The people of Hong Kong are being jackbooted into the ground for seeking the kind of constitutional rights we have. Without guns, they will be jackbooted into the ground forever. Gun control advocates are with the jackboots.
1
The people of Australia, New Zealand, and almost all European countries beg to disagree with you.
23
Mr. Blow, thanks again for a thoughtful article. I really wonder whether American need to get smarter on this issue and build on the law that the NRA refuses to challenge regarding automatic weapons. If that can stand why can magazine laws, and velocity laws, calibre laws and other minutiae be enacted to allow the amendment stand through very strict regulation of the militia. Heck, call that well regulated militia into service on Superbowl weekend...or the guns aren't well regulated.
6
Just writing to say that I’m glad you’re back writing for the NYT. Your kindness, empathy, and beautiful writing are needed in these times. Thank you.
17
More troubleshooting is this claim in The Forward about anti-anti-Semitism at the event:
The D.C. Dyke March, an event that claims “to celebrate and center all Dykes,” has decided to ban certain symbols, including Israeli or Jewish Pride flags. The message felt by many is unmistakable: If you are gay and Jewish, you are not welcome here.
3
@SAGE Sounds like whataboutism that is meant to distract from the article without making a relevant point.
DC Pride has hundreds, perhaps thousands of groups there. If one of them is exclusionary to Jewish gays, there are a myriad of other groups they can feel welcome in.
But I suspect you don't actually care about the D.C. Dyke March's policies. You just want to change the subject.
5
@SAGE
Actually, the message was that symbols of Israeli Zionism were not welcome.
Not all us Jews regard the Israeli flag as a positive symbol.
However, I agree that they should not have been banned.
6
I lived in DC for six years and went to Pride every year. My partner was at Virginia Tech when that shooting happened. He and I were at a gay wedding in Las Vegas when that massacre occurred.
The fear of mass shootings is something that my generation lives with constantly. Yes, I know that it's very unlikely that I'll be killed by one. But it was unlikely that my partner would be attending college where a shooting occurred. Unlikely that we'd be two hotels away on the Strip. There is also a trauma of being within the zone of danger--it very easily could have been me, or us. Just one degree of separation.
And yet, unlike every other nation in the world, in the ten years between these two shootings (each of which was the deadliest of its kind when it occurred), we watched as our elected officials did NOTHING. Not a single thing to make us safer, or protect us. That gross negligence has continued to this day. No wonder people at DC Pride were terrified--why wouldn't they be?
Charles Blow is correct, more broadly so than perhaps he realizes. His generation, your generation, has handed down ghastly legacies because they don't care about the world they leave behind.
They don't question why things are the way they are, or try to change them.
They ignore problems because they aren't affected. They got theirs already.
They don't think to learn from other countries, because obviously we're the best already.
The simultaneous arrogance and complacency is maddening.
12
Thank you for opening the door, Mr. Blow. You were their parent through an awful and traumatic event. This story brought me to tears. And, btw, I am a white lesbian too, old and a parent. So, I know what it must have done to your insides to see this happen to children. Maybe you take care of yourself as well?
8
Charles Blow's kindness brought me to tears.
9
“Help us! Somebody help us!”
The places where real fear of gun crime is warranted are South Side Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, New Orleans. Isn;t it amazing that Mr. Blow seems to show no concern for the citizen who fear relentless daily violence? All in order to make an ideological point that turns out to be based on nonexistent danger?
4
This just shows how much irrational terror there is over guns, stoked by those who want only want people to have the constitutional rights they themselves value. Any of the Pride attendees were far more likely to die from vehicular violence getting to or from the event. However, we don't see any push for "sensible" laws like banning all use of cell phones while driving, in-car touch screens, or limiting the ownership of assault vehicles, and there's not a whiff of a constitutional right to any of those.
6
@Ross. A great comment. When the threat of auto in crowds and around buildings was identified bollards went up 'everywhere'. There is an amazing collection throughout Washington D.C. I no longer can pursue my happiness of looking at the North face of the White House from my car.
1
Let's hope those four young women are registered (or will register) to vote next year. And that all of their friends and family will vote.
Because if we don't start voting more reliable and more sensibly, then we are doomed to a culture of violence forever.
VOTE.
21
Everyone in America is living in trauma from gun violence and mass shootings. We may not think so, but in reality we are. Saturday's stampede in Washington, D.C. was a perfect example of it.
A few years ago I was in line at a grocery store. Suddenly, me and everyone else in the store heard a loud BANG! I immediately felt the air go out of the place, and it seemed everything stopped except for the music coming through the speakers. No one made a sound. Moments later everyone started moving again. What was the sound? A balloon tied to a table to bring notice to a sale on grapes near the front door had popped. But everyone in the place thought it was a gun shot. So did I.
How very sad this all is.
14
This is a bit off topic but I'm sure by now everyone has heard that baseball star David Ortiz was shot in the Dominican Republic. Sorry, no one can blame their favorite scapegoats like the NRA for this crime. If anyone is still looking for again free Utopia forget it!!! No one is immune to gun violence anywhere in the world.
@sharon5101
The murder rate in the Dominican Republic is 1/5 of that in the USA. Apples and Oranges.
5
If we had a President or Congress like the Prime Minster of New Zealand some of this gun violence could be stopped! Back to the real world of life in the US with mass shootings daily at every venue.
6
Does anyone remember the "American carnage" speech?
When you live out west with Rattlesnakes. bears, cougars, and the like, guns are needed by everyone not living in the city. In the city where the police patrol and are minutes away, anything more than a shotgun or a pistol is not needed.
If you live in a deer hunting state, if you hunt, you need a deer rifle. In all of these circumstances, ownership of guns of any kind .needs to have a certificate that shows you know how to use it (think drivers license) and insurance on the weapon (again like an automobile) Most people will comply with these things, but there are some (drivers without license or insurance) push the limits. If caught they pay a heavy fine or go to jail, so it should be with gun ownership.
8
@Joy B
You really do not understand the controversy. Society has always had the authority to oppose violence by any means. How does one control violence by some people who use guns? Identify those who are likely to do harm, or just remove the guns from all people?
People who do not allow their guns to be used to do harm are not any danger to anyone with one or many guns, with single shot or semi-automatics with large magazines.
People who do harm to themselves or others use all kinds of guns to do so, nearly all of them legal to purchase and to own. Some are restricted from possessing guns, too.
The safe gun owners are the vast majority and they have been safe for a very long time. The unsafe ones are a very small proportion but the large number of gun owners just makes this number pretty large.
So what it the most reasonable solution?
1
Curious, what hotel would allow people to run in through the front door and up the stairwell without breaching some security protocols? Just asking...
12
@Susan
I also wonder what they were doing knocking on Mr. Blow's door. One would think by the time they were in the hotel, they would be and feel safe.
5
Blow is a smart man. He is also one with strong opinions. He also has some concerns which make him fear whether people capable of doing harm to others for any reason should be allowed to act free of strong social restraints. He fears gun owners. He fears gun owners because gun violence is a big problem in certain communities in which people like teenagers involved with criminal activities are able to get them easier than a driver's license. He fears white supremacists who express a desire to enact racial cleansing and who brandish firearms. He has real concerns about these things which our current laws do not address reasonably. So this panic presents a good example to argue his case. But the panic was the product of an obvious anxiety that persists among LGBT people, violence upon themselves by strangers that is sometimes fatal, and rarely requires guns to commit. So he is not addressing what happened, in context. He could have compared this to the long decades of violence and murder against people under Jim Crow, and it would have been a close fit.
2
Since the Texas Tower shooting on Aug. 1,1966, there have been 1,165 mass shooting deaths. This works out to about 22 mass shooting deaths a year. This is according to the Washington Post’s running tally of Americans killed in mass shootings. The Post defines mass shootings as any shooting in which four or more people we are killed. To put the threat in perspective, the United Sates averages about 51 lightening strikes fatalities each year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?utm_term=.92922e1ba0c7
3
@William Case
Two aspects to risk. Likelihood and significance. The likelihood of being a victim in a mass shooting is remote but the significance is totally unacceptable. It makes dealing with the problem hard. The fact is that gun owners and their guns are unlikely to pose a danger to anyone, but that likelihood is ignored when a few people commit these horrific acts.
2
From the article "There is no universally accepted definition of a public mass shooting, and this piece defines it narrowly. It looks at the 163 shootings in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (two shooters in a few cases). It does not include shootings tied to gang disputes or robberies that went awry, and it does not include domestic shootings that took place exclusively in private homes. A broader definition would yield much higher numbers."
When thousands of gay men and women gather together, you have to expect a little drama.
4
I am in agreement with and have sympathy for everything you have written here, except for the idea that an entire generation is to blame for our current gun culture and anxiety. You are spreading the responsibility too widely and uniformly. The responsibility lies with all the legislators over all the years who ignored the problem, pretended it did not exist, took no action in the face of countless needless gun-related deaths, voted against gun control measures for electoral advantage, accepted money from gun manufacturers and lobby groups, and blocked any rational discussion and study of gun violence.
6
Mr. Blow, thank you for your kindness and understanding. And yes, you are right: This "new normal" of the possibility of a deranged shooter anytime, anywhere, is absurd. Why can't the United States of America be as sane and as forward-thinking as its allies, Australia and New Zealand, who have both banned automatic weapons?
Ban the NRA. It has accepted Russian money.
4
@Planetary Occupant. ....and the president launders money for Russian oligarchs but no one wants to confront that either.
4
There was no mass shooting. No one was shot. A man appeared with a BB gun. These people overreacted based on something they heard second- or third-hand.
7
Yes, they did. That’s the point of the article. Everyone is so traumatized by mass shootings in this country that overreacting will be the new norm.
But what do you suggest? Should people stand still and wait to see an actual shooting victim before they respond?
8
A crowd overreacts to to a rumor. Young people panic. These are not remarkable circumstances.
.
Most gun deaths are suicides or committed by criminals in high crime areas. Mass shootings are a news phenomenon, not a public health problem. We have localized crime problems in the country, made worse by guns. Why is your concern the scourge of guns rather than the scourge of terrorism? Can't afford to waste a good panic?
.
You are not your generation. Please don't apologize for what you do not control; when you do so you are granting yourself moral authority to coerce the rest of the nation to conform to your view of how people should behave; nobody gave you that authority.
48
@Tom Meadowcroft Not at all clear to me who you are lecturing here, Tom. The right, including gun advocates, grants itself moral authority all the time. Guns ARE a public health problem, whether they're involved in suicides, domestic disputes, crime or mass shootings.
108
@Tom Meadowcroft
People being gunned down in public places by mentally unstable domestic terrorists certainly is a public health problem on many levels.
91
"We have localized crime problems in the country, made worse by guns. Why is your concern the scourge of guns rather than the scourge of terrorism?"
Your first sentence answers your second.
Also, in this case, the two are one and the same.
"You are not your generation. Please don't apologize for what you do not control"
They are saying that there WAS a control that their generation had, presumably in the form of their elected officials. They're saying they're sorry for not doing enough.
"when you do so you are granting yourself moral authority to coerce the rest of the nation to conform to your view of how people should behave; nobody gave you that authority."
That makes no sense. There is no "authority" here.
29
Yes indeed; troubled times. I helped organize a large community seder on the last night of Passover, with about 70 participants. I'm not the kind of person who worries about things - I don't think that the plane I'm in will crash or that the footsteps I hear behind me on a dark street are made by a mugger - but I felt vulnerable that night, aware that we were an attractive target to someone with a hate agenda and a powerful weapon. Will we ever be able to be comfortable again?
4
I find myself somewhat conflicted about this piece. On one level, it makes an important, even a vital, point about the degree to which mass shootings and gun violence have become part of our national landscape, and the psychological effects that that constant low-level fear creates.
On another, though, I feel like the point of what happened on Saturday has somewhat been missed here.
I was one of the women in that crowd fleeing for safety, though not one of the ones who sought shelter in Mr Blow's hotel. When we heard loud sounds and rumours of an active shooter, it had the immediate ring of truth to it, because we remember; because violence against LGBTQ people is an ever-present worry.
The key point here is not that "a mass shooting could be anywhere, even at a parade bursting with rainbows", but rather that, in this context, the rainbows made it all too plausible that this was indeed a mass shooting. That this was a second Pulse massacre.
Guns are a huge part of the problem, yes; Mr Blow is right to address that. But the bigotry and hatred that drives people to use them is another, and both must be addressed. One of the lessons of the panic at Pride is that it remains all too believable that someone has come to murder us.
14
Can someone please tell me what the bold red X beside a reply in these comments means?
Thx!
I like how this column has brought out people who seem to be minimizing the threat of gun violence by saying (truthfully, I must add) that the odds of suffering gun violence is minuscule. It is. And the odds of dying is the U.S. at the hand of ISIS or any of the other thousands of terrorist groups in existence is so small as to be statistically 0%. We spend billions of dollars, utilize immense resources, and take liberties with the Constitution to protect against that threat. Are the victims of gun violence, past and future, not worthy of at least the same consideration?
As someone who believes in the the Constitution, I do.
10
Thank you, Mr. Blow, for opening your door, providing the young women with a safe place and an understanding heart, and for sharing the story and its lessons with us.
4
"it was my generation that should be apologizing to theirs.", true, Charles, but even more so it should be my generation, the baby boomers, doing the apologizing. We were going to change everything, had love-ins, the summer of love, half a million people at Woodstock with no violence, girls putting flowers in the barrels of guns.....and then what happened? Boomers got just as greedy as their parents, became more me and less we, got old and some even voted for Trump. All previous previous generations ought to be apologizing to the young, instead the GOP burdens them with more national debt so they can give the rich a tax cut.
5
@Caded
Flip that page back to the Greatest Generation. Also closely eyeball their mini-me Silent Generation - many of whom who are still in power. Most Boomers (1946 - 1964) didn't graduate college until the 1970s and early 1980s. Politics and the U.S. economy were already a toxic waste dump, mostly thanks to the GG and SG, especially their most right wing and religious fundamentalist crackpots. That is who kept the Vietnam wheel turning, that is who elected Nixon and Reagan, that is why we cannot have nice things. The SG is who still makes up the majority of the old white male GOP and right wing religious fundamentalists.
4
Glad I'm not the only one seeing big-time irony in a major media columnist bemoaning the atmosphere that he and his cohort studiously perpetuate and inflame on a daily basis. Mission accomplished, Mr. Blow. Hope your weekend calmed down.
5
What a nasty thing to say. Mr. Blow takes pains to relate a relevant and frightening aspect of the times we live in. Many in HIS cohort try to do the same. You may be referring to another cohort, the real fake news news folks who inhabit Fox News.
2
Yes, it’s not the actual shootings that are causing panic and anxiety, it’s those pesky reporters writing about them!
1
You did a kind thing, Mr. Blow.
4
I was there, waiting for it to be our turn to walk in the parade (it was super slow going). My friends and I were chatting when a wave of probably 200 people came sprinting down the street, many of them screaming at us to run. My friend and I ended up in the stairwell of a basement apartment, hidden out of sight. Before that we'd been crouching in front of door. I lost track of a good friend in the melee. What if it was an active shooter and he had gotten hurt or killed? Why didn't I find a better place for me and my friend to hide? I can't stop thinking about all the ways I failed to protect myself and the people I was with. Before we took off running, the first thought that crossed my mind was that it was probably a false alarm. My internal dialogue flipped a second later. This is the US, why *wouldn't* it be an active shooter?
So I ran for my life.
12
@Anna
There's nothing you or anyone else could've done out in a public place, certainly not at a large street celebration.
The gunman, Aftabjit Singh, 38, had a BB pistol hidden in a paper bag. He shot at another male he claimed was flirting with someone he was with. As he was arrested, he threatened to return and finish the job, i.e. kill the man.
I am an 82-years-old woman. In the 1940s, gun safety was an integral part of the NRA's badge programme focussed on rural youth. When I was eleven, my four-years-older brother, who eventually shot handgun for the USA at the Australian Olympics, wanted to earn his NRA Instructor's badge, so he took a .22 and me and a haybale out into a recently-mown field, and by the end of the summer I had the targets for my Expert badge, tho' too young to apply for it. With shotguns, we shot clay pigeons from our front steps out over our salt-marsh; I was assigned the .410 because it was our smallest gun and blasted those discs into smithereens. This nice little gun was made in 1913; in the 1960s I brought it to Canada for a humane killer after my husband did away with a muskrat with a garden spade. Some years later, Canada initiated gun registration, and I duly handed in the paperwork for my .410, and shortly thereafter received a phone call from the RCMP; an officer wished to make sure that I knew that this gun could only safely fire lead shot, no longer sold. I assured him that this gun was rarely used and only as a humane killer, and I still owned a box of lead-shot shells. He sighed RE the phone call: "I suppose this is worthwhile."
1
We have a problem with escalating incidents of hate crimes recently, and it’s clear that Trump’s persistent appeal to the fear and loathing in people is driving it. He is not making it happen but he’s making it seem acceptable to those inclined to act thus.
Despite this, we are not in the middle of a society ton which all of us are in great peril from gun violence. In fact, we are very safe in terms of risks of being affected by violence. The majority of gun deaths are not from homicide but from suicide. Mass killings though truly horrific are not a risk that anyone needs to worry will happen. It is a terrible risk nonetheless.
Highly publicized issues tend to receive too much attention and so the risks to people become misrepresented. It makes dealing with them distorted and inappropriate, too.
The great number of guns in our country without any awareness of where they are and who has them means that people who are likely to do harm can probably obtain them. It’s clear that many people who are unstable show indications of likely inclinations to do violence. Removing their access to guns would be an obvious way to avoid gun violence by such individuals. Assuring that gun owners secure their guns from children and people likely to misuse them is another way to reduce gun violence. Not having people carrying guns in public places without strict controls would be another simple way to prevent gun violence. But we cannot do these things because there is no mutual trust.
@Casual Observer where's the evidence for increased hate crimes? If you are referring to the Anti Defamation League study from a year ago, that study is deeply flawed. The report actually shows a decline in violent crimes but an uptick in reported expressions of anti-semitic speech or grafitti. But that could be due to increased sensitivity, particularly with the election of Donald Trump. And if you look at even that data, it shows a spike in reported anti-Semitic crimes after Trump's inauguration, then they decline -- and the spike is attributable in large part due to a single incident of a Jewish individual calling in bomb threats to synagogues and Jewish community centers.
Another example of the MSM pushing a headline and thus people believe something there is little evidence for.
3
How much longer will the NRA get tax subsidies from the rest of us?
It's utterly risible that they are apolitical.
10
@Occupy Government
I feel the same way about tax exemptions for religious businesses that are part and parcel of the NRA fan base.
11
I fail to see why people just don't acknowledge the gun issue that we have. We are living in a daily war zone and there is no debate about that. Everyone is on edge because we are living in a society of fear that the con man in charge has created. The temperature for hate is extremely high and we have the NRA not protecting gun rights but just another corrupt entity for people to make money off of.
We have to listen to a bully who is constantly afraid that the mask he wears of lies is dissolving right before our eyes..
FDR stated we have nothing to "fear but fear itself."
so always be prepared but not fearful, you can not enjoy life being afraid. We must live our lives for everyone who can not be with us.
Thank you, Charles for a beautiful piece and God placed you there at that ad place to extend kindness when it was surely needed.
Life is all about helping others in their time of need.
Americans are full of character and courage. We need to show more of it when possible. In 2020 we can go to the polls and vote out all of the politicians who refuse to stand up for the rights of Americans and around the world
7
Thank you for this remarkable news, I hope to hear more detail on the Tucker Carlson Show tonight for validation and verification.
2
Probably most of us are now more paranoid than ever: A loud noise just happened in my neighborhood. It wasn't a car backfiring; it didn't sound like a gun exactly, more like a small explosion. At first, I thought: "Aw, it's nothing," but then I ran to my front window to see all my neighbors out on their front lawns looking around for what it was. (We do live near an airport.) I'll probably never know. Cities are noisy places, day and night.
As other comments note, while a mass shooting is certainly possible, so is a crazed maniac plowing a truck through the crowd. Or a pair of young men with pressure cookers. Such is the nature of our world and some of the ideologies which infest it.
Now, if you wanted to stop a huge number of much more common, albeit less spectacular murders, you'd advocate for a big police presence in the areas which such things are much more likely to occur: areas full of urban minority males. You'd advocate saving lives through aggressive stop and frisk tactics.
