GAMADES: “Shock” doesn’t apply to mass shootings anymore

There are a lot of words that people use in the wake of tragedies: devastated, angry, heartbroken, shocked. But I am not shocked. “Shocked” is not the right word for mass shootings in America.

Saddened, yes. Horrified, certainly. But not shocked. How can we be? We live in a country where mass shootings occur on an almost-daily basis.

Over the years, we’ve watched U.S. President Barack Obama give press conferences after these tragedies, his demeanor growing progressively more frustrated, his words calling for an end to this preventable violence. It seems like every time one of these massacres occurs, the country grieves and demands change, but nothing happens. Why is that? Why has nothing been done to stop these horrors?

Let me tell you — I am originally from Texas, a state where people are very much in favor of their Second Amendment rights (never mind the fact that when the amendment was written, the Founding Fathers had weapons that were, by today’s standards, pea shooters. And it took 20 minutes and some skill to load them, but I digress). As someone who was surrounded by a lot of pro-gun arguments growing up, I will attempt to unpack what I know of the issue.

First off, we have the “principle of the thing” argument, where people don’t want the government to get within 15 feet of their guns because they have a right to them and they’ll be damned if they let our liberal president exact his totalitarian rule over their Constitutional rights. Exaggeration? Gun lobbyists certainly toy with this fear to push it to its very edges. According to The Atlantic, one pro-gun organization sends emails with scaremongering subject lines, such as “They went door to door” and “Obama’s biggest gun grab yet.”

Other than striking fear in the hearts of citizens who have broad definitions of civil liberties, lobbyists (particularly the National Rifle Association’s) put up roadblocks to any significant change in firearms regulation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not touched research on the causes of gun violence for almost 20 years, despite being ordered to do so after the Newtown shooting, because in 1996 the NRA accused them of being pro-gun control and Congress threatened to strip them of their funding. There’s been a standstill ever since.

Next, we have the argument that gun control won’t actually “do” anything, that people who want to do senseless things will get their hands on guns if they want to — mental illness is the real culprit here.

The reality is that people who have a mental illness are far more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than commit one: only about 4 percent of violent acts are committed by someone with a mental illness, according to a paper published by the American Journal of Public Health. Factors like substance abuse, arrest history and shockingly enough, access to guns, all play into the likelihood of an individual committing a violent crime. Scapegoating and demonizing mental illness is not the answer for a problem that could be fixed with sensible legislation.

Because that’s the thing — this problem has been solved in other countries by passing restrictions. After a 1996 massacre at the Port Arthur former prison colony, Australia introduced gun control laws that banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and pump-action shotguns. They also created a government buyback program for firearms. Since then, Australia’s gun-related homicides have dropped to 1.4 for every million people, while the U.S. sits at 29.7, far higher than any other developed nation.

Guns don’t kill people, but people with guns kill people more easily and efficiently than those without. Maybe not every hunter or aficionado should have to give up his weapon, but when you can grab a gun at Walmart in less time than it takes to buy over-the-counter decongestant, I think it’s safe to say we have a cultural problem.

There is this idea embedded deeply in U.S. gun culture that allowing the government to take away firearms will lead to a slippery slope wherein other rights mentioned in the Constitution are also taken away. The thing is, speech, religion and the press don’t kill a room full of innocent people with the pull of a trigger.

It’s going to take a lot to solve the epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. A good start would be approaching this issue like a public health matter with a CDC investigation. But that won’t happen as long as the lobbyists get their way. If there are no investigations done and no restrictions passed, the country will remain paralyzed.

And then this will happen over and over again. And each time, we will be angry and devastated and saddened, but not shocked. As long as we stubbornly hold out from changing anything, we cannot look at the survivors and the families of victims of these tragedies and act like we couldn’t have predicted this. They deserve better than our “shock.”