a school since Newtown, a number of politicians, including the President, pointed out the mental state of the assailant and decried America's "mental health crisis". Critics suggested this was done to shift the focus away from the unique gun culture that exists in the United States, which is the only developed nation where these mass shootings happen with alarming regularity. I will agree that there are certainly issues related to mental health that need to be addressed to help prevent future tragedies. It's worth pointing out that those who want to place the blame squarely on mental health have done much to exacerbate* the crisis.
But even if we could "solve the mental health crisis" (I'm not even sure what that would look like), or ban all of the violent video games and media, another scapegoat of the those opposing any, seemingly common sense, gun control measures, we'd still have guns, and the primary function of a gun is to induce harm, most often fatally, on something or someone. Nevermind the fact that rates of mental illness diagnosis are relatively consistent across the developed countries. The US has a mental illness rate comparable with the Netherlands, which has a gun death rate nearly 10 times less than the US. I'm guessing they also play their fair share of violent video games in Holland, including the popular Killzone series games, which were developed there. Like the US, they probably haven't yet found a way to block all of the violence portrayed in Dutch movies and television (or those salacious American imports). I do wonder what gun sales would look like if we managed to get rid of all of the violent video games, television shows and movies, a concept I've become much more receptive to in my crotchety old age.
I recognize that getting rid of all the guns will not end tragic events like the shooting in Parkland. Having taking middle school and high school civics, I am well aware that the Second Amendment provides all law abiding citizens with the right to bear arms. I am also aware, having taken constitutional law classes in college, that no rights are absolute. Even the late (and very conservative) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia commented in regards to his opinion of a 2008 Supreme Court Case dealing with Second Amendment Rights, that there are "undoubtedly" certain "limitations on the right to bear arms". As the only developed country that continues to deal with these types of mass shootings on a too regular basis, it's baffling, disturbing and shameful that we can't figure out how to reduce the gun violence in our country. Our obsession with guns is not the only problem, but it is certainly part of the problem, and in my view, a big part of the problem.
After the shooting in Parkland, there was discussion about the need to "harden" schools, and the Florida Legislature earlier this week, passed a bill that would allow certain school staff to be armed. Some experts have suggested (more than once) that this is the exact opposite of what needs to be done to prevent another school shooting. I don't agree with our President often, but I did agree when he "tweeted" that "No child, teacher, or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school." But honestly, I can't imagine arming teachers or adding (more) metal detectors outside of school entrances doing the trick. Yes, schools should be a safe haven for kids, but shouldn't every place else; the park, the mall, the movie theater? Why stop with just the schools? Don't all of us have a right to feel safe in a nation that was created to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
When our kids were in daycare, we used to get the occasional note home about a "biting incident". As sad as it sounds, I was always a little relieved when the note indicated our child was the one bitten, as opposed to the one doing the biting. I never wish ill will on my children, but realizing that bite marks and bruises heal in time always seemed easier to process than behavioral issues that would need to be continually addressed over time. It's a drastic, and somewhat (okay, very) sadistic comparison, but if, Heaven forbid, one of my children were ever involved in a mass shooting, I'd have to say that I'd rather have them be a victim than the shooter. The sad reality is that we can't ensure that our kids never fall victim to a horrendous act of violence. Shootings like the one in Florida three weeks ago will undoubtedly happen again. But we can, and must, do absolutely everything that we can to ensure that our kids are never the ones to commit those horrendous acts. If we all did that, then we could probably worry less about them being the victims.
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| Yes, I carried this toy gun when I dressed up as a cowboy for Halloween one year in college. I even took it to the bar and vaguely remember, in my drunken stupidity, pointing it at people in attempt to be humorous. Despite my antics, I was very fortunately not shot that night. Although I probably should have been. |
^The definition of mass shooting is obviously widely debated, but we usually know one when we see (or hear about) one, which we do a lot.
*If you are unfamiliar with The Onion, please note it is a satirical news publication, and Paul Ryan did not actually write this article. But if you want to get an actual sense of how serious conservatives are about fixing the "mental health crisis" you can look here. Or here, among other places.
*If you are unfamiliar with The Onion, please note it is a satirical news publication, and Paul Ryan did not actually write this article. But if you want to get an actual sense of how serious conservatives are about fixing the "mental health crisis" you can look here. Or here, among other places.