But while you despise the 2A, you regard the 4A as holy wri to be read not only expansively, but without limit.
Armed criminals are the problem. Let's deal with the criminals.
4
@Michael
Wherever young males congregate, trouble ensues and usually involves harming someone. This is true in America and in every other country. The only exception is with groups of gay males.
5
I was a block east of Dupont Circle when the panic broke out. Witnessing hundreds of people suddenly start running towards you, in the opposite direction of the parade, screaming and crying, evokes a sort of instinctual, guttural fear in you.
Grabbing my friend's hand and running into an alleyway to duck into a crawlspace under a restaurant's back stairs, having absolutely no idea what was going on was indescribably terrifying. There was a moment where the surge of people running into the alleyway stopped - the only sounds were sirens and the cries of the people under the crawlspace with me. And suddenly, about 20 more people sprinted into the alley, packing tightly together into the crawlspace. In that moment, I thought that was it, that an active shooter had chased them into the alley and would find us all under the crawlspace, that we would become more victims of a senseless mass shooting - and that's messed up.
I'm glad that Dupont was just a false alarm, but I cannot put into words how absolutely terrifying and traumatic that experience was. Thank you Mr. Blow for helping those girls, and thank you to all who sheltered the frightened crowd that afternoon.
We live in a country where a mass shooting isn't only imaginable, but plausible as well. I just hope that we act now to change this. We need to do better.
15
From the videos of the melee, it was an awesome event. Wish I was there. Of the countless pride parades I've suffered through in my life, I can remember only three: my first in Houston in 1980, the second in NYC because it was NYC, and a third in Dallas that was broken-up by a torrential thunderstorm with lightening crashing and 70mph winds. That was fun. Sheer pandemonium. Pride parades are as boring and predictable as the gay community. Tired club music, familiar mass-produced propaganda, drag, drag, and more drag, and thoroughly conventional theatricality. You never see anyone in a butterfly suit anymore. And of course the most important ingredient: booze. The truly sad thing is that every Pride parade everywhere in the world looks the same - except in Turkey and Russia where people actually risk life and limb to march.
1
None of us saw it coming, but a dear, 70-year-old lifelong friend, who had never owned a gun, woke up one morning, went downtown and bought a gun, went home and arranged his papers on the diningroom table, went into the kitchen, and shot himself in the head. What if there had been a 48-hour waiting period? We'll never know.
5
I've read CB 's column, and several comments. Have yet to read anyone propose a workable plan -- i.e. one that works and will reduce mass shootings. Just the same tired, NRA and repubs and White people are bad --- and tighter gun control laws are needed. So exactly how would tighter gun control laws prevent mass shootings? You've got over 300 million guns and you're not going to be able to confiscate those guns. So how would tighter gun control laws actually prevent more mass shootings? These, despite how horrible, are rare events and few if any shooters had a history of other mass shootings, killing people etc. -- few if any had been diagnosed as a potential mass killer. So, unless someone has directly threatened to kill people -- how would you know who to sell a gun to and who not to sell a gun to.
2
@Ralphie - Nothing will be fool proof and that’s an argument conservatives use against all attempts at solutions. Here’s some potential solutions. 1) Gun buy back programs for semi-auto rifles. 2) Having PIN numbers to unlock safeties of guns. 3) Much longer waits on background checks: it shouldn’t be a problem to wait like we do for passports. 4) Expensive license in order to own & carry guns. 5) No public open or concealed carry. (Fine to carry hunting or to the range, but not walk into a community parade. 6) Close gun-show and Craig’slist loophole on background checks. 7) Fund mental health and education and social services adequately: because our society breeds desperation and this breeds violence. These are just all the measures I can remember off the top of my head that people regularly call for.
8
Well, we might start by addressing reality.
Like the reality that most mass shootings are carried out by people who’ve bought their guns legally, or got them from somebody who bought them legally so they could sell them illegally.
Like the reality that “mass shootings,” divide into two types: crime and domestic violence, usually carried out with a handgun; racist and wacko-bird, usually carried out with an assault rifle or some other fancy piece of hardware.
Like the reality that in more than half the racist/wackobird shootings, the killer did everything but take out an ad telling us that they were coming.
Like the reality that a) you clowns bellowed for more guns, and now bellow that there are too many to do anything about, and b) fairly few people own most of your 300 million guns.
Like the reality that the NRA et al always yack about mental helth, then run right out and attack mental health funding and programs.
Feel free to explain where I am wrong. But facts will be required, or ot’s the ol’ raspberry.
7
@SDemocrat I'm not anti gun control, just don't think it will work.
-- millions in circulation, so how many will be bought back? And if they are all bought back, a shooter buys 3 or 4 semi auto pistols and a pump shotgun.
- that will never sell. Someone breaks in my house I'm going to calmly remember my pin, get in right, etc. And a mass shooter wouldn't use the pin before he started
-- so people have to wait a month -- who will that stop?
- so I buy it on the black market, or if I know I'm going to be caught or killed, do I care about how expensive the license is?
- how many open carriers have committed mass shootings
-- making everyone do background checks is fine -- but how do you identify who potential killers are
-- most of the people who have committed mass shootings weren't mentally ill. At least identifiably. After the fact, maybe, but beforehand?
Robert
You're not wrong on every point. However, most of the mass shootings -- stranger on stranger, school or workplace, aren't inherently racist.
I've never bellowed for more guns -- but I believe that there are at least 100 million households with guns.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/guns-dont-know-how-many-america/index.html
As far as NRA and mental health, I've never seen anything where the NRA has attacked mental health care funding. But in any event, most mass shooters aren't psychotic so I don't think that's the key to prevention or better gun control.
My generation was the bleeding edge of coming out. While we endured hateful comments, cries of "shame" from onlookers, jerky adolescents trying to prove their manhood by suggesting we lacked it, we never once thought someone would open fire. Sadly these many years later, it's all too common to hear some mentally challenged or simply hateful person has picked up a gun and decided to shoot. Not just at Gays but at anything they decide is worthy of their own anger. The young women were right to be fearful, and you sir were extraordinarily kind to let them into your life. Your apology is not necessary ... your compassion speaks volumes and contributes to the dialog about how to address these scary circumstances.
6
I still love the USA, but when I look at the justifiable fear and panic we pass to the next generation I realize I cannot honestly say I live in a civilized country.
6
All driven by an unfounded fear.
In this OP-ED piece, the fear held up as a symptom of a larger problem with American society - a problem supposedly caused by the author's generation for which he feels he should apologize. The author feels he can stereotype for the sake of a good polemic.
3
A quick read of the comments tells me that there are too many apologists for the, so called, right to bear arms. Sort of the old trope: guns don't kill people, people do. Well I don't buy it. Guns are trouble. And the unfettered access to them, breeds trouble.
11
"There are not many countries in the world where a fun parade could so quickly dissolve into hysteria because it is absolutely plausible that there could be yet another man with a weapon hellbent on watching bullets rip through flesh."
Sadly, this is not quite true. We have all read about holiday gatherings and other public events interrupted by deranged individuals all across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, some parts of Asia and now even in New Zealand. Whether the weapon of choice is a handgun, a small explosive device (there have even been modified rice cookers), a truck, a machete or some other instrument of violence is not as significant as one would think, and terrorists know this. Outside the US the non-handgun weapons seem to be more common but if handguns were to be more tightly controlled in the US the perpetrators may simply change their methods. Not to say that no handgun restriction is justified but one has to recognize this to appreciate the full picture.
2
Care to give us the numbers for this carnage "all over Europe"? It is not anywhere near the actual daily carnage in your dangerous country.
5
Good job, Charles. By using a real occurrence you have showed the silent fear that many of us feel when we go to a large group event. We cannot refuse to go anywhere for that would be giving in to the crazies who want us to be fearful. So we go hoping for the best. The fear is real as is the threat. What we can do is to vote locally in 2019 and nationally in 2020 to throw out the politicians who refuse to respond to the American public’s efforts to control weapons that have no sane justification to be in a non military person’s hands. VOTE
5
This happened at the Independence Day fireworks show in Myrtle Beach last year. I was with my children and a dear friend and her daughter.
There was a stampede of people. Panicked people passing along rumors about gunmen going crazy. The Ripley’s Aquarium staff let us into their administrative offices to shelter in place.
It was approximately 40 minutes before the security and police department deemed the site all clear. It turns out it was a fight, no gun in sight. My friend was traumatized by this experience and will not be back.
But the fact that we react like this to any incidence of localized hostility is damaging to our psyche, and frankly, our economy. We have a lot of people afraid to be around strangers. Especially foreign potential tourists do not want to be in the US because they are afraid of us.
We should all be ashamed our society doesn’t care enough to address reasonable solutions to this uniquely American problem.
6
I think that the gun culture will likely be bred out of America, but it will take another couple of generations and a whole lot of demographic changes to cause this change.
2
In this editorial Charles coins the phrase I've been trying to identify for the past two years which perfectly describes this era: "ambient dread in the American psyche."
11
I was there with my wife, stepson and another teen. We were about 50 yards down with parade route from DuPont Circle. Suddenly everyone, everyone, was running towards us and the thick crowd was scattering all around. I grabbed my group and started running away from the Circle.
The crowd was big and we were getting jostled. I was afraid someone would fall and get trampled, or that a shooter or bomber might be heading our way, so I steered us into a narrow, deep pizza shop. I pushed my wife and kids past the busy counter to the very back of the restaurant, so we could look for a rear exit if something happened.
Like Charles's children, ours were shaking and crying. I left them with my wife and headed up to the front door so I could know what was coming and what to do next. Fortunately, nothing happened. There was no shooting. But we all know there could have been.
Like New Yorkers after 9/11, we won't stop attending public events in our city. But it's an unnecessary shame to have to have an evacuation instinct and terrify your children because of the risk of mass violence. I don't care if the risk is statistically small, we shouldn't have to run in fear at a parade in the streets of our nation's capitol.
16
@Triple C
There was an incident, there was a gun - albeit a BB pistol, there was a shooting of the gun by one man at another, there was an arrest, there was a threat made by that man to return and kill the other man.
How is any of that behavior to be dismissed because the criminal didn't have a Glock and take out 20+ people?
3
Methinks it is past time for politicians, those in office and those running, to be compelled to publicly endorse one of two propositions.
Prop. #1; Stricter gun control laws must become a priority.
Prop. #2; The mass shooting of innocents is now an accepted part of the American experience and ethos, and may take its rightful place along side the flag, baseball. Mom, and apple pie.
After the ho hum response to the Virginia Beach shootings, it seems that Proposition #2 is now the default position.
How close are we to where a mass shooting doesn't get mentioned on the evening news?
We are sick and getting sicker.
12
This country is being destroyed by people who profess to love it, but who really just want to spread fear and hate to help preserve their white privilege. It's horrible and destructive, but we will overcome it. Love, inclusiveness, decency and thought will win in the end. The people who spread the fear are worried that they will lose the advantages they've enjoyed as conservative, white, Christian heterosexuals. And you know what? They're right. Like the dinosaurs they are, their time is almost up.
28
@Larry Bennett Larry, you left out the most important word when you condemn white privilege : "male."
8
My fondest hope is that young people old enough to vote will do so, and that they will support progressive policies that benefit all—including rational, reasonable gun regulation. The Second Amendment, as twisted by the NRA, has been worshipped as somehow overarching every other right—including everyone’s right to feel safe in public. My second fondest hope is that the NRA’s recently exposed financial shenanigans will implode the entire corrupt organization. The exposure of its serving to launder Russian money supporting Republican candidates may be the final nail in its coffin.
6
"It is us who have watched mass shooting after mass shooting and done almost nothing about it."
It is we. Just saying.
Your chance of dying in a mass shooting is very much less than your chance of dying from an insect sting. This doesn't mean it's not something that needs to be dealt with (I think the insect thing is a problem too given that I've been two times to the emergency room from wasp stings) but apologizing for your generation because "you" collectively didn't do something about a problem whose solution is not at all clear is just more pointless virtue signaling.
7
If Mr. Blow were honest, he would have to admit that a gay parade might be more likely to be attacked by an AK toting Islamo-terrorist in just about any and every European country, in spite of their prohibitions on otherwise law abiding people owning guns. Or the terrorist might easily choose to mow the paraders down with a delivery truck. But he is not being honest, and neither is the Times, as they relentlessly bellow their one agenda, and agenda with which many millions in the non-urban areas do not agree.
5
I think that the reasonable fear of omnipresent guns is also stoking the rise of police shootings of unarmed black men. Yes, racism is to blame as well, but sometimes the officer and the victim are both black. After the victim is shown to have been unarmed, we damn the officer as "trigger happy." Many if not most of the police shootings have been egregiously awful, but when I consider the policeman's unhappy lot--whether to use lethal force or be on the receiving end of it--I have to temper my indignation. Police unions are nearly unanimous in calling for stricter gun control. If black lives matter, as they surely do, then law enforcement needs the assurance that citizens are unarmed.
1
@Daniel D'Arezzo
No. The criminals have run rampant in America since the 1960s, with cops often shot and killed. The criminals (almost always male) always had better weapons. That changed in the horrendous 1980s and 1990s crime waves. Law enforcement knows the citizenry will always be the impediment to public safety. That's why they fear most the domestic violence calls. Not because the woman and children or even grandmother being beaten are dangerous, but because the son, father, husband, boyfriend, and even grandfather has a gun and will not hesitate to kill everyone, family and police.
Police are not often attacked by citizens but when they are the attackers often are affected by drugs or alcohol and are just not rational. They will try to hurt the police by any means available. They will try to take the officer’s sidearm. They may already be carrying a weapon and try to use it. Due to the reaction times of a human body, the officer can be fatally injured before being able to ward off the attack. So they must react before the harm can be done to them.
The nature of self defense is preventing injury and that means reacting before the harm can be done. Whenever human beings acts in self defense, they will have to act in anticipation of the attack or it will be likely ineffective. That means they will react before the threat is clear and will sometimes harm people who only seem to be a threat.
Judging people’s actions without experiencing what they do is a fundamental mistake. But people do it all the time.
@Maggie I'm puzzled by your "no" because you seem to agree with me that police have a legitimate fear of firearms in the wrong hands. What are you saying no to?
Many if not most of the comments refer to gun and suicide choosing to ignore the horrific and yes, now common deaths caused by assault weapons that rapidly shoot multiple bullets that shred the human body. The problem is a health crisis which remains unique to our country and will not change until the society accepts these truths. Mental health policy is not the root cause - no other countries share the problem or access to assault weapons. I am thankful for the actions of Mr. Blow..There but for the grace of God go I.
4
For Republicans, promoting the NRA is best for their bottom line, and ultimately, that’s all that matters to them.
Republicans see election to government as a business opportunity.
It’s a way to get at the money.
They don’t care the country or the people - it’s all about getting rich and pleasing their donors.
That’s why they don’t care about climate change, or the poor, or healthcare, or gun violence.
It’s why the Republican Supreme Court supports corporations over people.
It’s why Mitch McConnell won’t allow anything that would help people over himself or his donors.
Money talks.
I mean “money is speech”.
7
Suicide bombers, crazed drivers of stolen vehicles and cowardly planted bombs are the tools of the deranged in countries with sensible gun laws. This world is nuts. A couple of our major military industrial companies are merging to make better weapons of mass destruction. In Alabama they allow the convicted rapist to file for custodial rights of the child they forced into their victim while not allowing the woman the right to choose what happens with their body. This stuff is crazy and it's not some dystopian fiction. Whats not to like?
3
Charles, please stop blaming complete categories of people for society's various ills--white people for racism, your generation for mass shootings--and then demanding or expecting apologies. It only further antagonizes folks. Learn to draw some Venn diagrams instead and look to make connections, not divergences.
8
"That is the ghastly legacy that my generation has bequeathed to theirs."
Most of the shooters come from their generation, not yours. While I agree that it is horrible that a simple celebration has to live in fear, I do not see it as a generational thing.
You justifiably get up in arms (pun intended) when people use the actions of a few bad actors to condemn all young black men as thugs, yet you have no problem using the actions of a few bad actors to condemn all members of the NRA. BTW, I am not a member nor do I own any guns.
1
Who is the ' us' who needs ' help' in America?
I live in the Chicago area. I was born and raised black and poor on the South Side of Chicago.
Chicago has more homicides than New York City and Los Angeles combined. No space nor time is safe from gun violence in Chicago. Over the Memorial Day Holiday weekend 10 Chicagoans were homicide victims and 52 were wounded. This past weekend was a gunfight shooting mayhem gallery.
But because they were largely black and brown and poor their lives don't matter. They are expected to be grateful, invisible and silent. There is no closet nor place of worship where they can hide.
America has 25% of the world's prisoners with 5% of it's people. And 40% of those prisoners are black like Ben Carson because the 13% of Americans who are black are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
' I am an invisible man' from ' Invisible Man ' by Ralph Ellison..
See ' The Chi' if you can't tale nor understand Chicago crime and violence news.
5
"It seemed to me that it was I who should have been apologizing to them, or more precisely, it was my generation that should be apologizing to theirs."
What nonsense. His generation is my generation, and I don't have to apologize for anything. I'm not responsible for the president ( I voted for Ms. Clinton) or the NRA (which I think should be shut down for rampant bribery). I'm certainly not responsible for the Nazis, who should all have been tracked down and prosecuted after Charlottesville.
But I'm still expected to apologize, because of the "generation" I belong to. Identity politics strikes again.
5
Author lacks a world view. Can't think of any country in the world that is more tolerant of LGBTQ communities than the US, and having lived for past 7 years on Middle River in Wilton Manors, gayest city per capita in US.do not recall any rumors of attentats or violence against folks with a different orientation. By contrast, in Senegal ,a"democracy,"where I was assigned for 2 years 1 can be jailed for up to a year for being gay, and same is true for other west African countries, and in the east, Uganda, which has criminalized homosexuality.Article has an elitist tone to it. Times columnist with a sinecure descending from a flight from no doubt a university town where he had given a paid speech thanks to the Speakers Bureau, encounter with the 2 women. and obligatory attack on the NRA. and domestic terrorism. But does author include Boston marathon bombings and Pulse night club attack in that same category?Compared to journalists in other countries where the mortality rate among folks of the word is high, author has a wonderful life, "the best of everything and ballroom bananas!"He should appreciate it and find something positive, decent to say about his fellow citizens and the country that has made it all possible! .
1
This article is not about homophobia. It is about the fact that any event (country music festival in Las Vegas), church, mosque, synagogue, school, work place or movie theater can now be the scene of a mass shooting. This article is about the pervasive fear that all Americans (gay, straight, young, old, attending any typical venue, and of any religion) now feel every day.
3
The lack of self-examination in this article is astounding. The NYT has had a huge influence on the false perception that mass-shootings are on the rise.
Mr. Blow, you helped victims of the fear you created, how very Trump of you!
5
Mass shootings ARE on the rise!!
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/mass-shootings-increasing-harvard-research/
And even if they weren’t, are you arguing that everything is just fine because the rate of horrific mass shootings has remained steady? Are you arguing that that is a good thing? Something that should not concern us?
2
We have turned our Nation over to the war profiteers, lock, stock, and barrel. Pun intended.
Not satisfied with selling bombs and planes and armor to other nations around the world, sometimes to both sides of a dispute. Not satisfied with the profits involved with those sales, these same oligarchs want to see US at war with each other to further stoke their bottom lines.
And we watch our children die in their schools and movie theaters. And we watch as our so called leaders call for "thoughts and prayers" instead of bans on military style firearms intended for only one purpose: killing humans; a lot of humans; we keep believing their lies and voting to keep them in office because we have bought their lie that guns make us safer. They do not. They make us dead.
In the Old Wild West it was common for the cowboys and frontiersmen to have to leave their firearms with the marshal. They knew how dangerous those things are.
There is one place the NRA will not allow guns to be carried: Their offices. They know how dangerous those things are.
3
Has anyone noticed that not a single Democratic presidential wannabe has yet to say anything about gun control? Can't imagine why.
2
@sharon5101 Well for one thing a couple of them must carry concealed.
@sharon5101
Sorry to wake you with accuracy, but almost ALL the Democratic candidates have publicly addressed gun violence, the 2nd Amendment, the NRA and gun control.
