It’s a routine now, and I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because of the sheer frequency that the moves we make in response to mass shootings are just plain familiar. Or maybe it’s because having a routine — terror, thoughts, prayers, a fruitless investigation, numbness, repeat — is the best and most we can do. Since it’s not like Congress is well staffed with men and women who could or even would pass meaningful legislation in the wake of a mass shooting. Or maybe, and perhaps most terrifyingly, it’s because mass shootings and gun violence have finally moved into the realm of inevitability. That is, they’re just something we’re going to have to deal with, like hurricanes and tsunamis.
To feel powerless after a Newtown, or an Orlando, or a Vegas, or a Texas is natural. Beside the fact that the problem seems 16-fold — Is it guns? Is it mental health? Is it violent video games? Is it misogyny and patriarchy manifesting? It seems like different groups and individuals have a variety of vested interests in this increasingly complicated debate.
Suppose I believe that America has a gun problem, and that mass shootings can be curbed if we pass legislation that bars bump stocks and assault weapons (I do believe this, by the way). We can argue all day about whether my proposition is logical (which it undoubtedly is), but that is not where my greatest hurdle lies. Rather, the major obstacle I have is the massive leviathan — that is, the powerful people, groups and forces that I’m going to have to engage with if I want to act on my belief.
In the case of guns, there are businesses (most of which make firearms) that have a vested interest in keeping regulations lax. There’s the National Rifle Association, a quasi-terrorist organization that thinks arming a vast portion of the U.S. populace with machine guns would provide reasonable security, not irrational paranoia and lunacy. There’s senators and representative who bow to those aforementioned businesses and worship the NRA. There’s the simple fact that the United States has been a nation of gun owners since 1776 (and long before that, too). And though you can certainly make the argument that Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if he saw what guns had turned into in 2017, the fact still remains that the Second Amendment has been christened with a historically conservative interpretation of the Constitution over the course of 200 or so years.
Powerless is an understatement, then, and you’re faced with the same set of obstacles no matter if you’re trying to address mass shootings through mental health or violent video games and music or domestic violence. It really feels like there’s nothing anyone can do.
Before I get into whether or not that’s actually true, just think about that for second. A lot of Americans — particularly young people like me — have grown up with mass shootings. When I was ten years old, I watched those tapes that the Virginia Tech shooter sent to NBC. When I was a sophomore in high school, I spent two hours crying at montages of five and six year olds who were gunned down in their elementary school that played ad infinitum on CNN. Two summers ago, I woke up at 5 in the morning to use the bathroom, and saw that more than 50 people had been shot to death in a nightclub in Orlando on my phone lock screen. Last month, I got up to go to my philosophy class, and saw on my phone that #LasVegas was trending on Twitter. Two days ago, I was writing a paper at Barnes and Noble and the notification cropped up on the right corner of my computer screen: More than 20 people dead in Texas church shooting.
I wonder if bonafide members of Congress, people who remember what America was like before these things became so frequent and so deadly, know what this does to a developing person? I can’t go to a movie theater without body scanning every person who walks up the aisle to make sure they’re not carrying a gun. I can’t sit in class and hear a noise in the hallway without immediately concluding that there’s a shooter outside. I can’t go to the mall without mapping the exits in my head.
We can’t become OK with that. We just can’t. It’s morally indefensible for us not to act, and despite the very bleak picture I painted before, we can act. In fact, it only benefits our adversaries — plays right into their hands — if we think we can’t change and if we think our voice doesn’t matter.
No political fight is ever easy. Take cigarettes, for example. In the 1990s, any political fight aimed at defanging the tobacco industry seemed dire and useless. They had so much money, so much political capital and so much power. But think about it — we went from a nicotine addicted culture to a society that has since banned smoking in every public establishment and nearly every private establishment. Smoking rates are down, and the public is well aware of the health effects of smoking a pack a day.
It’s a routine, certainly — but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to live in perpetual fear of being shot. Our children don’t need to grow accustomed to this sort of thing. It starts with voting in officials who want to see gun regulations, who want to address mental health the right way rather than pontificating about it to distract from the guns. It continues with dismantling the potency of the NRA, with education about guns, with a relentless PR campaign. It ends with meaningful legislation and policy work. It’s not going to be easy — it never is — but we can’t live in a hazy routine anymore.
