One minute.
In scarcely 60 seconds a stream of bullets fuelled by irrational hate streams into crowds of partygoers on a Dayton, Ohio street. Nine human lives, each a biography with emotions, hopes, dreams and aspirations no less important than our own, burning so brightly one moment, are abruptly extinguished the next.
Two minutes.
With almost unbelievably alacrity, Dayton Police are on the scene, pouring out of their cruisers and SUVs, weapons draw, charging into danger with only one overwhelming prerogative: to somehow search, locate and take down whomever has perpetrating this most heinous crime.
It is over with lightning speed.
Nine people and the shooter himself are dead, twenty-seven wounded.
Earlier in the day, in El Paso, a border city of 700,000 recently labelled one of the safest in the US, another gunman, this time brandishing a semi-automatic AK-47 of the kind popularized across innumerable Cold War battlefields, had wreaked even bloodier havoc in a suburban shopping mall. Caught in grainy black and white surveillance cam footage he can be seen dressed like some bargain-basement perversion of Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘Terminator’ with his ear protectors and outsized weapon.
Twenty-two people, twenty-four wounded and the shooter arrested.
But we don’t think of the killers. While we may feel a degree of emotion at the pain their own families must be enduring, their motivations, the kinds of inner demons that must drive a person to commit such monstrous acts, those thoughts pale in comparison to the compassion, the overwhelming sense of sadness and loss for the random victims of such murderous rage.
People like Jordan and Andre Anchondo, young parents who just recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary, mowed down while protecting their two-month-old baby. Judging from the baby’s injures, the authorities could extrapolate that he had been shielded with her body by Jordan, who in turn had been protected by Andre. She had fallen atop the young infant, and he still remained nearby in the store where he’d dropped. Two other children of theirs, ages five and two, are also now orphaned. These children don’t yet understand what happened. The oldest keeps asking for her mom and dad.
It is unimaginable. It is unspeakable. To be cut down while shopping for school supplies, just like any of three thousand shoppers who happened to be at the Walmart. Acts of such massive violence aren’t supposed to happen on regular days where the sky is a pure blue and the sun shines so brightly.
There is a war raging on US streets. It is as real as a mortar shell detonating on an Aleppo street, the tear gas searing the eyes of protestors in Hong Kong, and the victims both Israeli and Palestinian who remain nameless and unclaimed in Gaza morgues. But this is supposed to be America, more than a political state , more than a group of differing immigrant nationalities. The United States is as much a state of being, a way of life, a beacon of idealistic hope.
Every day, 100 Americans are killed with guns and hundreds more are shot and injured. The effects of gun violence extend far beyond these casualties -- gun violence shapes the lives of millions of Americans who witness it, know someone who was shot, or live in fear of the next shooting. Firearms were used to kill 13,286 people in the U.S. in 2015, excluding suicide. Approximately 1.4 million people have died from firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011. This number includes all deaths resulting from a firearm, including suicides, homicides, and accidents. Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the U.S. had 82 percent of all gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns. Four sitting US presidents out of forty-five have been killed by guns.
And on and on it goes.
In comparison, the total numbers of Americans (soldiers and contractors) killed for the more intense period of the entire Iraq war from 2003 – 2011 were 4,497.
The U.S. once had a prohibition on assault weapons -- but Congress allowed that decade-long ban to lapse in 2004, at the urging of the National Rifle Association (NTA) and against the wishes of many national police organizations. That ban and other potential gun control measures are now back in the spotlight. Dissatisfied with politicians' offers of more “thoughts and prayers” after more than 250 mass shootings so far this year, advocates for U.S. gun law change spoke out loudly — many of them shouting a simple command to their public servants like Donald Trump: "Do something!"
There are signs that President Trump, acutely sensitive to criticism as he faces election next year, is exploring ways to use regulatory power and executive action “do something” about gun violence -- a move driven both by his aides’ belief that Congress is incapable of coalescing around consensus legislation and the desire to deflect some of the ferocious criticism that stemmed from his occasional use of inflammatory language. He needs to inoculate himself from increasingly effective Democratic party attacks that he was partially responsible for creating the climate that has caused this firestorm of hate.
One central question remains: will he actually do anything? Predicting actions by Donald Trump is a fool’s game. But he is wily, and this could ne his Nixon-goes-to-China moment.
Should he elect to break expectations of lots of rhetoric but very little actual action, Trump could draw from a long menu of pre-existing potential options. Executive action could be employed to enforce mandatory background checks for customers of gun sellers who deal beyond a certain annual threshold, increase fines for gun manufacturers who circumvent existing regulations, establish longer cooling-off periods for gun buyers and eliminating loopholes that, in some cases, allow individuals convicted of domestic abuse to purchase firearms. Of course, he could also simply reinstate an Obama-era regulation he undid in February 2017 that was intended to prevent mentally ill Americans from acquiring firearms. This is both likely and unlikely in that while Trump is in the habit of trying to undo his predecessor’s legacy, he’s not above re-dressing what he took away and bringing it back under the guise of something else.