Next time, do your own homework:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democratic-candidates-embrace-gun-control-in-notable-shift/2019/04/10/c2ba9bce-5a0f-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?noredirect&utm_term=.f4f11b10820b.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/heres-2020-democrats-differ-gun-control/story?id=62970498
As did Hillary Clinton and even NRA-backed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Clinton and Sanders during that campaign often referred to gun access as being the problem. Clinton: "We've got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun anywhere, anytime. And I don't believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people."
4
Very good. A real story about a very real issue in this country. This is the face of domestic terrorism.
5
52 people were shot in Chicago last weekend, 8 of whom died. Is that not considered a mass shooting? Yet little concern is shown nationally. Why is that?
5
When I get on a airliner, I always assess my escape route just in case, and I’m a ex airline mechanic that us very familiar with these aircraft. A student in a classroom shouldn’t even be considering a emergency situation involving a gun man. I’m ashamed to be a American, the world looks upon us as ignorant, dangerous fools.
4
I wonder how many conservatives, at least internally, respond with the thought "Well, if they weren't gay, especially out in public, then none of this would happen. They can always stay inside and that way they wouldn't bother anybody."
3
Are you serious, Mr. Blow? This story sounds like a case of chickenlittleism. How are these young women going to take their place in society, doing the many difficult things that one has to do in life, if they panic and run. mindlessly seeking male help from the nearest man when there is no danger?
2
Actually, are you serious? There was concern that a mass shooting was occurring! Everyone ran from the scene! Hundreds of people ran! These four girls were no more scared than anyone else at the event. They were no more scared than the hundreds of concert goers who ran from the shooter in Las Vegas! They did what people all over the country are now trained to do when faced with an active shooter situation: Run first, Hide if necessary or Fight given no other option. They weren’t looking for a man to cower by.
3
So much for Generation X.
@The Buddy
Gen Z males are already on the gun violence bus. It is part and parcel of being a man in America. Except for gay men, bless them. That seems to be the only group of males in America who have their act together. It is why females of all ages for decades chose to be around gay males and not the random dangerous straight males.
1
"...it is absolutely plausible that there could be yet another man with a weapon hellbent on watching bullets rip through flesh." Nearly always a white man, and very often both a hoarder of guns and a vet, which it seems no one wants to talk about.
4
Ghastly is the exact word to describe the real "American Carnage", meaning the profitmaking zeal of the entire arms industry that wreaks havoc domestically and abroad.
1
I always appreciate Blow's writing. I think it's worth noting that despite the glitter, Pride is not just a "fun parade." Also, a mass shooting at a Pride parade is less likely to be the kind of random violence Blow seems to refer to when he writes how this panic could occur "even" at a parade "bursting with rainbows," and more likely to be a targeted hate crime. Many of us have experienced violence or the threat of it for being LGBTQ. Armed neo-Nazis disrupted at the Detroit Pride parade this weekend under police escort.
4
Charles, it’s not generational, it’s cultural.we are being held hostage by a group of gun loving, scared little boys trying desperately to express what they do not possess; manliness. That many of these people are descendants of traitors is not surprising.
I blame Lincoln for not snuffing out every bit of the confederacy when he had the chance.
5
Think of the public in Nice as the terrorist drove a truck over large numbers of people. Remember Charlie Hebdo. Those were real.
1
Yes, they are Domestic Terrorists. A fact our misaligned government refuses to acknowledge. And yes they are all men. I find myself increasingly reluctant to go to crowded venues, the farmers market, concerts, etc. I look around while in the checkout line at Costco. Most places have a decided lack of security, as to make it too easy for a man with a gun to kill. We have to do better. We have to have gun control. We need to stop these crazy men from having the access to weaponry. Kids who do active shooter training in school instead of the tornado drills I used to do. How did we get here.
7
Thank you for opening your door to these young women. As a society we should be opening doors to each other instead of slamming them shut, which seems to be the tendency now.
3
Mr. Blow. Thank you for your actions. It was their luck to enter a room that a responsible and caring individual answered their request for entry
Another sign of incompetence in a Democratic run city.
They need to fix that fountain.
3
@True Observer
And what is broken with the Dupont Circle roundabout fountain? Have you ever been to the District?
1
This is an absolutely correct statement on our society today and its effect on normal citizens. I avoid all parades and crowds because of the constant threat of a mass shooting. The next event to avoid is Trump's July 4th speech on the National Mall. Heaven forbid that it turn into another Las Vegas or Orlando. So many unbalanced people with guns are waiting to make their mark in America's bloody post-modern times.
2
The ultimate goal of terrorists has always been to make people live in a state of constant fear, so that they are easily controlled and exploited. The terror attacks are only a mean towards this end.
In that respect, the NRA (and it’s political branch, known as the republican party) is by far the most successful terrorist group in history.
They have managed to turn the educated population of the richest and most powerful country in the world into a group of people living in fear.
5
Although the column is a well-needed reminder of how our civic life is being disrupted, most comments are about controlling gun violence. There is no silver bullet. But for gosh sakes can’t we at least load up a few bronze ones? Let’s reject the thinking that because such-and-such a measure won’t totally solve the problem nothing can be done. Surely legislators can make a start! Continue thoughts and prayers by all means, but also do something! If a 1% chance of a terrorist attack is enough to cause half the country to support s total Muslim ban, why isn’t a 1% chance that soon we’ll all be knocking desperately on doors justification for making that start?
2
I have to ask once again: why do people in the United States have a greater right to own a gun than I have to be safe from guns?
7
@Kendall Zeigler
Because the constitution generally enshrines negative rights, not positive ones.
A society awash in guns will necessarily be a society awash in gun violence. And anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.
It’s that simple.
7
Yes, things have changed particularly over the past three years. Living in fear, anxiety and depression no matter how slight has become the "new normal, even for kids. Its sad that to die from "natural causes" has become even more remote than ever......It's Time.
3
It's not your fault Charles, or your generation's fault. Blame it on the NRA and the conservative Supreme Court that have morphed into something grotesque. Tell me why class action lawsuits can be launched against makers of opioids but not gun manufacturers? Tell me why the second amendment was interpreted in the 1970's as an archaic right for militias in the 1700's but now means every citizen can arm themselves to the teeth? Tell me how members of congress and the senate who support the NRA and the modern interpretation of the 2nd amendment sleep at night? Not your fault Charles.
7
Here, is where all of that anti abortion legislative activism should be placed. Real issues and real threats. New Zealand should be out model. Our reps are failing us, repeatedly.
5
"They threw themselves down, on the bed, on the floor, anywhere they could find to discharge the stress of running in fear of their lives." They threw themselves on your bed? If this is true, this the most entitled, and frankly, disturbing part of the entire article. You let them into your room and they felt that now they own the place? Millennial narcissism at it's finest.
6
Hah! I thought the same thing when I read this! Walking into a stranger’s room was invasion of privacy enough but throwing themselves on the bed was just wrong. Hopefully, Blow embellished the [non] story.
1
so were there shots fired?
what actually happened and in how large of an area that people panicked and started "stampeding" everywhere?
2
'Those women in my room had every right to fear for their lives.'
Incidentally, women have always had right and reason to fear for their lives. When we walk on a dark street, when we jog in the park alone, when we ride in a taxi, on a first date, in our own homes.
Parades should be cordoned off with barricades. Store employees should report suspicious men and checking for stored weapons, and all men should be checked for guns as they enter any parade or other organized mass outdoor activity, just as arenas and stadiums now do. This is what we've come to.
4
This is us and this is now. When my husband and I go to the movies, we always check these days for places to hide should a shooter decide to shoot up the cinema.
1
In this so called christian nation it is appalling that our children live in fear of gun violence threatening their very being. How does the clergy reconcile this reality and not spea?. Take all of your Franklin Grahams and single them out for a lack of leadership in the humanity they want to influence. Speak out even once about NRA tactics and wealth and the consequences of its very being.
3
WaPo has a front page story about the NRA and their blood money dole. With names. What does one do in a country so stained by so many people with clout who don’t care? And so many just keep putting up with it? Thank you Sir/Ma’am May I have another ? I don’t know anymore.
3
I’ve plotted out my escape route in my local gym if a mass shooter enters. Sorry, the signs at the front door and in the locker rooms telling patrons to report suspicious looking characters isn’t enough protection for me. Only an armed guard at the gym’s entrance with a metal detector would be good enough. America, as a pro-gun, Dirty Harry nation, has become like the gangs that ran amok in Stanley Kubrick movie “A Clockwork Orange,” where thugs and crazies run around randomly murdering people. Kubrick’s film is fiction, America with its cities of crazies with guns, is real.
5
I don’t think you need to apologize. If anything you showed them how an adult should act.
1
In this sad story emblematic of the fear stoked by the presence of guns everywhere, let's not forget one shining positive: four terrified young women expected a person they had never met and knew nothing about to provide shelter when they feared for their lives. And that complete stranger did everything he could to help them, even though he had never met them and knew nothing about them when he opened his door.
Charles is a small instance of the goodness that sustains us; these women of the trust in other human beings we cannot live without.
Guns poison our society; they are a cancer. We should all, though, be glad that in a moment of fear and panic those women trusted that a stranger would help, and that that stranger in fact did.
286
@Gary
Great letter! Thanks Gary.
11
@Gary: An acquaintance whom I spoke with recently made a trenchant observation - I was wearing an orange t-shirt in support of an anti-gun day - he asked me why, I told him, and (he holds somewhat different views, not entirely pro-gun but not entirely anti-gun either) he noted that "gun control" is a red flag. I thought: Yes, like "global warming" - it's true, but "climate change" is perhaps more applicable. Can we invent another phrase? "Anti-mass murder", or "I'm against arrogant, unwarranted random attacks" somehow doesn't do it; "Anti-gun violence"? I don't know, but I get what he was saying.
I know, I know: The 2nd Amendment - but as another friend observed, that meant single-shot muskets, when it was adopted, not to mention that it only applied to the landed gentry.
6
Mr. Blow is the first person I've heard express generational guilt over how mass shootings have become an entrenched fear in American society. This a day after his colleague, Mr. Douthat, describes left-leaning political dystopia as "millennial ingratitude." I find this development extremely interesting.
Perhaps Mr. Blow's lament arises from an association with his daughter who might experience a similar fear. However, I personally never connected mass shootings as a specifically Gen X failure. I'm happy to blame Gen X for many things but I never thought to blame them for mass shootings until today. I wish Mr. Blow had expanded on his thought. Less anecdote and more explanation.
You contrast that sentiment with Douthat's reaction though? You're kind of like, "wait a second," there is actually a lot of things young people should be ungrateful about. The past 40+ years of political history has essentially rendered the entire country a complete train wreck right now. GDP and Dow Jones notwithstanding. How is that our fault? We weren't even alive when this process began.
You're left thinking Blow is right to express guilt and Douthat deserves contempt more than gratitude.
Gun culture. What is that? It’s a stereotyping of people. It’s a false characterization of people whereby a common characteristic is used to attribute entirely different characteristics to them because they share that one characteristic. A man committed a mass murder with a gun, therefore any person who owns a gun like it must be at high risk of doing the same or of allowing anther person to do the same. A person who has African American features shares those with some person who has committed a crime. Therefore that person with African American features must be intending to commit a crime, too.
Some people are advocating for dangerous behaviors with guns like anyone being free to carry them in public, or vigilantes acting with guns to counter gun violence. They don’t represent the vast majority of gun owners. But nobody is going to accept blame for others doing bad things with guns, or for others advocating for poor policies about guns in public, nor should they have to accept such blame. But the stereotyping does that.
3
@Casual Observer, if you think "gun culture" is simply stereotyping, you should attend a gun show in the South for an eye-opening experience.
5
No president haI s the legal authority ti "restrain the TV and film industry at will. Nor is there any evidence whatsoevet that gun violence is in any way related to fictional depictions of it in either of those media.
That would be a biased sample. It proves that some are highly interested in guns and some seem to be obsessed. Generalizing from a specific is not reasonable.
1
America expanded across the continent at the point of a gun or a sword. How many Indigenous Peoples were murdered or robbed in the colonial wars that expanded the USA’s territory? How many Africans were enslaved and held captive by gun bearing citizens? How many Mexicans were killed or robbed of their property when the USA and Texas took the Southwest by force? How many women have existed in a state of powerlessness and fear because of the violent armed threats of their husbands or partners? How many colonial victims of America’s armed aggression? I submit that the right to bear arms is not so much about independence from England. It is more about one privileged class and race in America taking and keeping all it can in the world for itself through the threat of armed violence.
10
Eliminate guns and all murder and oppression would be impossible. Interesting claim.
People have a startle reflex that throws them into a fight or flight reaction when they are surprised by various sights and sounds that could represent threats. It happens when there is an unexpected loud noise, from a voice behind one when one is absorbed in work. It happens when a something thing moves in the brush near where we are walking. It can happen to people who have suffered from long exposure to war. It can happen to people who have been attacked because of being stereotyped and previously attacked by others who think hatefully towards them, and who remember the fear.
Finding one factor that contributes to a panic and then blaming the panic on that one factor because one wants to arouse people’s fear and anxiety about that one factor is not generating an honest and reasonable discussion.
Gun violence is not the critical factor in this story, it’s the continued bigotry against LGBT people that produces random attacks against them by strangers. It’s a separate issue from the gun debate.
1
Charles Blow did not put the gun violence fear into the minds of the panicked women. Las Vegas, Pulse, Aurora, etc. did.
1
100 million people in the US live in a home with a gun. The number of those who create problems, if one eliminates criminals who use guns, is extremely small.
The gun control measures proposed are, in general, created by those who don't have guns, meaning that no change is required for them. It's very easy to say others should change.
And those proposed measures, as everyone knows, will do very little to solve the problem.
The only effective "gun control" policy would be for the police to go into every home, search for, and confiscate all guns. Gallup polls indicate that 30% of Americans want a total ban on handguns, which is what would be required if they got their way.
Just like Blow here, the easy answer for many people is to call for "gun controls" and blame the NRA (which the vast majority of gun owners don't even belong to).
And people seem to believe that if we "do something" (e.g., ban bump stocks), then they "care" and those who oppose "doing something" are not as enlightened or caring.
The 2nd amendment exists, and we'll have a conservative supreme court for at least the next generation. The solution is going to have to be something besides vague calls for ineffective "gun controls" and blaming the NRA.
8
Common sense doesn’t enter in? Do you drive an unlicensed, uninsured car? Has the govt come to confiscate it?
3
@Jonathan Leal
There is common sense, and then there is logic. Licenses are for raising revenue, not safety. Insurance is to pay other peoples' bills if you cause an accident, not for safety.
......and in fact, if you drive without a license you can get ticketed. Or if you get caught without insurance, you can get cited.
But you have proven my point. Nothing in your response deals with the fact that the gun control measures proposed will do little more than make a small dent in gun deaths. People love to point to Australia, ignoring the fact that gun deaths were already declining before the new policies were instituted. Or they use correlational data showing differences between states.
When 30% of people want a total ban, the context for proposing "reasonable gun control measures" is quite different for different people. For these gun control advocates, they are proposing measures that will do little good, although they will get a warm feeling inside for favoring them. And then what? They will go after stronger measures.
Gun owners read the comments in the NYT and know that for many gun control advocates these "reasonable gun laws" are only the first step toward what many (i.e 30%) want, which is a total ban. So they dig in their heels.
Many proposals (e.g., Booker's) are so severe and imposing on gun owners that they effectively take gun owners from collaborating on solutions. Gun owners rightfully see those proposals as "you change, but I don't have to."
1
A worthy column but let us not forget that Clinton-Obama had many years to mount a campaign to rid our culture of those who inflict their gun-culture on us. They could have defeated the gun lobby with its influence over a Congress susceptible to it, and by restraining TV and the film industry from their flagrant display of shootings and violence, making it look common-place, a quick solution to any problem, inducing the susceptible to copy it.
There have been many examples of government representatives speaking to the media urging them to express caution in their productions without curtailing freedom of expression,
3
This is not a problem of a particular generation, it is a problem primarily caused by the Republican politicians who have cynically chosen to retain power by fostering racial and other kinds of division. The politicians are paid off by, and the power is used for the benefit of, corporate and other big-money interests, who must also bear responsibility.
7
@skeptonomist
America became violent - began its violent spike in the 1960s under 8 years of Democratic administrations.
1
And we have a president who supports the madness of the NRA openly addressing their convention every year
8
@kathy
Independent Bernie Sanders was a lifelong staunch supporter of the NRA and his campaigns a beneficiary, as are many, many Democratic Party candidates, too.
1
Sensible gun laws in accordance with the Right to Bear Arms is logical and needed although today's laws are more comprehensive than they were 30 years ago when we never had school shootings or mass murder on this scale.
There is a deeper psychosis affecting the USA and the gun is only a tool used by aberrant people to make some social or dystopian view-point.
Treat the symptom sure but the disease is still present.
What is going on with males, many from privilege and what would seem "normal foundations" to shoot people from their social circle. Look at last week's Virginia Beach shooter as a broadening base example. Did the gun make him shoot his co-workers?
I believe the issue is access to instant communication technology and social media which gives these whackos a stage to gain the notoriety they psychotically crave.
Guns are the current tool du jour of these psychopaths, limit that without addressing the problem's foundation and they move on to some other tool.
2
Couldn't you just for once say something about sick people rather than a sick country. The vast (vast!) majority of American people -- black, brown, red, white, yellow, rainbow, green -- are decent citizens. We're all equally horrified by the violence. We don't belong to some psychopathic collective, and we shouldn't be shamed into thinking so.
81
@Ken
Please explain why the US has so many more sick people than anywhere else in the world. We are number 1 in gun deaths per 100,000. I won't cite a link because you can google it yourself, and find a hundred sites that document this.
I am not trying to shame or guilt you. I too am bothered by having to be bothered by this. But the problem won't go away on its own.
69
@Ken
Fine, then I say it is way past time for the 'decent' citizens to vote out all gop, as they are really the ones who are aggressively blocking any real dialogue about this, much less any concrete action. And yes, we are all part of a psychopathic collective. No shame involved, unless you have eyes, ears, thoughtfulness and a conscience.
That this goes on and on, with the NRA pushing away what the majority of 'decent citizens' say they want, gun control.
I still maintain that trump mocks us every day for having something we used to pretend to believe in. Yes a sick country that accepts this complete degenerate degrading behavior and will not accept holding it to account.
Where are the values and dignified behavior and policies that have made progress in a better society? All thrown away because of some repeated falsehood about Progressive accomplishments? Voter suppression not only tolerated but actively supported?
So, come on out 'vast majority ... of decent citizens"
Speak up, register, vote out those who are debasing the very thing you claim to value. How about it?
46
@Ken
Then why do many Americans keep electing
somme reps who do nothing to stop the carnage?
Obviously a minority, but a sizable one!
35
Thank you for helping them.
4
The day when America's consciousness and humanity deteriorated to a point of no return was Friday, December 14, 2012, when twenty kindergartners were viciously slaughtered inside their classroom by a 20 year old mentally-deranged psychopath who lived in his mother's basement. In the almost 7 years since this massacre, our federal government has done absolutely nothing to protect the citizenry from the incessant, almost daily, ravages of gun violence.
20 kindergartners and 6 staff members shot and killed inside of their classroom - Nothing happened.
14 office workers shot and killed at a Christmas party - Nothing happened.
9 black people shot and killed inside of a church - Nothing happened.
49 gay people shot and killed inside a nightclub - Nothing happened.
58 concert-goers shot and killed at a music festival - Nothing happened.
17 students and staff members shot and killed inside of their high school - Nothing happened.
26 worshipers shot and killed inside of their church - Nothing happened.
5 journalists shot and killed inside the offices of their newspaper - Nothing happened.
12 city employees shot and killed inside of a municipal building - Nothing happened.
Millions of Americans begging their government for meaningful federal gun-control measures - Nothing happened.
On December 12, 2012, we as a nation, failed to defend the most defenseless of our citizens from the horrors of gun violence. We, the citizenry and elected officials, collectively failed as a nation.
13
One minor correction: The NRA's Washington supporters are not "handmaidens," as Mr. Blow calls them. They are too well paid to be "handmaidens." Thugs, lackeys, co-conspirators is more like it.
4
Gun control advocates need a serious re-branding. Drop that name/phrase, entirely - it's a no-win proposition as soon as it's uttered.
