Yet another mass shooting.
This is something we're all pretty used to. I've come to realize just how numb I've become to this, how I have to fight to not let this be something I simply shrug at and move on from. I grew up with active shooter drills that grew more and more complex as the years went on.
My generation, I suppose, is uniquely numb to the possibility of dying in a massacre; we all went to school post-Columbine, post-9/11. I personally don't even remember Columbine, and 9/11 is one of my earliest memories. Both have always been givens to me. Of course we have troops in the Middle East fighting an unknown enemy. Of course I might get gunned down during any given school day.
One of the most consistent commentaries on this the last couple years has been about the cycle of shootings, calls for gun control, and then forgetting. After Sandy Hook and the utter lack of any meaningful action that followed, most of us resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing was going to change. If the slaughter of 20 six and seven year old children and six of their teachers didn't drive us to do something, nothing would.
But herein, I think, lies the problem. There is a major shooting; then cries to "do something". While understandable, this approach misses two important realities.
The first is the fact that most gun deaths in this country are not in mass shootings. These events attract the most attention because they are so shocking and public and thus considered newsworthy. But we have forgotten the thousands upon thousands of lives lost to suicide and urban gun violence every year, which far outstrip those taken in mass shootings. By focusing our response to gun violence entirely on mass shootings, we attempt to prevent an anomaly while ignoring an everyday occurrence.
The other problem here is the impulse to "just do something". We should, of course, do something about our obscenely high gun violence rate. But most of our knee-jerk legislation winds up doing nothing to stop gun violence and simply puts more black and brown men in jail. If we're serious about doing something about gun violence in this country, we're going to have to actually address the root causes of that violence- something that requires far more patience, effort, and investment than simply banning whatever looks scary, filling our schools with cops, or blaming mental illness.
This, of course, is not an attractive thing. It's far easier to make a big show about gun control, push some nonsense statistics and analysis, cite policies in other countries that seem to prove their point, get the liberal base to tweet about it, and then not actually do anything. But to continue to approach gun violence like this is irresponsible.
That's not to say there's no role for gun control here. There is a need for smart, reasonable, empirically-based gun policy, including expanded background checks and enforcing the existing laws against domestic abusers owning firearms. These sorts of policies need to be combined with intervention programs like Ceasefire, as well as with more fundamental solutions to economic, educational, and racial inequality (yes, I am implying that capitalism and toxic masculinity are largely responsible for gun violence).
And one last thing: our culture of violence certainly does not help. Our collective cultural conscience is convinced that the way to solve our problems is through force and violence. (If you don't believe me, take a look at the way violence is depicted in our movies and television, particularly the sorts of outlandish scenes you find in films featuring Steven Seagal, James Bond, Bruce Willis, or any other famous action character/actor.)
And when the church of all places - the group of people who follow a crucified savior who overcame death by submitting to imperial violence and then rising from the grave - is filled with people drooling over guns, we must take some time to examine our hearts. As John Piper so wisely put it,
The issue is not primarily about when and if a Christian may ever use force in self-defense, or the defense of one’s family or friends. There are significant situational ambiguities in the answer to that question. The issue is about the whole tenor and focus and demeanor and heart-attitude of the Christian life. Does it accord with the New Testament to encourage the attitude that says, “I have the power to kill you in my pocket, so don’t mess with me”? My answer is, No.
Amen.
