Another day, another massacre in an American city at the hands of a disturbed individual armed with what most other countries would consider military-grade weaponry. Because the murders at Columbine High School two decades ago weren’t enough to galvanize the United States as a nation into action, they have been caught in a bloody groundhog day of horrific events, cursed with Newtown and San Bernardino and Orlando and Las Vegas and too many others to count. That a single individual attacking a crowd of 20,000 people and killing or wounding more than 600 is considered just another unfortunate tragedy in the free-for-all that is 21st century America is simply unconscionable.
Almost as if on cue, Twitter and Facebook exploded with the “thoughts and prayers” of every elected politician of every political stripe. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stood in the well of the United States Senate and offered condolences to those lost and injured in Las Vegas with the full knowledge that neither he nor his counterpart in the House, Speaker Paul Ryan would take anything like a single step toward measures to stop such violence. One wonders if they even know theirs is an act long since gone stale. No one is buying it anymore. They may sound bereaved and may even be sincerely affected, but where’s the outrage that should prompt legislative action to weed out the root causes of such wanton and mindless violence?
Just as “liking” something on Facebook has almost become an automated response cliche, the phrase “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of a tragedy are now the minimal acceptable response for politicians confronted with a tragedy they are unable to face and with whose underlying causes they’re unwilling to contend. Elected leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, owe their citizens better on the issue of guns, just as they owe them better on so many problems the world’s sole hyperpower faces.
The issue of firearms in America has achieved near-religious status among those who believe that any law-abiding individual should be able to sling a .45 Magnum on their belt wherever and whenever they choose. The Second Amendment may only be seen in its purest form -- that Americans have the right to bear arms, as many arms as they can afford or carry, regardless of their purpose. That the Founding Fathers who wrote the constitution, pure genius though that document may be, did not have the prescience to look beyond the day when they would not have to defend their homesteads from marauding native Americans and straying wildlife is not their fault. That America has come 241 years after the creation of that great document without updating this provision to fit the times, is an act of nothing less than wanton political dereliction of duty.
For the US’s elected leaders doing nothing isn’t just an answer, it’s the only answer. The perpetual answer. They willfully stand by as tens of thousands of citizens fall victim to gun violence every year.
Take the city of Chicago, for example. In 2015, Chicago recorded 478 homicides, more than in any other American city. New York, with 352 homicides, recorded the second-highest number of homicides, followed by Baltimore with 344. Almost everyone who was killed in Chicago that year -- 93 percent -- was shot to death.
But numbers offer a limited view of a city’s gun violence problem. Chicago, with roughly 2.7 million residents, is the third-most populous city in the country. On a per capita basis, its shooting epidemic is not nearly as severe as the violence in many other large American cities.
Chicago’s rate of non-fatal shootings was 12th highest of 68 cities in 2015, with a rate of 88.9 per 100,000, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association. The association collects data from the country’s largest law-enforcement agencies. St. Louis led the list with a rate of 660 per 100,000 — nearly seven times as high as Chicago -- followed by Memphis and Oakland.
And these are not the latest figures. In one sense, Donald Trump was right about one thing in his dark Inaugural Address: there really is “carnage” on the streets.
When too many people perished in car crashes, seat belts were mandated as safety protection. But not so with weaponry. In 2015 35,000 people died in road crashes. 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015 (excluding suicides), according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured. To date (since 2003), 4,486 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and 2,345 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan. There were 58,220 fatal military casualties incurred during the entirety of the US involvement in the Vietnam War.
Guns are a big business, a bigger lobby and among the biggest of political footballs. A lot of people make a lot of money ensuring Second Amendment rights, whether the citizenry choose to exercise them or not. When asked whether the Trump Administration would push for stronger gun regulations, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dodged, saying now was not the time to embark on such a fight.
OMG.
If not now, when?
That's like saying an election is not the right time to discuss issues.
Las Vegas also reminds us that when it comes to guns in America, it's a matter of might makes right. Whether one supports the National Rifle Association or not, it is a devastatingly effective political force. It is savvy and sophisticated. In the wake of the slaughterhouse scene on The Strip, the NRA was essentially silent; it knows the game. Give it a few days or weeks and the outrage will blow over. It’ll use selective threats on those Republican members of Congress who dare to suggest that now may be the time to take a harder look at modest gun regulation.
The NRA wraps itself in the Constitution, in the flag and in American myth writ large. Its political power is matched only by its willingness to use it. Earlier this year, the NRA produced a series of videos aimed at the mainstream media that were both frightening and telling. The NRA created those messages at the height of its power -- when its allies control the White House and Congress, and when the nation has the most erratic commander-in-chief in recent history who, at any moment, can change the national conversation with yet another outrageous remark or Tweet. For the NRA there can be no compromise. Body counts? They’re someone else’s problem. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Let's move on to tax reform.
ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Al-Shabaab need not do anything to strike at the US homeland. They can just sit back and watch the arsenal of democracy, what Ronald Reagan once called “this last best hope of man on earth”, suffer through wanton violent acts as gross as any perpetrated by those groups.
The shame is that there are millions -- millions -- of American gun owners who are responsible and peace-loving and law-abiding who are equally as horrified at the events in Las Vegas as any in the global; audience. But there are those for whom toting one’s weapon is a means of showing independence: from fear, from other citizens and from the tyranny of what they see as an overweening, malevolent federal government. Ironically, though, these folks likely also support mass surveillance of American citizens in the name of protecting us from radical Islamic terrorism. They may also believe in “law and order” so long as the long arm of the law doesn’t look in their direction or shoot someone they know or care about.
As an increasingly globalized world, we may think Americans see 9/11 as the event that most shook their sense of security. For many reasons, it did. Now, though, parents have to wonder if their kids are safe at school. Is their teenager safe on college campus? Can they go to the birthday party at work? Is it safe to go to the movies? Is it safe to go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night? Can they take their loved one to an outdoor concert and expect to come home safely?
All of those things, on American soil.
These are questions we as a human race rarely ever had to ask ourselves. We never would’ve thought about them. But too many mass shootings later, there is no segment of society, no demographic, no geography, no political bent that is safe from the AR-15 or the AK-47 or the M-16 on American soil. That is an outrage. America is not France, or Germany, or Spain, or even recently, the UK. Those are nations that have just most recently suffered the blight of international terrorism.
What’s worse than that? It's that so many of us are now so desensitized to these horrors that we’re beginning to believe that this is just part of everyday life.
It is not. Nor should it ever be. Anywhere.
Don’t. Do not allow oneself to fall into that trap. Humanity cannot and must not forget the shattered tapestry of lives unraveled by these events. Change can only begin and end with human beings. It won’t be delivered to our doorstep by Amazon or Alibaba. If chaos truly presents opportunities, let us as a world in general and Americans in particular take this moment and make something of it.
We owe it to all those kids, senior citizens, blue/white collar workers and concert-goers who will never have the chance to see the sun come up ever again.