The cause should be gun SAFETY. Simple, common-sense provisions to make it safer for everyone to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and safer for everyone else around them while everyone is exercising those rights. Assault weapons bans, sensible background checks, bump stock bans, etc. - these are all gun safety measures. No one is controlling your right to bear arms, just making sure you do safe in a way that's safe for you and all others. The brand name is the problem here.
3
I don't think it's our generation (I'm a Boomer) as much as it is the more fearful "conservative" mindset. That mindset has been around forever, actually, and it will probably always exist - there will always be those who are so terrified of change some will even harm others in order to stop that change.
Of course LGBTQ people have also been around forever, but the "change" that so terrifies some is that now the rest of us are accepting them into humanity and life, something long overdue.
3
The ghastly legacy is from the NRA and the members that continue to support CEO Wayne LaPierre's insane attitude about the Second Amendment.
I've come full circle in less than 30 years. I was out to a small degree about being a lesbian in the 90s and early 2000's. Now I find that I don't to share anything at all about my sexual identity in public or in private. I used to be able to have discussions with people about political issues. We might not have agreed but it wasn't looked at as an opportunity to indulge in name calling and threats. Now we can't even approach a stranger to tell him/her that their car has a flat tire or something simpler.
We've become a very angry nation. Some of that anger is valid. But when we have a president and a party that, through both its action and non-action, supports violence against those who disagree we lose the opportunity for discussions about anything. People become terrified over the smallest things because they don't know if they are safe at home, in school, in the laundromat, at work, etc. A man like Trump making the statements he's made worsens the problems.
We are being bullied by our president and his party. This is not a liberal or a conservative problem. It's a national problem when people have to worry about getting death threats for having opinions. It's a national tragedy when the extremists win and that's what's happening now. They are winning and the adults are losing.
6/9/2019 9:58pm
6
I wonder if it dawns on people that the GOP and NRA continued support for no gun laws in the face of mass shootings is not just about promoting the gun business, legal and illegal ( lot of them good ole boys from places like Virginia and Georgia can sell guns with impunity into the black market, and there is nothing to prevent them from doing that, as long as there are no laws requiring reporting lost or stolen guns, and also allowing for private gun sales without any kind of reporting of it). The other reason is highlighted by the topic of this article, that the fear of mass shootings is a very powerful political and social tool. Much the same way that the ever present threat of violence was used to keep Jim Crow in place, the fear of being killed in a mass shooting can tamper down other marginilized people. When people are killed seemingly for no reason (Las Vegas, Aurora Co) it adds to fear; but when you have a time of heightened hate, spurred on by the president of the US and his party, where rhetoric has reached levels not seen since the early 60's with violence to match, that fear of mass shootings is going to be there, whether it is a pride march or at a planned parenthood facility or at a group promoting gun control, can tamper down what people feel safe doing and give power to those on the side of hate and fear.
3
Most of the comments here are amazing with everyone hopping on the "ban guns" and "more gun control laws" bandwagons. As the article correctly states, there was no real gun, just a bb gun. The stampeded was caused by a rumor. Should we legislate rumors? How much totalitarianism do you want?
7
So, if it was you instead of those young women Mr. Blow referenced who heard loud noises that sounded like gunshots, you would say in that moment "nothing to see here, folks, it's just a BB gun and it's just another attempt at totalitarianism."
Give me a break.
6
Actually, that is the problem here, fear that giving people too much liberty will lead to anarchy and violence. There is a need to remove clear and present dangers in any society but determining what those are can be a big difficulty. How much risk is too much risk? How much liberty allows too bad outcomes to allow?
1
The United States has become a dysfunctional, toxic, sick society where *nobody can go anywhere* without the fear of being shot. Anybody who has lived abroad for a while can tell you that is so abnormal. And it will just get worse as most psychiatrists have forsaken their duty as doctors. Driven by greed, most of them refuse to take insurance and with fees in the hundred of dollars, more and more mentally ill and emotionally disturbed people will continue to use.guns to appease their inner demons. And Just you wait until the current generation of children who we have failed to protect at school so nutcases out there can have lethal toy become adults.
7
So critical to remember, the next time we're struggling to get energized over an unexciting political actor like Mrs. Clinton. Vote so that everyone has a chance to survive watching a parade.
7
Is it guns that are the real problem here, or the media stoking panic about guns?
Don't get me wrong. I think America is more than a little gun crazy and I wish we had more sensible gun laws. I certainly have no desire to ever own a gun myself. There are 40,000 gun deaths a year, and that's a terrible number.
That said, the actual danger of being killed in a mass shooting is beyond tiny. Sixty percent of gun deaths are suicides. Most of the rest are either crimes of passion (where the people knew each other) or just plain crimes (where victim and perpetrator often also know each other). Your chance of being killed in a mass shooting incident is one in millions.
We hear about them all the time because any mass shooting incident is NEWS and must trumpeted by the media to sell papers and get clicks. Our schools also stage active shooter drills, which again ups the fear factor. The fear created is far beyond what is appropriate for the actual risk.
Our focus should be on suicide prevention and community outreach in crime ridden neighborhoods. Let's save the lives of the truly at risk: the victims of suicidal depression and the young men (mostly) whose lives are tragically cut short by the prevalence of guns on the street.
The rest of us have very little chance of becoming gun victims, and Mr. Blow should know better than to say otherwise.
75
@Carl Skutsch
"The rest of us have very little chance of becoming gun victims, and Mr. Blow should know better than to say otherwise."
Tell that to all the schools across America who are spending scarce resources on becoming "hardened targets", learning the terrifying routine of the lockdown drill, teaching children to throw books, or their own bodies in front of shooters to stop them - which they are now doing with increasing regularity.
Mass shootings in public places are part of American life these days. Maybe you take comfort in statistics, but as the number of victims keeps rising, the worse your statistics are looking.
201
@Carl Skutsch You are absolutely correct in that mass shootings are a tiny percentage of total gun deaths. I also agree that the likelihood of any individual being a victim of a mass shooting is statically very low.
That said, Americans are more likely to be the victims of violence than any other advanced nation. That’s partly because of the very high rate of gun ownership, but also partly due to a culture of violence. A culture that goes back a long time, a lot longer than the baby boomers have been around.
So Mr. Blow’s mea culpa on behalf of an entire generation sounds rather like the recent apology issued by the NYPD for the behavior of its officers at the Stonewall Inn 50 years ago (who have long since retired or died): a faint virtue signaling coupled with self congratulatory smugness.
It’s likely that reasonable restrictions on gun ownership will help reduce gun violence. But without cultural change, the reduction might not be meaningful, particularly in the near and medium term. It’s instructive to look at the situation in Brazil, which has more gun violence than the US, but which requires that all guns be registered. Culture matters.
41
Mr. Skutsch and Shiv, thank you for your reasoned responses.
All that Mr. Blow is describing (and, in fact, doing) is the encouragement of panic for political ends, which I had always thought to be anathema to supporters of Democracy, and the province of demagogues.
It's exactly what Mr. Trump does with regard to immigrants and crime.
As in the UK during the Blitz, democratic leaders encourage calm. They do not lionize blind panic.
25
Thoughts and Prayers....our answer to everything in modern America. It is sad to witness the decline of this once great democracy. Money and power override common sense and the will of the people. We are now a country of ME people rather than US people.
2
This is a beautifully written piece. The turn to responsibility is heartbreaking. I would just add (as a short op-ed can’t) that the NRA has brought us here not only by ensuring lax gun laws, but also by linking arms with a far-right hateful coalition. The anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-black and -brown, anti-social justice narrative sells guns. And it encourages domestic terrorism.
349
@Heather M Please don't JUST blame the NRA. They are an advocacy group that sees the mass shootings as a small inconvenience to their ownership of weapons. The most blame falls on the shoulders of the GOP. If we want to end the unnecessary carnage of gun violence, (that NO other democratic country endures), then all GOP politicians have to be voted out of office.
7
@Heather M So...you try to take down the NRA and conservatives at the same time.
You do know that progressive women own guns too, don't you?
And progressive men, and progressive gay men and lesbian women?
Many have carry permits so they can protect themselves against crimes.
Violence doesn't discriminate, unlike your opinion about people who are different than you.
1
At the Tucson Festival of Books in March, Ed Asner came to discuss the new book he wrote decrying our current political situation. His co-author, Ed. Weinberger, talked at one point about gun control. He mentioned that the Mary Tyler Moore Show generally received close to 99% approval ratings in letters from viewers. But when they aired one show that briefly touched on gun control, that episode received almost universal condemnation. Now that was fifty years ago. It points to how our collective national angst with guns has been with us for a long time.
Doesn't it all come down to whether or not we can overcome by learning how to properly regulate ourselves? To robustly stand up for our basic human rights in wanting to live peacefully as human beings?
I do not claim to have any easy answers on the issue of gun control in America, but we should realize that when we turn our backs on young children shot to death in their elementary schools, we simply do not live in a civilized society.
414
My generation bestowed two gifts to these young ladies: the failure to even try to save a single life in light of our gun culture and laws; and massive hatred/intolerance of LGBT people, and their right to exist, let alone exist peacefully.
I wish I had an answer for them. I've voted for people who'd try to curtail gun violence. I voted for people - especially at the state level - who extended basic civil marriage rights to all.
But I can't do anything about the broader culture which gives rise to the fear and panic these young women experienced. Except raise my children to be better than my generation.
356
@Cathy
The "massive hatred/intolerance of LGBT people" was not a" gift that was bestowed "by your generation, any more than anti-semitism or racism was a "gift that was bestowed by your generation. "
All of the above long preceded your generation,
21
@DJS
True, it's a gift they were given by the generation preceding them, but then they turned and regifted it to us, and we're regifting it to the next generation.
6
It's up to us Charles to vote #NeverAgain on election day, November 2020 for candidates who support commonsense gun regulation. Our children and grandchildren are frightened that at any moment, especially at school, and now at prayer, that a gunman (yes, they're all men) will suddenly appear with an automatic weapon. We have to vote; it's time to use it wisely to protect our loved ones and even strangers. Congratulations on being a Good Samaritan and using your pulpit to advocate for an end to the endless gun massacres we've allowed mostly Republicans to perpetrate on the younger generation.
2
I was at DuPont circle when the panic occurred. I was right in the middle of it. Originally, I thought a celebrity came, and everyone was rushing to see them. Then I saw my friends sprinting away, and a crowd of people yelling at us to run. We ducked into an alleyway and jumped fences, and I was terrified because I couldn’t see my friends in the throng.
We live in a country where gun violence can happen at any time. The NRA has ensured that. As a high school student, I find myself pondering escape routes during class instead of focusing on my studies. No one should have to live in a world where you feel like at any second your life could be turned upside down by someone who should never have been able to have a firearm.
554
I was also there actually. in the circle itself in the center of the crosswalk for Massachusetts Ave. I only noticed something was wrong when the barrier next to me went down and people stared bolting. It ended up just being a fight and the only gun was a bb gun. There was another fight later but my husband stayed in the circle the whole time (I went to turn in a lost phone) and it was never anything actually dangerous. It still doesn't change the fact that we have been conditioned to this flight-first response though. I only ran because I saw people running but I didn't go far because I had no idea what was going on. It was scary and sad that even before I left the house I was hoping things would go fine and my husband doesn't quite get it because he's from the UK. I can only hope that we can change this new "normal" but I fear it might be difficult at this point.
45
@Sam Bender-Prouty
"As a high school student, I find myself pondering escape routes during class instead of focusing on my studies."
I did that in grammar school, in the early 1970s, before there had ever been a school shooting.
It's human nature for bored kids to make up exciting "what-if" scenarios. The difference is that back then it was another thing not to let the teacher catch you doing, whereas now, it can be used to self-righteously justify your political goals and your personal ennui.
2
@Eric
Today, making up exciting 'what if' scenarios is something that teachers like me lead students in doing as part of regular intruder drills. Not only do we have to ponder the "excitement" of a well-armed murderer choosing our school, we also have to report back to our school safety officer what we would do given the description, location, and armed status on our imagined murderer. Barricade? Charge? Flee? I do this with 11-13 year olds; others in the school do this with 5 year olds. Your comment was insensitive and unhelpful to the situation at hand. What could you do better next time?
54
What we are experiencing is the tyranny of the gun. Many gun owners like to claim that guns keep us free, that guns protect us from tyrants. But what they don't understand is that a society saturated with guns is a society were the guns themselves become our tyrants, our rulers.
Guns kill us so we buy more guns. High powered weapons kill a lot of us at once so we place heavily armed guards with their own high powered weapons all around us to defend against them.
The gun tyrant creates the fear, which creates the need, which increases the number of guns, which kills more people which creates more fear and so on. It's a positive feedback loop of fear, guns, death, and then more guns.
This is where we are. One loud bang results in a stampede. We are all on edge. Mass death lurks at every corner. It visits our most sacred spaces, our schools, our places of worship, and our homes. No place is safe and that is exactly what the gun tyrant wants because that increases its power and creates more guns.
The gun tyrant even has an ecclesiastical doctrine to promote its reign, the Second Amendment. It has to rule. It's our law, our legal and spiritual law.
Until we reject and rebel against gun tyrant and its doctrines, we are destined to live in fear of all.
Instead of submitting to the gun tyrant as a religious and patriotic duty, we must ask who actually needs them? What is their purpose other than to rule our lives?
579
@Bruce Rozenblit
"This is where we are. One loud bang results in a stampede. We are all on edge. Mass death lurks at every corner."
Except that through all or most of our history, guns were common and easily available (if pre-1968 laws were still in effect, you'd be able to buy them on Amazon today), and none of this happened.
I would look beyond the metal objects to the hearts and souls of our people. Something has gone wrong with Americans, not just the ones who run in panic for no reason, like wild animals, but the ones who, over the past thirty or so years, have gotten the notion that it is somehow a good idea to go out and kill a lot of people. We can fiddle with gun laws all we want, but, like Nero, our attention would be better paid to the fire consuming us.
35
@Eric
I think there is some credence to your idea that there is "fire consuming" parts of the populace, and that could perhaps help explain in part the surging rates of mass shootings. However, I think the root issue is simply how easy is for anyone to get access to a gun - and even if we have measures in place that would / could prevent people of suspect from obtaining guns (extremists, those with severe mental health issues, etc.) mass shootings like those in Los Vegas or Virginia Beach, where the motives or reasons of the perpetrator can't be definitively linked to such root causes, mass shootings can and will still occur.
17
For “most of our history” climate change and ransomware weren’t issues either. So, good news I guess. We don’t need to address them because they didn’t used to happen, and we don’t need to address modern day gun carnage because it didn’t used to happen either.
64
Fear is not just an unintended "ghastly legacy that my generation has bequeathed". It is purposeful. The point. The plan.
Demagogues consolidate power by exploiting fear. "Only I Can Save You", "I Alone Can Fix America"
The NRA uses fear to sell guns and drive donations. "The Only Thing That Stops A Bad Guy With A Gun Is A Good Guy With A Gun"
The GOP has spent decades making sure everyone knows who to fear. Who the "Other" is. How they will defend your right to own military style weapons so that you can defend your family against "Them".
How they will help you make "You Will Not Replace Us" your anthem.
Fear is what got Trump elected. It's what the GOP is counting on to maintain power as demographics change. It's what allows the gun industry to sell products with no other use than killing humans.
The fear "that a mass shooter could be anywhere" It's not just a "ghastly legacy". It's an industry. A business plan. A political strategy.
743
@LT The key to all of this is Graham Greene's terrific title "Ministry of Fear." The GOP has already exploited fear back in 2001, when it set up the Homeland Security Department, whose early TSA follies exemplified it.
Vote R to continue this; vote D to start ending it.
34
@LT
And don't forget the line from, of all places, Homer Simpson (or, rather, a very gifted writer):
"Let us kill that which we do not understand and, therefore, fear."
17
@LT
The NRA also passes around a lot of bribes. I remember when a student whose school was attacked by a gun-wielding lunatic criticized the gun culture, and his motives were impugned by somebody in the Florida government. The ex-official is no longer in the Florida government.
Why did the official throw his career away by insulting somebody he knew nothing about? Bribery.
On a lesser scale, a gubernatorial candidate in my state ruined his political career by intervening when a private business cut its subsidy to the NRA after a massacre. What was he thinking? About collecting a reward from the NRA.
I once read that in Imperial China bribery was a capital crime for which the source and recipient could be executed. In modern America we can't even admit that it is a problem.
8
Great essay Mr. Blow, but I must disagree in part. Yes, mass shootings have been going on too long, and it's a terrible thing. But it's not our generation's fault, as a whole. It's only Republicans and non-voters who are at fault. Democrats have always been making attempts to impose stricter gun control, and have always been blocked by Republicans. Republicans have always fought for the NRA, and against providing more comprehensive mental health care, so these mass shootings are really their fault. And non-voters are a secondary group to blame, because if they'd only gone and voted for Democrats, we'd have gotten gun control measures passed.
Overall too, it's not mass shootings that should concern all of humanity, it's climate change, also something that Republicans refuse to do anything about. Mass shootings don't kill all that many people, but climate change is on track to kill us all. The only other major thing that could easily kill us all are nuclear weapons, and guess what, Republicans are also against doing anything about them.
Bottom line, the problem is Republicans. As everyone at any Pride parade should already be aware.
884
Dan, while I'm sure we don't agree on guns, I agree with you wholeheartedly on your critique of this column.
Our generation as a whole needs feel no guilt at all regarding gun (or any other) violence.
You may wish to blame Republicans, rural people, the poorly educated, the insecure, and that is your right.
I personally believe that blaming any of those groups is simplistic, and deflects blame, allowing the truly guilty to slip away, like the true assailant of the Central Park Jogger did. (Sorry, not enough characters available to detail my beliefs about the complex causes of recent violence in the US, but suffice to say that the media hold a high position because of the fame they give to perpetrators, and family and cultural traditions have gone by the wayside).
And, yes, Mr. Blow's sense of proportion, like that of his unexpected guests, is badly warped.
Climate change and nuclear weapons, among other things, have a much greater chance of killing or hurting us than mass shooters. Statistically, it makes just as much sense to scatter and run in panic in response to lightning in the sky as in response to firecrackers — You're about as likely to be struck by lightning as shot by a mass shooter (about 51 people struck by lightning each year in the US).
14
Thanks Eric, but I don't think Mr. Blow's sense of proportion is that skewed; he was focusing on mass shootings in this column, but I don't really think he believes it's the most important issue. I do think people shouldn't panic too much about mass shootings, but on the other hand, this parade was probably a prime target for such a thing. And I do agree that the media gives too much fame and bandwidth to mass shooters.
Also I wanted to point out, before anybody wonders why I claim to be in the same generation as Mr. Blow, it turns out he's almost exactly six months older than me. And while I'll disagree with him on occasion, I have great respect for him and wish him all the best.
51
@Eric again, Your comparison to being struck by lightening doesn't hold up. Source? Visit http://gunviolence.org for statistics on mass shooting deaths in 2018. These are :mass shootings" defined as 4 or more people killed by a lone shooter. Number of incidents in 2018: 57,276. Number of deaths: 14,752. Number of injuries: 28,189.
55
"It seemed to me that it was I who should have been apologizing to them, or more precisely, it was my generation that should be apologizing to theirs."
And my generation as well. Not only for our culture of gun fetish and violence, but also for a planet exploited to the point of disaster. For a country dominated by the military-industrial=corporate-oligarchy complex and now held hostage by a pretender to a longed=for throne.
But I'll continue to write my 'representatives' and show up at various protest marches and donate small sums to worthwhile causes, often as I can, long as I can. I couldn't look grandson in the eye if I didn't.
Thank you, Mr. Blow, for your words and for your decency.
6
Ancient cults sometimes sacrificed people, even children, to pacify a god. Indeed, Yahweh tested Abraham's faith by ordering to sacrifice his son Isaac, and then relented t the last moment.
Our tribal god Mammon is not so merciful. Obscene amounts of profit do not satisfy him, and "collateral damage" in the form of destroyed lives (the dead) and tortured psyches (the living) are never counted in the balance sheet. Yet the capacity of some to adapt to this sickness as "freedom" and defend it as sacred,as if the 2nd Amendment (or at least a part of it) was delivered on a mountaintop as holy writ, never ceases to amaze. Although it does seem to have lost its power to appal.
3
Since Congress is inept and scared to do anything about gun control, is it possible the States can?