Invoking unilateral authority to address gun violence can only be seen by the voting majority as a positive act. Will it do anything to improve the long-term political discourse and search for a more ling-term solution? Unlikely. Democratic presidential hopefuls are unlikely to embrace any proposal that stops short of banning assault weapons out of fear of reprisal from their party’s progressive base, and most Republicans seeking re-election can’t afford to disturb the gun lobby.
Nonetheless, Republicans just might be willing to strike a bipartisan compromise to inoculate themselves from claims that Trump’s rhetoric has contributed to the scourge of hate crimes committed by white supremacists, especially if their association with the President pulls them down in the polls.
Yet, for all this ritual of sound and fury, what is becoming clearer is that a misalignment between those at either extremes of the gun debate, and the actual reality of what drives the US’s gun culture exists.
Ever since they gained independence from Britain, Americans see themselves as locked into a perpetual stalemate over the meaning and limits of the Constitution’s guarantee of a right to bear arms. Liberals see gun owners as a kind of NRA-captured cult, and pro-gun conservatives are perpetually wary about the possibility that left-wing Washington bureaucrats will strip them of their capacity for self-defense.
But America's stalemate on guns runs deeper than that. It's also based on an important mistake that both sides make about guns themselves and their role in society.
The view of guns as neutral tools, a view shared by both conservative defenders of gun rights as well as liberal advocates of gun regulation, misses a crucial fact about guns and gun ownership. It assumes that the distribution of guns and their presence in their owners' lives are totally independent facts that don't shape the opportunities and choices of the people who use them.
Research into the culture and political views of gun owners is casting aspersions as to this view. It seems that gun owners' politics don't generally fall into lockstep with the NRA—but guns themselves are woven into people's lives in ways that go far beyond a mere tool. This suggests that the path to gun law reform won’t be as simple as liberals hope or conservatives fear.
The sale, manufacture, distribution, purchase and production of guns, as well as the views of their owners, are, in part, responses to the perceived weakness of the government and the perceived need for constant vigilance and a collateral interpersonal fear. As dangerous weapons, guns offer a form of direct power in a world where trust and civic belonging are in short supply. 67 per cent of gun owners said protection is a major reason they own a gun; 38 percent cited hunting, 30 per cent listed sport shooting, and 13 per cent listed gun collecting as major reasons.
Culturally, guns aren't just a reaction to anxieties. In a way gun control advocates rarely consider, , they're actually a meaningful social asset for their owners. In a fragmented society, guns connect people at a time when making connections is rendered ever more difficult by distancing technology ironically labelled “social” networking that which isolates.
In part because of their implied danger and allure and in part because they're the center of a sporting culture with deep roots, guns draw adherents together in contexts like expos, gun ranges, and online chatrooms. At the recreational level, participants can indulge in hobbyist debate and discussion; on a political and cultural level, they can also forge a shared commitment to armed citizenship. In short, they are outlets for peoples’ sense of belonging.
As we mourn the victims in El Paso and Dayton and demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice, America’s political leaders, especially those who seek tougher regulations, must also realize that guns are, for their owners, something more than macho weapons. They are manifestations of expression, change the way people understand their own socio-political identities and the powers they have as citizens. Guns help make some visions of society possible while destroying others. For their owners, guns are the material embodiments of good citizenship.
Given the toxic polarity that has developed in American political discourse where one is almost compelled to thread the needle between the extremes of the Squad and the Freedom Caucus, gun reform advocates have to provide assurances to those who own guns that, should they gain the upper hand in Congress and the presidency in 2020 that they will not employ the fanatical zeal they often accuse their opponents of. It is all too easy for self-righteous zealots to hurtle from red-flag laws, regulating semi-automatic weapons and large capacity magazines and closing the gun-show loophole to excessively intrusive regulations aiming to break down a culture that millions of people value greatly -- one that actually enriches lives and whose roots predate the United States.
The only real solution, the only real way out of the impasse between the two solitudes is to do what should have been done from the very beginning: talk. And part of that dialogue means making mental space for views that, at their essence, require accommodation if not understanding. Any meaningful reform is going to need to consider the gun-owning community and its value system. Liberals need to make them allies. Conversely, in the wake of the seemingly endless “carnage” that Donald Trump claimed existed in the US at his inauguration, responsible citizenship requires that the millions of gun owners who say they support gun regulation do more than think about their own way of life. They need to turn that support into vocal activism. In so doing, they just may help bring about changes necessary to protect the communities that we all love, live in, and share.