Once again the argument that guns don’t kill, people kill is trotted
out. On a national evening radio talk
show I even heard, to my astonished ears, the featured guest suggest the massacre
was part of an ongoing left-wing conspiracy (without challenge from the radio host). We will also hear the proposed solution that
if most everybody was “packing” such nut cases as (the now temporarily infamous)
Adam Lanza could not have carried out his plans, or at least not with the same
carnage. The fact that there are
countries that have higher per capita gun ownership than the US yet effectively
no such large scale incidents (such as Canada or Switzerland) are also given
to bolster the only people kill argument. There are parts
to many such arguments which are valid, but it is also a fact that it is bullets, not ill will, which are passing
through the bodies of the victims.
What is different about today
regarding mass gun killings than in prior generations? Conservative columnist David Brooks argues in
the New York Times that at least
since the beginning of the 1900s such gun killing sprees have appeared with
regularity worldwide, if not in some cyclical fashion. He essentially says that
we might be experiencing an uptick in such events now, but such variations have
precedent going back a century or more. Given
that the US population today is 4 times that of 1900 there is argument to be
made for consistency, even if the raw numbers have accelerated. What Brooks
doesn’t clearly address is the nature of the shootings, which with the death of
20 children under the age of 7 is so devastatingly demonstrated. It also doesn’t address the bigger issues,
which are 1) the countless smaller gun killings which make news, but quickly
vanish from the public memory, and 2) that in recent decades the vast majority
of such major massacres in the world, almost 2/3, occur in the United States.
A 101 years ago last March, 143
women were killed in a fire at the Triangle
Shirtwaist factory in New York City.
This was a pivotal event, which is why it has retained its historical
significance. It tipped the scale on
what had been an ongoing problem; workplace conditions. There had been many incidents of injury and
death in the workplace throughout the Nation over many decades but little
accomplished as a society to deal with it. There was a high level of resigned
acceptance. The “injury” from workplace regulations, such as restricted freedom
of the employer or compromising free and competitive enterprise kept even
common sensible actions from taking place. The Triangle
fire altered the landscape. The changes,
which included new regulations, didn’t eliminate workplace disasters small or
large. It did start something new though; a change in attitude on a national
scale regarding working conditions by employees and employers alike. The impact was far reaching even if the
actual number of people whose lives were saved or improved over the years cannot
be known.
The target in trying to curb
wholesale gun violence is our national attitude about it and our inability to
address it in a demonstrable way. This
nation, federally and locally, needs to enact a series of gun regulations, not
because we expect that the inhabitants of the lunatic fringe will no longer
unleash their insanity from time to time on the innocent, with guns or other
means. We need to do it to generate a different
national consensus about guns that will affect new generations and subsequently
shrink the size of the lunatic fringe - at least as it relates to gun
violence. Unfortunately, not only will the
full extent of such regulations not immediately be felt, but the positive
impact (how many killings avoided) will never be known. However, that is no
excuse for not beginning the process. Perhaps these 20 children, like the women
of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, will help start it.
The wrong course is to aim at the
tragedy itself by elevating national fear, fear which is grossly
disproportionate to the actual danger - thank our new informational age for
that. We cannot build walls high enough, alarms loud enough, guards numerous
enough, or personal intrusion deep enough to stop all Adam Lanzas from carrying
out their sadistic fantasies or frustrations.
Those efforts only create a different, more invasive insanity for many,
many more people. We can only attempt to
produce less Adam Lanzas by making the use of guns less acceptable to
subsequent generations. If Adam and his mother had grown up with different attitudes toward guns, how might things have been different? We start by
restricting gun availability, which is simply a social statement of where we
want to be.
