Tragic human stories often have the tendency to leave readers mentally devastated, but tragedies that involve the killing of school children in Connecticut and peaceful church goers in South Carolina do something unimaginable—they shake our consciousness. In the aftermath of every single episode of shooting, the grief becomes wordless, tears lose their significance, and the country mourns for the deceased. Photographs of the bereaved, of screaming relations, cover the pages of most-read magazines and newspapers. The profile of the lone gunman emerges, as do the usual adjectives depicting essentially the same thing: "socially awkward," "misfit," "loner." Those exact words are usually used for the spree killers behind mass shootings because the perpetrators of such an act can hardly be conceived as more than dead-eyed aliens. Witnesses in a deep state of shock offer sound bites, policemen in uniforms shake their heads and the president of the free world weeps in front of HD cameras.
Then the morning after arrives, as it always does. Fox News, armed with pearls of wisdom, jumps in. The grief is still fresh, but the shock is gone. Such an issue should not be immediately politicized, they argue, when there’s still blood on the pavement. Politicization here meaning desperately yearning for gun law reforms to prevent further shootings and save a thousand lives. NRA executives then roar back, take over the media establishment, and inevitably mention the right to bear arms, that golden piece of wisdom the founding fathers etched into the Constitution, an intrinsic right that is part of the nation’s soul.
The show is far from over. The doctrinaire ones, referred to as dimwits in normal life, suggest that victims should have been armed themselves to stop the murder. Mental awareness counselors will be called in. Lobbies will throw bags of money at any venue that may slightly work: op-ed space, television airtime, Christian preachers, Republican congressmen. As a result, America will be convinced and satisfied once more that there’s only one solution to having too many guns—more guns.
Perhaps this deeply embarrassing development should not surprise anyone. When elected officials become ideological barriers to change, reforms are often hard to come by. Now a dropped-out candidate, the junior Bush shamefully grabs an “A+” grade from the National Rifle Association. No wonder during his time as governor of Florida, he vigorously opposed efforts to expand gun control, and signed into law the notorious “Stand Your Ground” legislative document.
The so-called young face of the G.O.P., Mr. Rubio was once a sane republican voice on this issue. After the Sandy Hook massacre, in December 2012, Rubio’s spokesman made a refreshing statement by telling reporters that Rubio would support measures to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill. But, back then, he didn’t know the game's rules and the NRA’s leverage over Washington, D.C. When he was interviewed only a couple of years later, he lamented, “Criminals don’t follow gun laws. Only law-abiding people follow gun laws. The laws that many are proposing would have done nothing to prevent these attacks."
Senator, what a terrible thing to say.
But wait, you haven’t heard the beautiful words of Dr. Carson. I still recall his appearance on a news channel where he was invited to share his condolences for victims of a gun shooting at Umpqua Community College. Asked what he would do if a gunman walked up to him and put a gun to his head, the surgeon, low on energy and substance, replied, “I’m glad you asked that question. Because not only would I probably not cooperate with them, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.'"
Well played, doctor. A quintessential G.O.P. move: insult the victims of a massacre by suggesting that their response was inadequate.
20 dead schoolchildren and seven adults in Sandy Hook, 14 bullet-riddled county employees in San Bernardino and a police officer, an Iraq vet, and a young mother dead in Colorado Springs--they all were an instance of human evil. But bloody massacres like these are made possible by lax gun laws that the country not only refuses to change, but at times seems to remarkably embrace, even when data overwhelmingly suggests otherwise. U.S. states with the harshest gun laws (New York and California) have the lowest rates of gun deaths, and this holds just as true for the reverse. Countries that have instituted tight weapon regimens, like Britain and Australia, or reformed previously slack ones, like Japan and Switzerland, cannot even be attempted to be mentioned in the same sentence as the U.S. when it comes to the death toll.
Look no further than the Harvard social scientist David Hemenway’s work on gun violence, which debunks and dispels the despicable notion that more guns eventually save more lives. Hemenway also discovered, as he eloquently elaborated in this interview with Harvard Magazine, that what is usually argued as a case of self-defense with guns is almost invariably a fictional story about an escalating quarrel. “How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense? The answer? zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately—because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances.”
The simple truth boils down to a simple point. A small, but well-organized, minority of Americans think it’s worth continuing this shooting carnage to protect their unfettered access to guns they believe will guard them against government tyranny. Those who battle against gun control, actively or passively, with a shrug of helplessness, are pushing more kids to horrible deaths and more parents to unspeakable grief. Meanwhile, a stunningly large but poorly organized majority of Americans support sensible gun control laws. But they don’t get what they want because one of our two major parties is hostage to a vile lobby group.