For example; besides background checks, monitor the sale of ammunition, or exorbitantly tax it. Track buyers, esp. those that buy large amounts, clips, and so forth.
The NRA will kick and scream about violating the second amendment. Sane gun owners will resent the cost increases, but if it prevents one mass shooting, then it is worth it.
3
Totalitarian communism might be the end point of the state religion of political correctness, but it's not constitutional. Some defend the state religion, some defend the constitution.
2
Thanks for your oped. America has had a romance with the gun. Guns were the great equalizer. A thug with a baseball bat was no match for an ordinary man with a six-shooter.
When I was old enough to go to the movies on Saturday, before Pearl Harbor, I watched westerns where the hero, Tom Mix or Hopalong Cassidy, saves the town or the rancher’s daughter with a quick draw and a skill to shoot the gun from the bad guy’s hand.
That was also true in the silent films. When I was 7 or 8 I had several cap guns. The kids on the block used to play cops and robbers, or as it was called on my block “guns,” bang, bank your dead, - missed- bang, bang your dead. Of course nobody died until WWII.
When my oldest brother came home on furlough he showed me his 45 automatic and I fell in love with it. I never bought a hand gun although I could have gotten a license. Guns lead to life changing mistakes. I had a double barrel 12ga shotgun for my country home and never fired it, even once. But then again I am a liberal Democrat and do not believe that I need guns to protect me from our government. I hope I am right.
3
Thanks for your unexpected reporting and giving refuge to some scared parade goers. Let’s all stop and think about our grade school children who experience mass shooting drills or what we, as parents and grandparents experience at work, where we too are given training in responding to a mass shooter event. This is the new normal, what the NRA normal wants us to think is normal, where the White House chief of staff keeps telling us it’s “too soon” after a mass shooting to talk about gun control.
We are a nation at war with itself. What will it take for this madness to stop?
2
This is domestic terrorism. Let's start calling it what it is. When American citizens are always anxious and on alert over the potential of mass shootings in any and all environments, that's terrorism. When children are routinely murdered in their places of learning, that's terrorism. When citizens start turning their places of worship, work, learning, and recreation into makeshift prisons for "protection", that's terrorism. When gun proliferation saturates our nation, with firearms easily falling into the hands of the most extreme, radical, and unstable of our citizens, that's terrorism. When the NRA and the Republican party run endlessly well-funded propaganda campaigns spreading lies and fear, that's terrorism (stochastic terrorism, technically). And when our elected officials, overwhelmingly Republican, not only turn a blind eye to this horrific reality but do everything in their power to increase its potential, that's aiding and abetting domestic terrorism.
The problem is guns, and the solution is strictly curtailing their ease of access, especially military grade weaponry. That we attack the opposite end of the problem is a mark of collective stupidity and the level to which we have allowed ourselves to be cowed and held hostage by the insanity of the NRA and the Republican party. No more. We need real leadership to stand up to the domestic terrorists in our midst and rid our nation of this epidemic nightmare.
2
Vote out any politician with a high NRA rating. Make them more afraid of the voters than the NRA.
2
As the election cycle heats up, both Parties will, unfortunately, continue to use demographics (i.e., pitting one group against another) to win power.
A side effect of Democracy, it seems, as old as the Roman Republic.
Overall he makes some great points, but I have to disagree here:
"There are not many countries in the world where a fun parade could so quickly dissolve into hysteria..."
Definitely not true. While Americans may constantly compare themselves to Canada, Sweden, or Denmark, we often forget about places like Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Myanmar, Yemen, Sudan, Honduras, Pakistan, Nigeria.... and the list goes on. Americans really need to travel more to get a better sense of how messed up the world *actually* is.
4
Nice column CB. Normally disagree with everything you say, but on this you are reasonable.
However, I don't know how we fix the problem. Identifying who might be a mass shooter is somewhat like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Profiling people won't work. Background checks, the entire array of ideas on how to keep guns out of the hands of those who might commit a mass shooting -- well we're back to the original problem. How do you identify those who may commit a mass killing with a gun?
It's on a par with identifying who might become a serial killer.
And while it's a good idea to outlaw automatic weapons, even if that were doable and we could collect every automatic rifle out there, those intent on mass killing will simply bring more guns, or use a bomb, or a car.
The NRA is an easy whipping boy. I'm not a member or gun owner but railing against the NRA won't solve the problem. What I want to hear are proposals for an approach that will work. One thing might be for national news outlets to simply stop covering these stories. News coverage may very well goad unstable people into acting. I have no direct evidence for that, but the crescendo of mass killings seems akin to mass hysteria. As these things happen it becomes very clear that there is little defense, and a mass shooting isn't hard to do. At least in DC there appears to have been a police presence, which is likely to dissuade. But theaters, schools, churches, restaurants?
2
@Ralphie: There are solutions. They all involve making it much, much harder for people to get access to guns and creating legal mechanisms to remove guns from people who are known threats. The fact that you and so many others believe that there are no solutions speaks to the success of the NRA in convincing too many of us that restricting access is off the table or that it wouldn't work. Legal restrictions wouldn't prevent 100% of shootings, but we don't need to stop every single one of them to save a a lot of lives.
2
@Angela S. Angela, strongly disagree. How many mass shooters were known threats beforehand? Sure, if someone is making specific threats, that's one thing. But the vast majority of mass shooters don't make threats first. Simply spouting anti-whatever statements online shouldn't be a reason to take a gun away from someone -- if they have a gun. Or being a troubled kid?
Sure. Let's not allow people under 18 to buy a gun themselves. And if they go hunting as kids for their parent(s) then the parents have to be accountable for ensuring that gun is kept safe and only used for hunting. But how many shootings would that stop.
I'm not saying don't implement the strictest gun laws you can, but there are so many guns out there that someone who wants a gun can get one. And mass shootings as terrible as they are are still rare events.
The 2nd Amendment is NOT absolute, yet a small group has affected public policy for so long, that in effect it seems to be be - either in the legislatures, the courts or the streets.
Of course that has to change, but how do we do so ?
It seems relatively on the face of it, but it comes down to each and every one of you voting for that change. It requires you getting involved, you spending money, offering your time and effort, and then ultimately voting.
You can do so for candidates that are true, but you can also do it by JOINING said groups that think the 2nd Amendment is absolute. When it comes time to vote for leadership and party platform within said organizations, then you can vote in numbers for that change.
It seems all so simple doesn't it ? It also seems logical that people would not be banging on hotel room doors seeking shelter from violence, but as this column depicts - this our reality.
We need to change it now.
6
Again and again Americans are forced to resort to the vote. It pits "us" against "them" and should be a positive method. It isn't because of voter suppression and gerrymandering, but it is really all we have. Violence is not included.
Appealing to common sense doesn't work because we still have gun tragedies and racism and hate . . . the list goes on. That said, is not the vote our most useful solution?
2
Sadly. At this point, how can anyone be surprised by this?
This society has turned into shark tank of insanity where everyone is at risk of being attacked -- it doesn't even make a difference if you're gay or straight, Black or white, rich or poor, young or old anymore.
It has gotten that bad.
And yes, the NRA and Second-Amendment-mad Americans who resist every effort for gun control laws are partly to blame -- but then so is this President, because it always comes down from the top.
Our world isn't any safer because guns are in it.
Just the opposite.
3
The NRA Membership is NOT the majority of Americans that the NRA would like unto think they are. They ARE well financed as they are the handmaiden to the U.S. Arms Industry, but we could stop them. It is time for the American people to STAND UP and be counted. Tell Congress and the NRA to either get it done or get out of the way.
4
Very sad, but note that there are more homicides in Chicago each year than deaths from mass shootings. The fear you discuss has been provoked more by mass media's desire for sensationalize of news to increase readership as it is by the actual numbers of shootings. The overwhelming number of homicides from guns are due to the use of handguns, and thus all of the gun safety measures proposed in your comments would do nothing to affect the rate of mass shootings. There is a cultural problem that the press does not discuss, and Hollywood's glorification of violence is a large part of that problem. Our citizens correctly note that gun violence is much lower in European countries, but violence on TV is also much, much less. We haven't even begun to address violence promoted on social media. Perhaps when we use TV, movies, blogs, Instargram, Twitter and Facebook to promote "Love thy Neighbor" we will live in a safer society.
7
@Dr B
For once, can the subject of the prevalence of mass shootings in the United States not be diminished by using crime statistics in Chicago? It is a false equivalency, and anytime somebody brings up "Chicago" it is classic "whataboutism" and serves as a way of diverting attention from the issue being discussed, which is the alarming increase of mass shootings in the United States.
5
@eheck It's not 'whataboutism." Its saying that the vast majority of gun violence involves handguns, not high powered rifles in mass shootings. Therefore, focusing on the latter will do little to stem gun violence. But it will get you much more attention in the media.
2
@eheck Didn't intend to make equivalence, just statistics. Charles believes that mass shootings have become so common that they now provoke fear in all large gatherings. If the daily murder in Chicago was given as much press as a mass shooting, everyone who lived in Chicago would walk around petrified and no one would visit there. Why not focus on preventing the much more frequent violence than the rare violence that increases readership? When the press stopped covering the nuts who ran onto baseball fields, the craziness stopped. It's unfortunate that the press glorifies the mass shooters with it's unrelenting coverage, thus increasing the chance that others seeking attention will repeat the act.
I agree 100% with your feelings on this, but the issue now is how can we defang the NRA so that real progress can be made. Taking away their tax exempt status seems the most viable method. They are not immune if they are in violation of the terms of that status & with no funds they would lose influence.
9
Just yesterday when my husband and I were at a local playground with our grandchildren, we heard some kind of single, loud popping noise off in the distance. A boy of about 7 or 8 asked his mother, "Was that a gunshot?". I have no idea what the sound was, but at that age, I would never have asked that question. I don't think the word "gunshot" was even in my vocabulary. We live in such fearful, dangerous times. I have little hope that things will change in my lifetime.
8
@Katie "We live in such fearful, dangerous times."
Could it be that there is more danger in our minds than out there? There was no justification for the boy's worry but you act as if the worry was the truth.
I too favor gun control. But there already are too many guns out there in America. There may not be an easy way to get rid of them. And some of the mass shootings have taken place in states with gun control like Connecticut and California.
Moreover, neither the Boston bombing nor the 9-11 hijacking involved any guns.
Perhaps there is greater danger from Americans fighting other Americans than there is from guns? (And I do not mean the deny the second danger).
2
@Ludwig Several years ago I was privileged to get a brief glimpse into the inner world of a 5-year-old child in the inner city. We were sitting together on a stoop during a block party when he asked me if I had "a grandma and grandpa." I said that I used to have a grandma and grandpa but they had died. "Oh," he said. "Were they shot?" I'm not sure where I'm going with this but that conversation showed me the perspective of another American whose life was very much in danger from guns, a very real danger that would only intensify as he grew older.
3
@Ludwig. “Could it be that there is more danger in our minds than out there?”
With dozens of mass shootings every year, the answer is no, the danger is really out there.
2
I know that the majority of gun owners are law abiding and not liable to become murderers nor heaven forbid mass murderers. Nonetheless, 95-99 % vaccination rate may provide herd protection for certain diseases but not gun violence. The proliferation of guns proves this assertion. 100 % vaccination required. Firearms for military and law enforcement only. Hunting rifles available under strict supervision only. This country, our nation cannot be safe with the proliferation of firearms. Half way measures will not be adequate.
12
In so many ways our deficit of love and surfeit of fear and hate are increasingly in evidence. Only love, for each other and for our beautiful and precious planet, can save us.
6
I'm in high school. I graduate soon.
My friend's school received a bomb threat a couple of months ago. She lives in a relatively safe community, somewhere I grew up and somewhere people move to because of how safe it is. She told me about how her parents pulled her out of school the few days afterward, of the quiet that followed them for the days after they returned.
A few weeks ago, I woke up to the news to find that there was a shooting which left two dead only minutes away from where relatives lived. I'm not sure how to communicate how relieved I was when I saw them texting on a group chat about the shooting, because that meant they were safe.
It didn't even occur to me until after talking to an international friend that active shooter drills shouldn't be something I'm well practiced in. This is something children are accustomed to, because Sandy Hook happened back in 2012 and the American government watched.
A fear of gun shootings is the normal for my generation. There's all this talk on media about this high school kid protesting against gun violence and this other kid protesting against climate change, and they're applauded for their efforts in attempting to induce change. They're said to be "inspiring," and I hate it. This is literal children calling for change in government, because those in charge no longer have public interest and public safety in mind as priority one.
36
@Angela. Share this story. Spread your news. Then, VOTE. Vote for candidates who take a stand against the NRA and our insane lack of firearms regulations. Make those in power know what it means to have term limits. Let your voice be heard at the ballot box. This is your time. This is your country. Take it back. Please, take it back from the entitled wealthy few. Send them packing.
Better yet, when you are eligible, RUN FOR OFFICE. Now, there's a plan.
3
We need to identify every single member of Congress who has blocked sensible gun safety legislation and vote them out, one by one until we have wiped the slate clean. It's not Make America Great Again; it's Make America Safe Again.
16
@Paul Barnes
Just take the NRA congressional ratings and start at the top, work our way down.
1
I'd guess that the same people who cannot bear any restriction on guns are the same people who love Trump: those who believe that bullying or force is the only real way to achieve what you want or be safe.
It's not "our generation." It's people who can't see a bit wider circle of cause and effect and who can't look at more complex solutions. It's people who think that a wall will stop immigrants but won't consider improving conditions in their home countries.
18
This is as simple as putting speed bumps on roads. Stop the ease of gun ownership and this violence will diminish. Wouldn’t hurt to vote out a president who encourages violence!
47
Thank you Mr Blow for another insightful column….and thank you for helping out those frightened girls by providing safety and solace. A cousin of mine, who lives in DC, was at the pride parade and afterwards felt the need to post on Facebook that both she and her partner were safe. Just feeling that one needs to post that is quite scary.
My son and I have dual Italian/USA citizenships. My son may be coming to the USA (Miami) for a six month internship in an architectural studio. Of course I am happy for him to get experience and to take advantage of his two citizenships. On the other hand, I will probably not sleep for six months. In Italy there are severe gun laws. I am not saying that some people do not get murdered here, but there are no domestic terror attacks at schools, discos, concerts, theaters. People here do not walk around packing with a rifle slung over their shoulders in a supermarket.
Here there is no need to send out thoughts and prayers.
(Except, of course, when thinking negatively about the current in charge right wing party and its thug of a so called leader.)
23
Blow is a incredibly decent human being. But on the gun issue, he’s off.
Watched him on Bill Maher the other night— Blow’s obsession with being morally clean instead of politically strategic isn’t helping Democrats in 2020. If he wants to reduce gun violence, he needs to help let the gun issue fall below the radar of the average American voter until Democrats have reclaimed the White House and more crucially the Senate.
Decades of Republican domination at the Supreme Court gave us Heller and McDonald, two decisions which rewrote the Second Amendment and gave us our current environment, where nearly anyone has access to weapons of mass murder.
Democrats— sane people generally— need to be in power before we can change these circumstances. Jumping and screaming for drastic change in gun policy while reformers weald no political power accomplishes nothing besides alienating the moderates Democrats needs to retake office and, in the long term, save lives.
4
Good for you. Your helping hand and insight in to how on edge we all need to be is wonderful.
1
Sadly, this is America today. After bringing death and destruction to innocent millions around the world, think 'shock & awe' among many others, maybe all that bad karma is perhaps bouncing back on us? For decades, we have spread hate and that hate for others is now being turned around and used inwardly. When you give someone a hammer, everything and everyone starts to look like a nail. It is a horrible fact of modern American society. The evil boogey men are not outside our borders, they are right here under our noses. Wake up America, please!
4
@Karekin
Good point. Our arms industry leads the world in supporting violence. It can only follow that what we support, we become.
It is not your generation that has bequeathed this hatred to a younger generation Charles, it is the republican part of your generation that has done this.
We can get rid of them if we vote in 2020 to bring some sanity and humanity back to the US. Use the power of the vote to suppress the hatred of the gun toting republicans. Vote Democrat in 2020.
22
The best way to avoid American mass shooters is to move to a less violent country.
4
@Robert Dole. I hired a Canadian attorney to advise me about moving to Canada. I was advised that at my age I can’t live there for more than six months each year no matter how much money or private health insurance that I have. Only if I could prove that I am a political refugee. I suppose after another trump term, that could happen.
11
@Robert Dole It's pretty pathetic that the solution for gun violence is "move to another country." It's especially ironic given the US rejection of Hondurans and Guatemalans who are fleeing violence in their countries.
1
My 20 year old daughter told us recently that when she & her friends go to a movie the first thing they do as they’re settling into their seats is imagine where they’ll run or hide when the shooter comes in. Going to a movie. 2019. This is a horribly sick country that has let its gun disease spread with no effective treatment for decades.
28
@Religionistherootofallevil
My wife and I went to the movies last fall, it was one of the Fathom events shows, and the sound of a garbage truck in the alley next to the theater caused a number of theater goers to jump up and run for the exits.
13
Thanks Charles for sharing this very touching story. As a father, my heart goes out to these four young women. Random gun violence has tragically altered our lives indeed.
During my younger days, I attended New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades and of course the New Year’s eve Ball Drops. I never thought of the likelihood of mass shootings while attending these events. Participating in these events signify our rights as ordinary citizens of a free country without the prospect of senseless gun violence. Therefore, these young women didn’t deserve to feel threatened while celebrating “Pride” by taking part in that march.
Gun violence has forever altered and endangered our lives. Unfortunately, gun violence in our country is also the highest in the world. The 2nd Amendment was ratified in 1791 and it clearly states the “right to bear arms in the CONTEXT of a well regulated militia necessary for the security of the free state”. It’s 2019 now and the CONTEXT of a “well regulated militia” does not exist anymore. Furthermore, the guns are exponentially dangerous now vs. the muzzle loaders in 1791.
Yet, gun violence continues because of the cynical interpretation and exploitation of the 2nd Amendment clauses by the collusion of the greedy gun industry through the lobbying of the NRA and of course the unethical political leaders.
It’s money over the loss of innocent lives and the greedy politicians are definitely complicit in perpetuating this sad state of affairs.
13
Speaking of guns, the 4th of July is around the corner. Our Independence Day includes so much ritual bombing and real shooting to the point where helicopters are grounded in many cities. We are reminded that the 4th of July celebrates independence, yes, but we forget at our peril that it was also a celebration of America's liberty to enslave others, to treat women as property, and the colonial Christian right to "discover" and take the lands and lives of the Original Nations, the indigenous peoples. While one can proudly trace the steady achievement of rights in America, it was more often than not in spite of the violent threats of the well armed citizenry. In some cases like the US Civil War, the guns of the South were turned on the guns of the North and it was a righteous use of arms that defeated the South's unlawful rebellion. However, almost a century transpired before the rights of the formerly enslaved were successfully defended. During the Civil Rights era, the same Southern States that once fought for a right of enslavement were forced by federal guns to respect the rights of the descendants of the formerly enslaved and the authority of the federal government to impose those principles upon American society. My point is that if we are to bow to the NRA and allow guns in the hands of almost anyone this must be regulated by a greater force willing to aggressively defend the rights of the innocent and the unarmed.
11
"It seemed to me that it was I who should have been apologizing to them, or more precisely, it was my generation that should be apologizing to theirs."
And here is exactly what is tearing us apart! Lately, I do not know what to think of Mr. Blow's intentions, but his emphasis on the guilt of various social groups rather than on the personal responsibility of the actual people who do bad things is divisive. Followed to its logical end, that kind of thinking will end in civil war as members of groups blame other groups for their unhappiness and insecurity rather than accepting responsibility for their own behavior.
To the extent that Mr. Blow was empathetic (but not necessarily sympathetic) to the fears of the young women and comforted them, I applaud him. It also reflects great social progress that there is such a thing as a parade for gay pride. However, it was not his place to apologize to them for his generation as if its members were a monolith. At minimum, it was presumptuous.
As to how to reduce mass shootings in America, I am not sure what we should do. The devil is in the details and they are complicated. Perhaps we might look to Australia as an example.
But tarring a generation with guilt for something that most of its members never did is just another form of identity politics. It is tribalism by another name, and in a country with people from as many backgrounds as has the United States, it can end only badly.
Identity politics will be the death of us all.
4
@D I Shaw
We have done nothing to effectively stop mass murder. I believe that is what Mr. Blow is apologizing for. We as a country do not take responsibility for our lack of strong gun laws, We should.
And while it is great that there are gay pride parades, we have not successfully ended discrimination of any groups.
20
@DIShaw there is such a thing as responsibility. Just because you think you have done enough and stood up against this epidemic of gun violence it is still a whole generation that let this happen. I grew up in post war Germany and was confronted many times with the past of my country. I agree that generations that were born after the third reich had no blame for what happened i fully agree that the generation(s) that let it happen share the blame, just like any generation that would allow for history to repeat itself would share the the blame for that. And so coming back to the topic of the column, just because one is not one of the active shooters it is not the case that one is not to blame. For generations Americans had the ability to do something, to stop the carnage, but few did something, most did nothing and let it happen, over and over again. So to say one is blameless is just not true, and has nothing to do with culture wars or sowing seeds to division — it is about taking responsibility for ones actions, or at least acknowledge ones complete lack of actions taken.
16
@D I Shaw
Either gun violence is a problem or it is not. If it is not, you do nothing. Why would you try and fix something that is not broken? On the other hand if gun violence is a problem, then some kind of solution needs to be found and implemented. We had too many deaths from car accidents. We implemented seat belts, shoulder belts, and air bags to try and fix the problem. Cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses like Hepatitis C. All identified as problems and solutions uncovered to lessen the impact or cure the malady. So if gun violence is a problem that needs a solution, I think Mr. Blow is trying to point out that our generation has done NOTHING: no research, no efforts at improving mental health services and access, no efforts to make guns safer or only functional for the owner, and no limitations on who can own a gun (If your medical conditions warrant it you lose your driver's license- if you are a domestic violence perpetrator- no limits on gun ownership). The flu shot is only effective like 40-50% of the time. We try every year to tailor it to the strain and make the vaccine more effective. Gun violence- we do nothing and hope for the best. Exactly what an intelligent society would do. If your child had a disease that was getting more common every year and no one was looking for a cure, would you say that was something you should not apologize to your child for?
6
I'm a psychologist. ten years ago the kids I see didn't really mention being shot at school high up on their list of anxieties. Now they do. A morning where the news is of a school shooting means an afternoon of heightened anxiety amongst some of my anxious clients. I can only imagine what its like to be a student these days. The directions - either hide or attack if a shooter comes into the building. We may as well give them all training as soldiers.
20
On the day of the election that brought us our current administration I went to vote. I'd never seen the gathering in the parking lot there every before that was of young men in camo and boots. As I walked in to vote I wondered why they were skulking about. We are a town of 1,500, we don't need attendants.
I deduced these fellows were contacted by the party of their choice to perform an age old rite of a head count, complete with a little reminder the are around. I've seen those movies.
I woke up after going to bed that night to check the election results to find my candidate had not won and their's had.
Ah, the power of the internet organizing and communicating advantages making almost anything your imagination desires a reality. Like a militia.
22
Thank you for writing this story. Thank you for providing a safe place for these girls.
I was also there with my 16-year old daughter and and friend. We had left the parade a little early to get some dinner. I know they say there weren't gunshots. But as we were eating dinner, on an outdoor patio about 2-3 blocks from Dupont Circle, we did hear what we thought were gunshots. Shortly after we saw police car after police car. The police were getting out and running toward Dupont Circle and then we could see the crowds running away. We checked Twitter to try to figure out what was happening. It was very scary. It felt like being a fish in a barrel. And all I could think of was that I had to keep it together and figure out a way to get us out of there.
11
If there were a mass shooting at a pride parade, I would be sad, but I would not be surprised.
4
If there was a mass shooting ANYWHERE, NOBODY would be surprised. That is how mentally sick and emotionally unhealthy this country has become.
1
I know how afraid these girls were because I was there, shooting photos at the DC Pride march. Finally, my batteries ran out and I was exhausted and footsore, so I headed home.
I was on the escalator down to the Metro when the "gun" panic struck. A flood of runners started cramming past me, trailing panic and fear. I knew I'd fall if I let go of the handrail, so I clutched it, prayed the escalator wouldn't break down from overload, and let them go by, their elbows and knees hitting my back. I was terrified of being swept away. Luckily I made it safely to the bottom and headed to the train.
Until that escalator ride, the Pride parade was tremendous fun. My photos all show so. I didn't know what happened until I got home. But what will I remember? Being very, very afraid.
18
America's gun culture is her end-stage terminal disease. The panic at D.C. Pride because of America's gun culture is another symptom of our common demise. How much more shameful will the land of the free become before our "experiment in democracy" falls? Mass shootings occur every week in the U.S.
When the framers of the Constitution wrote and ratified the Second Amendment (1791), they were living in the 18th Century, What was written by human beings ("the moving finger having writ") 228 years ago can be amended and re-written by human beings in our 21st Century.
Charles Blow, your account of being in a Dupont Circle hotel during Gay Pride Day was moving and frightening to those of us who have seen the appalling decline of our country due to a gun culture like no other on earth.
As Donald Trump claimed in January, 2016 --10 months before he was elected our 45th president -- "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any votes". Will presidential power be sufficient reason why our Congress refuses to act on gun control (and climate change and the impeachment of Donald Trump)?
27
"...“Please walk us down.” I said, still trying to lighten the mood: “Well, looks like I’ll be getting dressed on the elevator. Let’s go.”
I walked them to the front door, and we parted ways."
I may have queried them about the "glass ceiling", but, Charles, ever the gentleman, did not.
After the Orlando shooting there has been a quiet under current of citizens of the rainbow persuasion, taking advantage of their Second Amendment rights. Without getting lost in the details of who, where and when to carry a weapon, suffice to say, being prepared is what everyone does, in some form every day.
Nobody wants to get in a car wreck and no matter the effort, drunk drivers kill, every day. We all wear seat belts and pay for car insurance. We have smoke alarms in our house and who can't remember 3 digits in an emergency.
Events like Pride Parades and others, that are advertised as, or at least assumed to be "gun free", attract the nuts. If the only ones armed are the security, Joe Nutjob may kill many before he is stopped. Virginia Beach?
I shouldn't have to worry about wearing a seat belt. And people shouldn't drive drunk. I don't expect to get shot when I go outside and bad guys don't expect to get return fire. But, I'm wearing the seat belt and carrying 2 pounds of steel, because there are no fairy tales out side my front door.
4
Unfortunately, the NRAers I know would be just fine with scaring people at a Pride parade. The NRA holds most of America hostage.
As a teacher, I live with the fear of a shooting every day. We go through training and we try to help kids with psychological issues. Nevertheless, you are never quite ready. What is really sad is that it has almost become a joke. We all expect terror. We have come to terms with the fact that state and federal government simply don't care.
14
Thank you, Mr. Blow. As a mom of 20-somethings I’ve helped my kids plan how to walk to school to avoid a sniper. How to shelter in place. And how to hide when they need to. Thank you for giving safe harbor to those young adults. I got the text that they were safe on Saturday. The panic is real. The reality is so, so sad.
12
That might make you feel better but reality is that there is absolutely nothing that anybody can do to avoid being shot anywhere whatsoever other that locking yourself in your room. The craziness of the current gun culture is that absolutely anybody can get and own a gun. From the smartest, most stable person you know (who dont because most emotionally stable people do not need that kind of twisted empowerment) to the friendly nutcase next door, they all can have a lethal tool that can kill you. no questions asked. So unless people with mental/emotional issues develop some kind of visible physical symptom, you or your kids will never know who the next nutcase with a gun is or where he will be.
It’s amazing that our tolerance and expectation of gun-related incidents comes solely because the gun industry wants to keep making money.
17
That’s because it is a misleading narrative. It’s like blaming the auto industry for drunken driving because they promote auto sales and oppose auto safety laws. They are not responsible for gun violence even if they gladly sell guns anymore than GM is responsible for drunken driving.
1
What a ghastly experience to have to go through! Our society is sick and I don’t see any prospect for a cure any time soon. I can’t think of anything else to say on this frightening and ugly ending to what should have been a happy and celebratory event.
11
You are a very kind, responsible person. But we knew that. America, we have lost our way, and our will. It’s time to stop the madness, before it stops more of us.
VOTE for Democrats, Vote for sanity. 2020.
22
And eliminate the Electoral College. There more of us out there as than them as both Gore's and Clinton's popular vote count have proven but yet we can't get rid of an institution that protects the vote of people who do not deserve it at all.
3
It used to be that we would hear about terrorist attacks in other countries, and wonder that people could live with that kind of daily fear. Now it is they, looking at us, who wonder.
18
How interesting and lucky that out of so many people and so many hotel rooms they found you and yours.
Note: from Apple's dictionary:
tableau
a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.
2
I'm one year older than you Mr. Blow. I'm not taking sole responsibility for this culture of violence. Do you remember being a child in the 1970s with Vietnam raging? Do you remember being a teen in the 1980s and thinking that the USSR was going to nuke us at any moment? Yeah, me too.
I'm not taking sole responsibility. We inherited violence and trauma from our parents and grandparents and older siblings' generations. It's a story as old as time.
But I will imagine a future much different than the present. Those four young women who knocked on your door in a panic deserve a peaceful world. We all do.
12
Only in America. Thank God you were there, Charles, to calm down these young women scared out of their wits, and lives during something designed to be pure fun.
They were lucky they found someone so understanding, a quality in short supply in this countey, particularly now.
As hate rises and haters feel entitled to act out, is it any wonder our collective anxiety over mass shootings-- anywhere, anytime, anyplace--is at an all time high?
We're failing our children.
23
My daughter’s middle school went on lock down for a potential threat. She was asked to crouch under a desk while her teacher moved tables in front of the door to barricade it. Just another day in America.
24
My kid's high school was in lockdown for 3 hours!!! My daughter took a mental health holiday on that day so she was spared that trauma but all the other kids were pretty rattled by it. How sick is that? Every animal's first instinct is to protect their young from harm. It is a sad day when we Americans could learn from our dogs and cats what the right thing to do is when it comes to our young. I have given up. My kid is going to college abroad, to a sane country and I am I the process of following her. America, call me when you get treatment and get better.
1
Mr. Blow,
Thank you for helping those young ladies.
One of them could have been my granddaughter.
12
I'm sorry Mr. Blow but it's too late to do anything about gun violence in America. Right now there are over 300M guns in America and the majority are self-loading (also known as semi-automatic) or pump-action weapons, the kinds of weapons that are heavily regulated in civilized countries like Britain. If we outlawed these weapons today there would still be 300M of these killing machines in America available to any lunatic with a drivers licence and 300 bucks.
They NRA has won. The nation is now so thoroughly polluted with guns that there is no way to stop the carnage in our lifetimes. We will be seeing dead school children, maimed concert goers and fatally wounded night club revelers on TV until the day we die. My advice to you is either more to a civilized country or get used to the death and destruction.
10
@Mauichuck
When supposedly sane gun owners decide to put our children’s lives above their gun rights, we might have a chance. When our government tosses the NRA lobby out the door, we might have a chance. When we stop electing people who refuse to enact laws that stop guns, we might have a chance. When we stop interpreting the Second Amendment as the voice of god, we might have a chance.
6
I agree. I have given up. I came to the United States over 30 years ago full of hope and true admiration for this country. I leave full of sadness for what it has become.
2
The idea panics are a uniquely American phenomenon is nonsense. Most countries in the world a fun parade could dissolve into hysteria, see examples of mass panics in Germany, UK, France and Spain. How this got published is beyond me.
4
The threat of random carnage perpetrated by people with guns keeps me from travelling to the US.
I can't imagine how you can tolerate it, but I guess it doesn't bother Americans enough to demand change.
14
Then you are afraid of the unknown. The risk of anyone being harmed by a statistically tiny likelihood is exactly that. But despite the low probability, being shot would be terrible. Besides, people who look afraid, look vulnerable, and if they stumble into a truly dangerous locale are more likely to be targeted by bad actors. So don’t come until you feel safe about it.
@Casual Observer
Statistically insignificant? Gun lovers may console themselves with statistics but Americans stand a greater chance of being killed by firearms than any other developed country. Mass shootings in the US happen more than once a day. Madness.
1
Blow ought to think this through. The panic over feared gun shots is founded upon fear of violence against LGBT people because they have suffered acts of violence previously.
But by some associative thinking, that history of violence becomes part of the battle to save the country from all the gun toting psychos, especially those who seem perfectly decent and have never let their guns be used to harm people. They are the worst because they cannot see how terrifying they are to others. It’s stereotyping, the same thinking that leads to unjust treatment of people over things like race and sexual orientation.
Passing along the bad treatment seems to be how some people cope with having been badly treated.
1
Pondering escape routes is a new form of karma yoga designed to capture the essence of these exciting times. Humans are adaptable. It's just another adjustment. Blow is to be commended for helping out.
1
"There are not many countries in the world where a fun parade could so quickly dissolve into hysteria"
-- This is an incredible lie. In 90% of countries around the world an event like this would dissolve into hysteria or actual risk. The US is one of the few civilized Western places where that's not the case.
6
51 years ago, I went to DC to work on the Presidential Commission on Travel--trying (ironically, as it soon turned out) to get more foreigners to visit the USA. Three days later, MLK was assassinated, and a few weeks after that RFK met the same fate. Instead of going to work the next day, I joined a picket line against the NRA.
Sadly, the NRA is even more powerful now than it was then...and incredibly, groups now exist that are still more extreme.
I blame Republican complicity and Democratic cowardice. But at last, there may be hope. The Florida high school students gave it back to me after the murder of Connecticut children made me lose it--with still nothing more than "thoughts and prayers" from Republicans.
Will the USA continue to be the laughing stock of the civilized world? Must every single one of us lose a loved one before the gun lobby is stopped?
16
Blow, you are truly a very wonderful human being. Thanks for sharing your experience in your column today. The girls were lucky they pounded on your door. The extinction of the gop is a must to get the country back to addressing the serious issues 'we' all face. Thanks again , sir.
5
During the Trump era the number of mass shootings seems to have increased. Why? Trump has been a willing supporter of the NRA. They contribute directly and indirectly to Trump and so many others who are mindless supporters of the 2nd Amendment. And unfortunately Trump’s response to a mass shooting is mechanical at best. No empathy. No outrage. In the Trump era a mass killing is like a bad storm. You react.You do not try to avoid. The NRA have their guy in the White House. The proliferation of mass shootings will continue. An American Tragedy.
11
Empathy and assistance to people in need are good things so great job on that, but the ongoing problem is not caused by the NRA. It’s way deeper than that.
Over 30,000 deaths are caused by people with guns every year in the U.S. and for some reason people (news media included) don’t report that much if it happens within a family, or via some gang member flapping his moronic wings killing one person or suicide situations. It only seems to register when the target is random or religious and close to your (our) neighborhood in clean-ville! Even though the random/religious number is so small that it doesn’t even register on the scale, it gets top billing and even though the pistol is the number one killer by far, it’s the so-called assault weapon that gets targeted for removal by anti-gun groups. The insult to intelligence was the removal of the bump stock, because the bump stock reduces accuracy of the long gun. Haven’t you read the Vietnam War statistics? That’s why they removed full automatic on the M16 and changed it to three round burst. One temporary solution to the problem could be to slap a $10,000 deposit on any gun above 22 caliber because that would remove a large factor in gruesome killings by making it harder for young people to get their hands on guns with devastating killing power. If decent intelligent people can afford an iPhone for $1,500 every 4 years they can save up for a high-powered rifle too.
4
Thank you, Charles, for reminding me to send a contribution to the anti-gun organizations of my choice.
5
In the 1980's in New York, car theft and break-ins were common, and when you went to a restaurant you pulled our car stereo out of the dashboard and brought it inside with you like a purse.
Then in the 1990's they started going after the 50 or so chop shops that were buying ALL of the stolen cars and stolen car stereos and shut them down - and the problem subsided.
This is happening because of a limited group of senators and congressmen - working in tandem with a completely corrupt NRA.
Eventually a panic like this will produce a fatality, or fatalities - showing how the madness has now created its own madness.
3
With all due respect, can we please stop blaming entire generations for the sins of some. I bequeathed nothing to anybody, especially not the right to own automatic weapons or the need to jump in fear everytime someone slams a door.
1
There is no way to overestimate the tragic impact of guns on society with 40,000 deaths, 125,000 people shot a year, and, like Mr Blow describes, a painful loss of actual and perceived personal safety. But the anti-gun regulation crowd is so inflated with expert propaganda and the politicians representing them are so flush with NRA cash, they can't see their own shoes, forget feel compassion. Instead, let's confront the supposedly pro-business GOP with Giffords Law Center reports on the cost of gun violence to our country: we spend $229 billion a year on 40,000 deaths from guns - nearly $6 million/death.
Wake UP America!
5
Fear breeds mistrust; mistrust breeds hate; hate breeds violence; and violence destroys civilized society. Time to smarten up before it's too late.
3
When I hear a fire alarm go off I assume it’s a false alarm. When I encounter a homeless person screaming profanity I figure it must be hard to be schizophrenic. When I get lost in a bad part of town I ask for directions. And when there’s a thunderstorm, i’m the last one out of the pool. I play the odds. The odds of dying in a mass shooting are microscopic.
3
@michjas When you send your children to school, do you tell them that most of those public school mass shootings will never happen to them, because their risk is microscopic?
Then do you want your children to tell their teachers during a practice school lockdown, that the odds are, that a school shooting will not occur, because the odds are against it?
I really don't think your kids will get away with it, with their teachers, and if a school shooting takes place, they might not be able to protect themselves.
4
@Milque Toast. When I was a kid they had us hide under desks in case of a nuclear attack. Most of us 5 year olds knew this was silly. If you want your schools to spend hours preparing and drilling for mass shootings that are as likely as nuclear attacks I assure you the kids will be bemused. Their parents and teachers should have prepared them for something more likely, like a lightning strike.
1
In a way, our whole country is suffering from a form of PTSD.
yet, it isn't post traumatic, it is present traumatic. We are suffering. Today we have a lock down drill in our school. I will comfort students and tell them it is only a drill. Until the day it isn't. And I will comfort them then as well. But is comfort enough anymore? Get rid of all guns. All of them. We are are suffering in present time. How are we letting this happen to our children?
5
Charles I don’t think it’s the fault of your generation. Go easy on yourself. I also don’t think it’s just a USA thing. With groups like ISIS mass killings can happen anywhere anytime.
I would usually postulate something about social fragmentation being the root cause. However I’m giving up trying to understand the craziness of the world and just accepting it is.
I don’t get this thing with glitter. I’ve never known it as a thing before but in the last few days I’ve seen loads of people wearing glitter and now you mention it. I’m probably too straight appearing to wear glitter.
1
While understandable, the stampede behavior showed two things: 1) in the end, no one cares about anyone else and 2) DC police were woefully unprepared for a true catastrophe.
1
Charles, do not place all the burden upon your generation. I am older than you; I am a Boomer. It was my generation also who put Trump in the White House. It is my generation that shares its age with this man of no character, no decency, no civility, and no moral compass. I can not blame those young women. We are all vulnerable. We all fear going to our houses of worship, the shopping mall, the cinema, to work, to school. You name it. But it is the "other" who are the most vulnerable. (I apologize for using the word "other." Because indeed, they are not others, they are all of us. ) The Brown and Black-skinned, the immigrant, our LGBT community, the Muslim, even a woman, they are all targets of people not of their right minds. Yes, Trump, his Republican Senate, even his Attorney General do nothing to stop these mass killings. They feign sympathy for the dead and the families left behind, They say a prayer to their Christian God while embracing the NRA. But it is also the MAGA supporters who are equally culpable. Let us appeal to our Democratic House to rein in gun use. Yes, we may not have the Senate, yet. But the House is a start and better than doing nothing at all.
7
As you’ve stated you identify as bisexual I’m wondering why you weren’t directly involved in the LGBT Pride festivities? It always helps a historically invisible community to have role models visible in the public eye for the younger generation to see.
2
My best friend was at the Indianapolis gay pride festival yesterday Saturday, June 8, 2019. 30,000 people were expected. 50,000 people showed up instead!!! It was so mobbed it was claustrophobic. Attendance is strong at gay festivals Mr. Blow. Your points in the opinion column are good but your headline title wildly exaggerates the situation. Nobody was screaming "Help US!" and running away screaming at the Indianapolis gay festival yesterday. These articles only serve to polarize which seems to be the goal of the media outlets desperate for loyal readership.
2
@Norman V.
Why even say what you said? It DID happen at the DC parade.
3
Thank you, Mr. Blow, for sharing a perspective that I have not seen elsewhere.
The perceived threat may have been imaginary, but it was real because nothing, literally nothing, is being done about gun safety at the federal level.
Mitch McConnell sits back as he and his wife's family rake in millions, in part because Republicans cynically use the Second Amendment to distract voters from the reality that Republican candidates could care less about them and their problems.
There is but one solution and, this comes from someone who has never been a member of a political party, vote Democratic.
It is the only hope for gun safety legislation at the federal level.
7
'Mass shooters have become our domestic terrorists, and the possibility of their presence and threat of their carnage is now an ambient dread in the American psyche.'
Then they've beaten you.
1
Ours is a big country with very different/opposing views on most social issues - guns, abortion, race, education, taxes. Our Republican Congress refuses to even allow the Center for Disease Control to study gun violence as the risk to public health it clearly is.
Those areas of the country with the highest rates of obesity, drug/alcohol abuse, and smoking also have higher rates of gun violence, unintended pregnancies, and school dropouts.
Gun violence is an accurate indicator for societal stupidity.
7
It is sad and pathetic and scary. The gun issue should be front and center in the next election and the next and the next. Those who refuse to act should be voted out and voted out and voted out.
4
Thank you mr. Blow for handling and reassuring these panic stricken girls and for sharing with us this personal experience.
Unfortunately the United States of America is number one in the world for mass shootings , thousands of innocent lives lost every year for misinterpretation of a constitutional amendment, that is being abused to make the gun lobbies and industry richer and more powerful.
Mass shootings is a quintessential American problem , as American as apple pie.
Truly sad , incomprehensible and immoral .
4
@inter nos The only misinterpretation of the Constitution going on right now is Circuit Courts not applying the 2nd Amendment to its originalist intent. And yes, the 2nd Amendment preserves an individual right to keep and bear arms. To pre-empt the inevitable, the right is not a collective one that protects the right of state militias (or something analogous to the National Guard which is even less accurate) although state militias are protected by the 2nd Amendment's guarantee of individual ownership defacto.
It was a false alarm, there were no shots fired? I'm still thinking about that....
4
I kill, therefore I am (Phil Ochs, from the album Rehearsals for Retirement)
1
I suppose the despair we feel daily from the never ending assault on intelligence and simple kindness is nothing in contrast to the apocalyptic rise of fascism in the early to mid 20th century. But it seems evident to me there is a heavily armed para military making headway into everyday life in the USA. And they do and will have the blessing and loose direction from Republicans. Eventually they will also have little to fear from our laws. But we will keep on playing out this painful and dreadful slow motion pretense of politicians trying to find a plausible response or fix for folks buying and using guns. There is none coming. But the para military are. Think of them as an American version of religious/social police.
3
Why are all these mass shooters men. Why are most serial killers men? There must be something fundamentally wrong with men. Maybe it is because men have only one X chromosome, which makes them inherently unstable. Maybe there genes on the Y chromosome that stimulate violent and unpredictable behavior. It is possible that these genes are responsible for survival, in the wilds of pre history, before humans had any sense of community. The Saxons often fought battles with “Berserkers”
4
What a fortunate coincidence that these women just happened to find the room of a renowned NYTimes journalist. Do we have to rely on this kind of luck to get these stories published? I would like to see Mr. Blow develop further the past and future stories of these and other LGBTQ bias victims he meets every day. There is a bigger story here.....
2
The Senate has to turn blue, not jus tthe White House next year. Only then will be finally have some sanity on guns.
10
Perhaps the greatest generation yielded The Worst. In giving them freedom on a platter, they lost what it means.
1
Mr Blow, This column is somewhat disjointed. There was no shooting, but it seems to be presented as if there was, until the reader gets deeper into it. Then, switch gears to "fear of a mass shooting". There are many more things that I fear more that a mass shooting. I fear the surge of "undocumented immigrants" into the country. Along with the good, comes some extraordinarily bad and evil peoples, the the media, and people such as you fail to talk about. I fear the revolving door justice system, where felons are being released under the guise of "racial fairness". I fear drug addicts. I fear radical extremists, both right and left.
I do not fear a mass shooting because I don't frequent "soft targets". I don't go into gun free zones (schools, churches, government building, etc), and I stay away from large public gatherings.
It was wrong for this event to be portrayed as a mass shooting or the prequel to one.
3
@Verminer
"I do not fear a mass shooting...."? Yes, you do! Your fear is scaring you away from schools, churches, public gatherings, and the buildings owned by the government you pay for. A great way to live in "the land of the free"!
12
@Verminer
Fear is the point of terrorism. Even if the likelihood that you personally will suffer from one, the fear is increasingly pervasive like a disease that infects the nervous system.
The fear cannot be disconnected from both the frequency and threat of the events. The shooters revel in that fear.
Even you stay away from the areas of public life (with fewer and fewer of those areas 'safe'). And somehow you don't recognize that NO 'felons' released under the 'guise of racial fairness,' drug addicts and 'radical extremists' (of the 'left?' Really) are responsible for these mass shootings at the root of this fear.
They are all white, unpredictable and unexpected. Although we DO expect another shooting, and sooner rather than later.
And fear it.
Somehow, you just don't get it.
9
Our country has gone badly astray when guns are more valued than the lives of our people.
This is truly senseless especially in combination with the panic at the border, ICE deporting veterans, rampant bigotry in the name of "protecting" Americans.
If we manage to survive the next couple of years we need to have a long honest national conversation. Who are we? And why do we think mass murder is OK?
Why do we think it's OK to lie all the time and take huge sums of money from Russia (NRA this means YOU) then declare that guns = freedom?
4
Many of the moneyed today or the priveleged feel the desperation of being powerless to stop climate change, poverty, prejudice. A malignant sector of this group want to strip the poor of the only thing they possess: hope. This is a celebration of not just sexual freedom but the freedom to feel. Only fifty years ago LGBTQIA people were shamed. beaten castrated, jailed,electro-shocked, even killed. These cultural maladies can be confronted forcefully with words. Dr. Larry Myers' (recently retired from St. John's University) theater foundation, The Playwrights Sanctuary ,is mentoring works of newer & younger dramatists investigating then enlivening LGBTQIA issues. Theater can be redemptive & ignite hope. Mr. Blow's words continually offer empathy & wisdom.
2
I'm quite moved by the humanity you exhibited in giving those young women shelter. I would like us to find ways to act daily like that without the impetus of terror at the possibility of being gunned down.
4
I'm afraid I don't even bother clicking on stories of mass shootings any more. (Wasn't there one last week, actually? I remember idly looking for something to read, being about to click on it, then realizing there was no point: some white guy goes nuts, terrorizes everyone. Some people die. Interviews with traumatized victims. Candlelit vigil. Thoughts and prayers. "Amazing Grace." End of story. BORING!)
Indeed, I have actually come to believe that America enjoys its mass shootings. I don't mean the unlucky ones whose family members die. They never thought it would happen to them--the chances of it doing so are miniscule--and they just assumed that when it did happen it would be someone else's children who died, so they allowed ownership of semi-automatic weapons by either voting for the NRA party, excuse me, I mean the GOP party, or didn't bother voting at all. They dissolve into their grief, of course, when their relatives are shot, against all odds, but everyone else just seems to enjoy it. Distant friends who get to hold candles and look tragic. News outlets. Twitterers. Readers and viewers. Ratings and readerships.
Lest you think that I exaggerate, note that if Americans wanted to do something about mass shootings, they would. They don't want to, and they do nothing accordingly.
2
Thank you friend. Your willingness to “open the door” was kind and brave.
6
It's a pretty backwards, Alice-In-Wonderland kind of world where the "answer" to school shootings is to give guns to teachers (what? a shooter couldn't just disarm an instructor, and use the guns against them?) and where a security guard who panics when an armed psycho shows up is now prosecuted as a worse, more horrible person than the actual shooter.
If we had sane gun laws, nobody would be in these no-win situations. As you noted, we are forcing our children to accept an insane premise as "normal" -- what other bad lessons are they absorbing as a result?
4
1 in a million people will be a victim in a mass murder as a commenter above stated. Wow, as though that is an acceptable set of odds.
The commenter also ignores the fact that the likelihood of murder is higher in certain neighborhoods. In other the commenter ignored the fact that poor are more likely to die from gun violence. There odds are certainly not 1 in a million.
Part of humanity loves violence. Sometimes that love in limited in mutual agreeable pseudo and even real violence. Sometimes that love of violence is expressed through murder of mammals, for the pleasure of the hunt.
The rest of the love of violence is expressed through the murder by gun and knife.
We can not change the nature of evil that is manifested through violence.
But we can better control the devices used to kill.
The 2nd Amendment was added at a time when there was no standing army. Just as the 3/5ths rule concerning Black Americans was immoral at the time and inevitably and necessarily was eliminated, the 2nd Amendment became obsolete when a standing army was created.
Without real and solid gun control we will remain a nation of that loves violence and is perfectly fine with murder.
We pretend to be upset about murders. But only after the fact.
The most wretched, foul and digusting hypocrisy to ever done. If there is a God, then that God judges each person who loves the possibility of murder and then screams crime and capital punishment when that murder happens.
3
@George Seely As a country, we export violence, war and militarism every single day and bring death and destruction to millions around the world. It's not the Peace Corps anymore. And you wonder why Americans are OK with guns?
1
As with so many issues, the vast majority of citizens want better gun safety, but the current crop of Republicans are a subsidiary of the NRA. Remember, this is the party that did nothing after 20 six year olds were murdered; I knew then that whatever the rest of us do, whatever enlightened states do, the carnage will continue.
5
"Those women in my room had every right to fear for their lives. It was perfectly understandable that they could believe that a mass shooter could be anywhere, even at a parade bursting with rainbows."
I'd only take issue with the last phrase of your otherwise accurate sentence, Charles. "Even at a parade bursting with rainbows"--and why not with the tremendous rise in hate crimes in this country?
Casual violence in the name of bigotry doesn't spring from nowhere, it comes from federal authorities that promote and condone it.
I feel these girls were more than justified to fear a killer loose at a LBGT event, just as people of faith are being forced to arm their houses of worship--all because of a lax gun culture that promotes weapons of violence at a time of rising hate crimes.
10
To many Americans worship at the alter of the gun and keep electing people who block gun regulations.
We the People of the United States have normalized madness, and we wonder what is wrong with people who are rightly afraid when they think a mass shooting is underway.
3
Maybe something of an overreaction by the overly fragile seeking self centered attention?
2
@BD I think that you can't answer the question you've posed until you've experienced the fear, and in this case it's a fear that unfortunately has a real basis in a sick society which refuses to protect its own... out of greed for guns. These young women might not be "overly fragile" if they didn't have perfectly good evidence that has left them feeling vulnerable.
4
A sordid realism that fit the U.S. historical pattern. Gun violence and abuses of all kind has been the social fabric of the land conquest.
In my opinion, the greatest NRA achievement is getting armed teachers at schools. The 'Good Guy With a Gun' narrative is now part of the natural learning process like maths, writting, reading and chalk board.
What does that creates on a child cognitive process? People are bad. The guns are not.
4
"The National Rifle Association and their conservative handmaidens in Washington have hampered any real movement on the issue of gun control."
To be more accurate, it has been the NRA and their *Republican* handmaidens. Only one party has pushed "God, Guns, and Gays".
9
@Cwnidog I'm sure it has nothing to do with gun control being an American wedge issue that is incredibly divisive among the general population. Blaming the NRA (which by the way has 5 million members) and just Republicans won't help you win over millions of Americans supportive of their 2nd Amendment rights.
4
@Alexander Winn: I am one of those millions. It's just that I'm able to realize that my right to to swing a fist ends at the other fellow's nose. We're talking regulation here, not confiscation, although if you listen to the NRA, one follows the other as night follows day.
I seem to remember after the 9/11 attacks people would quite rightly point out that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. 2nd Amendment absolutism is a case in point.
4
@Cwnidog It depends what type of regulation we are referring to. And I don't see the relevance of 9/11 at all. If anything 9/11 and the executive government actions after that represent one of the most disgraceful incidents in American history and a complete dereliciton of the US Constitution. Obviously the 4th Amendment was completely undermined.
Your country is a tragedy.
9
Can we deter mass shooters by taking away their guns? Many people argue that it has worked elsewhere. But the US is a violent place. The Middle East is a more violent place for sure. But it is worth noting that taking guns away there probably wouldn’t much matter.
What could we expect of the irrationally angry here? There aren’t a lot of people who commit the most serious mass shootings and most go to great ends to accumulate an arsenal. Would they suppress their urges without guns or would they turn to incendiary devices, poisons, the weapons of Middle East terrorists, and so on and so forth?
Gun control is worth the effort. But it shouldn’t be unpatriotic to acknowledge that it could open a can of worms. This is a hard thing to research. Maybe it’s far fetched. But it’s hard to know.
2
@michjas You're premise is completely wrong. How many times do we have to say it?!!... Nobody for sensible gun control is trying to take away the guns of law abiding citizens. Do we need human assault weapons like the AR-15? No. Do we need better, more comprehensive background checks? Yes. There are many things that can be done and they certainly should be done.
5
We as a country must make sure that nobody is startled by loud noises like recently returned combat veterans who reflexively react? No loud noises in public? No stories in the media about violence that results in fatalities?
People have very powerful imaginations and when they lack information can misapprehend the causes of things about which they don’t make sense with imaginative guesses. Really, panic like this comes from misperceptions of reality or unthinking minds in terror. The fear of being harmed by people who hate gays is likely in back of many people’s minds from bad experiences. Until acceptance of gay people ends such bad experiences, panics like this will happen, again.
We all want to live in a world that is safe, manageable, and predictable. Your story reminds me that this is not always the case. It was traumatic and nobody wants to remember trauma. To understand trauma, we have to overcome the strange reluctance to confront that reality and cultivate the courage to listen to the stories of survivors.
1
We are making great strides in changing the gridlock in Washington (and statehouses) impeding the people’s will. Credit goes to many, but it is Shannon Watts of Mom’s Demand who is getting the boots on the ground. Her work combined with sound research from think tanks, doctors’, parent advocates, victims, and so many more is allowing people to reject the false narratives of the gun lobby. Like every other issue, we must vote out those who do not care about our children and their future, and gun safety is rapidly becoming a mobilizing issue (note that every democratic nominee is on board). No one disputes a person’s right to own a gun. But we decide as a people, through our representatives, how they will be regulated.
8
Charles, I live by the sea in Ireland. A Russian ship gave a gun salute after a visit, which ricocheted around the harbour causing our windows to rattle and we all looked out to see what was up. However two American visitors in a local shop hit the floor, cowering in fear at the noise as the bemused shop keeper stared at them. It would never have occurred to ANY of the locals that we were in danger in any way - we simply don’t have to live with the element of fear that Americans do because of your gun culture.
55
@Eimer Walsh Perhaps Americans live in fear because they have a media culture dedicated to stoking that fear to make it easier to sell them things. Careers and fortunes depend upon it.
9
Giving shelter to genuinely panicked people was a fine act.
I wonder at the long-term effects of school children having to live in fear, and of children in violent neighborhoods having to live in much greater fear. In the past, people had to worry, at some low level, about theaters catching fire (very rare), fires in general (American cities were prone to conflagrations) and various other problems, including murderous mobs.
Mass shootings are our own special plague. So far, I do not see any effective response. Here in Florida, the theme parks seem to keep upgrading security, and I wonder whether they work special magic on the Legislature to keep the popular concealed weapons permits (2 million and rising) from being expanded into open-carry, which might spook tourists, especially those who come from other countries.
11
The fact that taking guns away has worked in other countries is only convincing evidence if those countries are comparable to the US. Keep in mind that the US is a relatively violent place even apart from gun crimes. We may be more like Colombia and Venezuela than New Zealand and Australia. Those countries would remain violent without guns. At the extreme, so would the Middle East and Nigeria.
We are the most violent developed country in the world. Whether that would turn around radically without guns depends on whether the level of violence here is pretty much beyond control. Statistics suggest that that is a close question.
1
@michjas. Again. It's NOT about taking guns away from law abiding citizens. Your false premise does nothing but cloud the issue.
One night in Japan, we were sitting around talking in the apartment of one of us. We were a mixed group of Japanese, Americans, Canadians and Europeans. Suddenly there was a sharp popping sound outside. In an instant, the two Americans were flat on the floor, yelling at us to "get down!". Impressive reflexes, but it turned out to be someone kicking around an empty plastic bottle outside. We non-Americans were totally stunned at their instinctive reaction. The incident itself was 20 years ago, but for this reaction to be embedded in their reflexes, the fear of shooters must have been widespread even longer. It is not just the young people we have to feel sorry for. All generations are affected.
36
@Elisabeth Interesting. I was like that for a year or so after I left the army (Im Australian). In the army its a potentially life saving response but its sad that civilians would be that jumpy and paranoid.
7
When everyone else around you is panicking, the last thing you want to do is go along with the crowd.
Always be aware of your surroundings. Where are doors? Where are exits? And be aware of what potential dangers exist. When you see a crowd running, chances are that it is not because of a tsunami or loose lion unless you are at the beach or near a zoo. By having awareness of your surroundings you can eliminate many potential dangers and narrow your choice of effective responses.
So...
Rule number 1: DON"T JOIN THE CROWD! All that will do is increase your chances of being injured or killed. Make yourself as small as possible and skitter your way to the closest cover. Go through a door. Getting behind a car, tree, or even a pole is better than being out in the open.
Rule number 2: Assess the situation. Determine why everyone is in a panic. Listen for sounds. Visually survey things. Listen. Is anything out of place? Is someone calmly moving in the opposite direction of the crowd? Do you even hear gunshots? Identify the locus of the threat.
Rule number 3: Once you have made that identification, then you can take steps to further protect yourself. It may be that sheltering in place is the best idea. Or working your way out of the area by using objects as sequential cover might be preferred. If you are armed, put yourself in a defensive stance and be prepared to stop the threat if it comes to you. Don't play hero, though. You never know if there is more than one shooter.
3
@Steve Crisp
Rule number 4:
WORK for effective gun control that makes rules 1-3 irrelevant.
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@James Wilson
Let's not pretend that mass panic and stampedes are only caused by mass shootings. Thus those rules still remain very relevant, regardless of effective gun control.
@RZ As exemplified by mass panics in the UK, France, Spain and Germany, just to name a few I found by doing the most cursory google search. The idea panics are a uniquely American phenomenon brought about by mass shootings is empirically wrong.
When will America's citizens wake up? The entire Western world has some form of nationalized health care, which includes all forms of women's reproductive care, free and equal opportunities for education, a living wage, laws in place to protect workers' rights, and strict laws limiting gun ownership. And guess what - the vast majority of the citizens of those countries are "happier" than Americans, according to most indexes. Gee, I wonder why that is? The longer we go down this dark path the greater the gap becomes between us, the former world leader in justice for all, and our peers, who are unfortunately shaking their heads at us as they walk toward the better future.
45
And most other Western nations do not have a 2nd Amendment in their respective Constitutions. Unless you want to go through Article V this is all exceptionally hypothetical. Not to mention that America's outlier level of gun violence is not really a product of having more guns as much as it is a product of a conglomerate of coalescing cultural, social and economic problems. Besides which America is not a monolithic place, state by state homicide rates dramatically vary as do gun ownership and gun law laxness.
4
@Alexander Winn
1. The Constitution was not created by gods, but by human beings. It can be amended, and, surprise, it has already been amended throughout history.
2. America is the only wealthy country that flaunts a school carnage every month or so. While this might be 'the product of a conglomerate of problems', as you say, the problem of unrestricted gun ownership occupies a place of honour in the conglomerate.
3. Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Given this giant gap, does it actually matter that US homicide rates vary by state?!
4. America is the country where active shooter drills have become a common part of school life and young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets! Please stop trying to rationalize this insanity.
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@Lali 1.) The Constitution can be amended. It's called Article V. I didn't assert otherwise. Unless you get 3/4 of the States to agree to it (which will never happen) the 2nd Amendment is going nowhere.
2.) School shootings represent a minisucle amount of the yearly homicide and suicide counts. They have also been dropping since the 90s despite the total number of gun sales exploding.
3.) Yes, because state by state variation reveals America's homicide problem is much more a social issue than it is a gun issue. Also, why cherrpick gun related murders and not look at homicide holistically ?
3
This reminds me of an incident here at a local large regional mall one of the largest in the state. My partner and I were in a store in the mall when I saw teenagers running in the corridors. At first I thought it was kids playing but then more and more were running and suddenly there was panic in the store. Word got out there was shooter firing in the mall. People ran into the back to escape or crouched behind the counters into the back peering through the large floor to ceiling windows lining the front facing corridor. A male customer tried to lock the front door as the Chinese non-English speaking owners apparently no clue what was going on. It became quiet for what seemed like 10-15 minutes. The large department store next to us even closed it’s grate. Then people started to emerge into the corridor and word got around that the gun shots heard was a nitrogen filled soda can in a kiosk exploding. By time we emerged into the parking the entire mall parking was deserted with hundreds of cars in-line to leave.
People in this country are on edge and panic susceptible.
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@David John It's not like there's no reason to be on edge. Perhaps the odds of getting caught in a mass shooting are low but they are real.
Giving in to panic is not a good response. Neither is blithely assuming that nothing dangerous could possibly be happening.
6
@Jack Toner...I never said there was a reason not to panic. I was saying it as an observation of a phenomenon in this country I never see reported. iIt makes complete sense there would be a reaction to what’s going in this country. It’s like trauma, there’s the direct experience of a person and there’s the secondary response from witnesses or being triggered from hearing about it.
2
@Concerned Citizen...The incident happened last month. I was reporting on an incident that I think exemplified how the general public is being triggered by these mass shootings. It’s possibly a new phenomenon. As I said before it feels like secondary trauma. And it’s not being reported or at least I’m not seeing it.
1
We issue travel warnings about potential dangers in other countries. Now the U.S. has become one of those countries with China's travel warning about potential dangers here. When you measure this country to others in education, safety, healthcare, civil rights, environmental protection, free press, and a slew of other categories, the U.S. doesn't make the top 10 anymore. Don't expect us to improve any time soon.
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I read this article after reading one that talked about abortion and the arguments about where does life begin.
As someone viewing the situation in the US from afar, the contradiction is mind blowing. How can a group in society that is seemingly so intent on pushing back the definition of when life apparently begins be so callous about the well being of it's citizens after birth.
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@Michael. Your point is that if you protect some life you should protect all life. It is well-meaning, no doubt, but it is easily rebutted. The logical response of conservatives is that you too have conflicting views because if you call for choice with abortion it is inconsistent to oppose all choice when it comes to guns. My point isn’t that your beliefs are bad but that your logic is bad.
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@michjas Not quite. My point is that the current approach is seen as farcical by the rest of the world because of the hypocrisy of it.
These are two issues that the rest of the world manages to deal with in a sensible manner. The US sometimes it looks like it does not even want to try.
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We know how to solve this problem. Oz did it, New Zealand is doing it. The astounding thing is that our political class - or, to be fairer, half of our political class - is composed of invertebrates.
I recently had to curtail my day plans because the report of an active shooter in a major American city forced the closure of the businesses I planned to visit.
The consequences of the indefensible cowardice of Congress are measured in real casualties, which are indescribably awful. But there is a whole other range of consequences, too - distrust of neighbors, avoidance of crowds, stress, lost economic activity and (as this article points out) loss of fun and solidarity - and these second order consequences alone are enough to hollow out an otherwise flourishing society.
No other free country would put up with these costs being imposed on its citizens.
Are we really still free?
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@T Australia just had a mass shooting last week. Not sure I'd be parading around about how the issue has been solved.
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@Alexander Winn
What was that, one in ten years? We're more like one in ten weeks.
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@Alexander Winn Last year there were 340 mass shootings in the US. That is almost 1 mass shooting Every. Single. Day. How many did Australia have in 2018?
This year so far there have been 165 in the US.
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I avoid crowds these days. Movies, concerts , large gatherings. It's an instinctual response and directly related to the increase in mass shootings across the country. I still go out to eat at my favorite spots . My rationale is they are small and would offer an active shooter very little in terms of recognition, celebrity and above all, targets. There is a very real randomness to being targeted. I appreciate the pure chance of it all. But, my instinct is now guided by an irrational fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can argue both sides of the gun issue. But, I favor strict gun control, strict limits on semi auto weapons, bump stocks, and limits on the ability to purchase ammunition. At the end of the day these arguments are theoretical and given the abundant availability of handguns and semi auto rifles I err on the side of caution.
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@Harley Leiber it’s hard to understand “both sides” of the gun issue. There is no rational reason for citizens of a modern society living in an urban area to be armed. From here, in Europe, it seems that many Americans see themselves as heroes in a Hollywood action movie, waiting for the day to come when they will take out a criminal and save the day. But that has never and will never happen. Instead the myth of gun ownership as the solution to security persists while facts point to the complete opposite. I will accept people in rural areas may need firearms as protection from certain wildlife, but in cities it is sufficient that the police are armed. I can’t recall an instance where a citizen shot and apprehended a criminal in the act of committing a crime. And why should they? That’s what the police are for!
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Firstly, the empirical estimate for DGU usage in the US ranges anywhere from 108,000 - 2 million incidents, with the best estimates I've seen either 300,000-500,000 or nearly a million using discraded CDC data.
Secondly, you are presenting an incredibly idealised depiction of the police that has no bearing on practical reality or legal obligation.
1
Gun violence is a way of life in America. It's a deeply ingrained part of the whole culture. I don't think anyone seriously wants to change the situation. If there were a serious desire for change, it would have happened after Sandy Hook. Imagine how this all looks to people who live in other countries, where guns are regulated (for example, the UK) or where gun violence is fairly rare (for example, Canada) or where strict gun laws were eventually established after too many incidents (Australia). I suspect it just looks as if Americans are content to destroy themselves -- and even to let their children be destroyed -- in an ongoing domestic guerrilla war. I don't know what the solution is. I don't think there is one. I predict nothing will change on this in my lifetime.
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Other countries conceptions of gun violence in the US are completely skewed by their media. I can say this as an Australian, many people don't even have the most basic understanding of the laws here, nor do they have a clue about the US beyond what they read on Murdoch rags/ABC/ Fairfax/Guardian Australia outlets.
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@Alexander Winn
Other countries "conceptions of gun violence in the US are completely skewed by...." the FACTS.
Thousands of dead Americans every year. That is a fact. No skew necessary.
Stop being an apologist for systemic murder.
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@James Wilson And is that because of guns or because of social issues ? Because blamming guns for the underlying problems causing homicide is very easy but also wrong.
Pride groups and artists need to be clear that these mass shootings are simply part of a by-product of how the GOP sees the second amendment being applied to modern America. EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED NATION has gun control and we don't and our murder rates reflect this. If Americans ever want serious gun control legislation, then most GOP politicians will need to be voted out of office. Until that time, we are going to keep paying the awful price of having regular mass shootings. Mass shootings are now a normal part of every day American life.
59
No other developed nation had comparable homicide rates to the US even before those other countries adopted stricter laws regulating gun ownership.
4
I have a high threshold when it comes to fear. Many don't. When I read this account, I thought of a woman in a local park who was almost paralyzed by fear when her dog had a seizure. Some guy came along and told her the dog was fine and he left, no doubt proud that he had reassured her. I stood by quietly and it was clear she wasn't any better. I offered to walk her to her car, and she readily agreed. We didn't talk much but the walking seemed to do her good and she assured me she was o.k. to drive.
It didn't matter what I thought about her fear. And it's often hard to step in someone else's shoes. If you're lucky enough not to be afraid, whatever the situation, I suggest you just listen and hold the hand of whoever is afraid. There isn't much more that you can do.
24
"The National Rifle Association and their conservative handmaidens in Washington have hampered any real movement on the issue of gun control."
Perhaps because gun control would have done nothing to stop any of the mass shooters (or for that matter, probably 95% of all shootings), which are done with illegal handguns?
6
@Erik Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
I don't think it's wise to be wrong guessing this.
4
I've read a lot of comments saying that gun violence goes back to the Revolutionary War. That's using the past as an excuse. There is not a country in existence that doesn't have a history of war or revolution somewhere in their past. Many of those countries have nowhere near the amount of gun violence and deaths that the US does. We have a culture of gun owners, some of whom are more concerned about their right to own a gun than they are with everyone's right to live in a peaceful society and their right to be alive. There are very few people who are trying to take away all guns. Most simply want all guns registered regardless of where they were bought and laws in place prohibiting possession of weapons of war. Keep your handguns, your rifles and shotguns, but get rid of automatic weapons like the AR 15. No civilians need weapons of war, they need to be left in the hands of the military. Start to consider that your rights end where the next person's begin and that their right to be alive trumps your right to own weapons of war designed to kill large numbers of people. Thank you Charles for showing compassion and understanding to those women when they needed it the most.
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AR-15s are not automatic weapons, they are in fact semi-automatic weapons. They are also one of the most popular hunting rifles in the United States, and functionally no different from any other semi-automatic rifle.
Automatic weapons are and have been very tightly regulated since 1934 under the National Firearms Act. The Hughes Amendment in 1986 then prohibited in toto all fully automatic weapons made after 1986, while keeping those manufactured before 1986 under the National Firearms Act.
8
@Alexander Winn
I knew the moment an AR-15 was described as automatic that gun folks would focus on the fact that it is a semi-automatic. Yes, you have to pull the trigger once per shot (bump stocks are another story).
AR-15s are terrible hunting guns and perfect killing machines. The large powder charge and relatively small (.223 cal.) bullet send the bullet on its way at hypersonic speeds, which cause immense damage to all surrounding tissue and organs.
A minor AR-15 wound is similar to a minor high-speed motorcycle accident. Never happened. Ban and collect (buyback) all
AR-15s that are not military owned.
5
@LM Firstly banning and buying back all AR-15s will never happen. Secondly, it would be unconstitutional. Thirdly, if you want to talk about high powered rifles just take a look at any .308 rifle. Much worse.
Panic is physically harmful. Elevated heart-rate, tensed back and neck muscles - even an ankle twisted while fleeing a perceived threat. Injuries resulting from panic at the fear of guns should be considered a gun-inflicted injury.
5
Sorry, your assertion is illogical. People are startled by any sharp loud noises when they don’t expect them and are not calmly centered. The fear of being attacked in public is an old fear of LGBT people. Jumping to a mistaken conclusion that they were being attacked was not determined by guns.
@Casual Observer
Not in a world where you now have people who have now lived through multiple mass shootings. If you're in a crowd and suddenly there's a surge and someone shouts "Run run!" you don't have the "old fear" that a lion is attacking. Your first thought in 2019 would be: "here we go again, and now it's my turn."
2
While I certainly agree that guns and terrorists (domestic and otherwise) have caused us to live in fear of mass shootings, I also think back to Roosevelt's speech "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
One day I was walking near Penn Station. I smelled smoke, heard sirens and saw people running. I immediately thought there was some kind of terrorist attack. But as it turned out, the sirens were from fire engines going on a normal run, the smoke was from food carts and people were running to catch their train at Penn. So sometimes we panic for absolutely no good reason and it doesn't take much to trigger a crowd to do so.
7
@Martin Brooks
It's not always for no good reason. It's a balancing of probability and degree of danger. It was reasonable for you to be wary in that situation, given the variables involved. One could also cite examples of people being unwary and walking right into danger and even death. However, I agree about your underlying distinction between channeling fear into wariness (useful) instead of panic (counter-productive).
4
It doesn’t take much for a crowd to panic- particularly in a culture rife with mass shootings.
2
@Martin Brooks, One wonders whether watching violent entertainment has influenced our initial reactions....
Just sayin'.
There was a man with a gun at the parade. Like public schools in the USA, politically-tinged events are conditioned to panic at any popping sound, so lethally tense has become our gun-worshipping country.
So, the injuries sustained weren't gun-inflicted this time, but there was good cause to fear which caused different types of injury. And then, there's always the next time, and this is only a matter of time.
This is the country that the NRA and its toadies in Congress and the White House bring us. Actually, it is we who vote; we bring it upon ourselves. That is how much we love our children and compatriots.
92
Dear John Lebaron,
Of course there was a man with a gun at the parade, in the photo right here there's a gun visible in the center. This is America, there are guns all over the place, more guns than there are people. It's not just the NRA and Congress either, this country was taken by brute force, with guns, and guns have been a major part of our national culture ever since.
23
@Dan Stackhouse
That’s weak sauce. Guns have been a part of every nation struggling and conquering another. It’s this country who don’t know when to put them away. America is confused about guns. The NRA has convinced some of the weaker-willed among us that more guns makes us safer. Of course the opposite is true.
12
@Dan Stackhouse I hope you don't think that guns as a major part of our national culture is good.
5
"White panic" isn't always caused by a wish to dominate every other segment of the population, so. Mr. Blow, your humane response to the four young women here was a fine mixture of courage, empathy and understanding. Let's keep supporting each other exactly like this, rather than let the shooters and other extremists panic us into shutting the door on each other when confronting the fears and threats that may affect us all.
56
I've been through two active-shooter lockdowns on the campus I teach, thankfully both false alarms. The first one was very frightening; I hid in my office listening to helicopters and police sirens without knowing what was going on. I suspect this kind of experience is common now at schools. This is affecting a lot of people.
90
@Chris Lang Please, do not accept this. Vote against anyone who supports the NRA. Guns need to be strictly limited. There are way too many guns circulation in the US and they should be removed. The frequency of mass shootings in the US is unreal, and anyone outside the US cannot understand why Americans accept this situation.
31
@Chris Lang: This is more real than the duck and cover nuclear bombing drills we did when I was in school.
6
Mass shootings are an atrocity and I support any reasonable measures to quell them. But the chances of being shot are far far greater in circumstances which are not a mass shooting. It’s not even close. This is especially true in DC which has a third world crime rate.
Once Mr. Blow addresses the biggest problems of gun violence he can have the credibility he seeks.
10
@ginger wentworth
"the number of victims may be low, considering it's made those girls respond like they're living in a country at war."
But Ms. Wentworth, they are not living in a country at war.
I HAVE lived in a country at war, and y'know what?
The people there didn't behave like that.
This is true pathology, the "victim mentality" run amok. There is something very wrong here, and Mr. Blow, as a responsible journalist, should not be encouraging it. He should be advocating calm and supporting a rational approach to effecting political change.
14
@Eric, So in the war zone you were in, defenseless people don't try to protect themselves by running and hiding? I have a problem believing you.
If you follow Mr. Blow's editorials, he clearly advocates, over and over again, "calm and supporting a rational approach to effecting political change". Yes, his editorials are emotional. I like that. We need to continue to be outraged until a higher caliber of people are voted into office. In this instance he is sharing an experience that clearly shows the psychological damage our country has inflicted on itself because our elected Congress refuses to deal with this matter.
50
@Mark
Well, OK, so my peaceful little neighborhood has been the scene of several shootings the past three or four years.
What do these apparently random shootings have in common with mass shootings?
Oh right.
Guns.
That is your problem.
15
Bad enough this occurred at a Pride parade (could it really get any worse?).
But why the surprise? Why the regret?
This is what we want, for some people to feel not just unloved but unworthy of life itself. To realize what a blot they are on our existence.
Thing is, it dribbles out of control.
My daughter, a newly-minted high school senior, lives with this every day. We want her to live with it. We like it that way.
So when kids show up at the school nurse in an unexplained panic, when groups double-check doors and hallways, when the occasional morning good-bye becomes an extended exercise in love and concern, that's us winning.
That's the NRA keeping the nation on edge, realizing armed preparation is the only responsible course. That some fool percentage of the population actually believe teachers with guns will make things, anything better. (You recall the armed teacher-training video broadcast on CBS where the principal acknowledged that, sure, they might got one or two students by mistake but wouldn't that be better than letting some crazed shooter do worse?).
We can yell at each other across whatever aisle is in the way, but out kids, our neighbors are suffering every day, and most do not have a hotel room to find sanctuary. And most have already been changed for life.
Its exactly the way we want it.
45
@oogada: Guns were not created to make any negotiation equitable.
11
Welcome to American Autocracy.
As of today, and thanks to Trump, no US embassy anywhere in the world is allowed to fly the Rainbow Flag. If that's not anti-American, I don't know what is. And it's only going to get worse before it gets better.
While we are witnessing the death throes of 'majority rule,' it's going to take a bit longer and get quite a bit uglier than we expected. Yet this, too, shall pass.
Vote.
98
@Guido Malsh
"While we are witnessing the death throes of 'majority rule'..."
Gay people are the majority?
I support freedom to marry, love, and receive physical pleasure from whoever we want, but let's not be ridiculous.
I'm plenty fond of the rainbow flag, and I felt an actual shiver when I saw the Obama White House illuminated in rainbow colors, but it is within the bounds of political reason to limit the flags flown at US consular locations to those representing actual sovereign entities.
11
@Eric: I believe the expression "majority rule" as it's applied here refers to the fact that the great majority of Americans are in favor of sensible gun control. The fanatics who'd sooner divorce their spouses than give up their semi-automatics are the folks who are plainly in the minority and yet continue to deny the rest of us the comfort of recognizing that there'll be no further repetition of Sandy Hook, Vegas, Orlando, ad nauseam.
45
@stu freeman
"... the expression "majority rule" as it's applied here refers to the fact that the great majority of Americans are in favor of sensible gun control."
When responding to vague, general questions on the subject.
When queried about specific laws and actions, support for actual legislation is much more limited.
This is the problem: The US is actually being governed in a democratic manner, but millions of people (on both sides) have been led to mistakenly believe that it is not.
4
You were a witness to mass hysteria on a local level.
For just a few minutes you were Ernie Pyle the war correspondent reporting on the latest skirmish in a never ending war.
Since Trump arrived on the scene the American quality of life has plummeted to a record low level.
As a permanent American expatriate I can assure you that living outside the United States has become a blessing in disguise.
I welcome all like minded Americans to join me in reinventing your lives!
114
I did. It is the best decision I’ve made.
26
@Michael Kittle...
Actually, you were witness to the mob mentality that has begun to permeate our society.
Mass hysteria is fear unleased, and once the lead is slipped, it is unpredictable as to where the mob might go.
19
@Michael Kittle
I did. Italy, 41 years ago. The best decision I ever made...
7
Mr. Blow, thank you for being a calming presence for these young women, and for immediately wanting to inform their parents that everyone was safe. I am angered knowing that there were others (I'm sure) in your same hotel who would not have even opened their door; not because of fear, but rather intolerance. I am saddened by the fact that I was more surprised to read that it was a false alarm rather than an actual mass shooting.
As I'm sure we'll hear soon...thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.
130
You seem to be a member of Gen X or a younger Baby Boomer. What evidence is there that this is our generation's fault? (I am an older Gen X, few years shy of Boomer age.) The independence streak, penchant for violence and tolerance of guns in everyone's hands has existed for many generations. It may go to the roots of how our country was taken and founded. Perhaps, it's an extension of human nature. Certainly, an intolerance and even hatred of gay people was not started by Gen X or Boomers.
I think our generations might have moved the needle closer to acceptance and have openly argued and advocated for more prevention of gun violence. I agree, it is still not nearly enough and there is far more work to do.
This is not a generational issue. This is a reflection of warring cultures in the United States. People with radically different views and visions of what our country should be. Corporations that keep people in power who will not allow the will of the majority of people to happen. That transcends generations. Indeed there are people in these young women's generation who will vote to uphold the status quo of guns, violence and hate.
61
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness to these young people (same age as my children) and the wisdom and insight you share through your column. There could very well have been guns or other violence. I’m so grateful that they knocked on your door.
407
Mr. Bow ,thank you for your kind assistance to these 4 frightened young women fleeing possible mass shooting. You took responsibility for our generation's failure to make our youth feel safe in schools, malls and parades from gun toting discontents expressing their outrage by slaughtering innocent youth with extended gun magazines. Perhaps the NRA and their conservative minions in congress could feel some blame but they are busy denying widespread easy to obtain guns are not related to mass shootings as auto accidents are not related to cars.
141
Well, that made me cry. Again. Over shootings that have, and in this case, have not, happened.
Ghastly legacy indeed. But thanks for being there for those girls.
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