Maybe it's time to restrict or eliminate the security the pubic provides our elected officials. Make them walk around and go to public areas with the same level of protection as an ordinary citizens. When they feel compelled to scan the rooms they walk into, and have to look over their shoulders where ever they go, they might become more motivated in limiting gun sales ?
11
I'm a fourteen year old boy who was born in Van Nuys, California. We moved up to Idaho when I was a bit under six months old. Ever since my family and I moved up here, I've been told by all of my friends at school that gun laws shouldn't be changed because most guns used in shootings are bought illegally anyways, but that isn't true. Around 80 percent of guns used in shootings are obtained legally. We need to buckle down and fix gun laws. We need to ban most assault rifles, because most of the assault rifles used in shootings are obtained legally, and these ARs are necessary to own. Most legal assault rifles are not meant for hunting animals, they are meant for killing other humans.
When I was younger I didn't feel safe at school. There was always that kid who, when you made him mad, would always threaten me by saying that there dad has a gun and that he would shoot me. We need to teach kids that just because their dad owns a gun they shouldn't threaten people by saying that their dad will shoot them.
54
Throughout the world people have passed and enforced gun laws as a result there is much less gun related crime in those countries - in The US we are willing to accept the almost daily massacre of innocent Men women and children so we can have our guns - like it or not - That. Is. The. Trade. Off.
Jerry W N E Kingdom VT
4
The spirit of this nation about guns is insane.It is that protestant ideology of taking the constitution like if it was the tables of the Law . God's words.Americans today are not able to comprehend that the reasons why the right to bear arms in the 18th are not valid today.
Add to this the disastrous state and also ideology ( same individualistic behaviorist psychology ) of mental health and you have a catastrophic condensation that repeats and repeats itself.
But the vast majority does not want to change it. It would be like repealing God.
4
"Violence is as American as cherry pie"
--H. Rap Brown
4
Sometimes I wish we really were a Christian nation.
2
It's sad that someone would threaten Roxane Gay, or feel threatened by her. It really is.
1
Sorry, Ms. Gay, but this IS our current "normal." To our shame and sorrow. And it's not showing any signs of getting better.
Land of the free fire zone, and the home of the "have to be brave" to go out in public.
When Sandy Hook taught us that millions of Americans are willing to sacrifice children to preserve our...unique firearm culture, I knew that we were a deeply rotten polity. It's no use appealing to their better nature. They don't have one.
4
Dear Ms. Gay,
I do not understand exactly what your opinion is. As far as I can tell U.S. is run in some sort of anarchistic fashion where the courts flat-out do not uphold the constitution except for white people. How the race topic got into a mass murder tragedy is nothing less than the tragic comedy about the cliche ideas that now get printed in major news print as stir emotion but lead readers in circles when such horrors occur.
In short, you suggest radical "change" of gun law in the U.S. and yet and in the next breath you thank California for the laws in place and suggest these laws prevented a greater loss of life. You throw the NRA as the common scapegoat, but you do not mention the shooter was a trained military soldier. Lest us not forget the Oklahoma City bombing that do not use guns in that ex-soldiers execution of his actions. I am thankful that the more, many more lethal an atrocious ways such professional and non-professional method could have been hatched up and delivered a greater body count.
May I suggest this when you look at that 4 month old boy, hope he doesn't have to go to war and have to be trained and use such hellish knowledge.
3
How the evangelical right can carry on and on about abortion while enabling, encouraging, and even financing mass murder of the already-born, is the height of hypocrisy. No, make that blasphemy.
5
The real media spends an inordinate amount of time having to debunk the conspiracy theories set forth by the propaganda arm of the WH, Fox. When is comes to the refugies from Honduras and Guatamala walking north for asylum, I wish the media had the time to explore the real reasons for this. I know its tough when the mid-terms and the donald sucks all the oxygen. But the daily tragedies in the USA and life in Latin America and many other spots on our globle have a common denominator - GUNS!!!!!!
The arms industry is ideologically right wing when it come to US politics, but when is comes to sales, greed trumps politics. They sell to anyone: governments, military, police, drug gangs, death squads, terrorists, men wanting to kill their wives or girlfriends, and oh yes, citizens trying to defend themselves. The arms industry is making a huge profit on the misery which is driving these people to seek asylum. The link between these merchants of death and the NRA and our politicians is undeniable and the 2nd Amendment has little to do with it. No conspiracy theory here, just plain old greed.
3
Thank you. I do not know what it will take for us to change. I thought Sandy Hook would do it. No, the shootings continue. I felt resigned when I heard about today's shooting, but you made me realize that I have a duty to remain outraged, and to make gun ownership reform part of my political agenda.
Thank you.
1
The outcome of the 6th Congressional district election in Atlanta gives me hope that change is stirring. Lucia McBath narrowly defeated Karen Handel in that race. Lucia McBath lost her son to gun violence in 2012. She became an activist for gun safety and sensible legislation. And after the Parkland shootings this year she entered the race for Congress...and now she's in a position to shape national gun legislation. She took her grief, combined it with her family's history of activism, and went all in. We need to hear and share stories like this! The work to change the culture of guns in the US will take decades, but I refuse to believe it's futile.
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. - Edwin Osgood Grover
2
"...take any real steps toward curbing gun violence and access to guns."
Like a fire triangle, there are 3 elements in every mass shooting. A gun. A gunman. And victims. Remove any one and there is no mass shooting.
Some of these shooters start out life destined to be a mass murderer. Most of the rest get converted somewhere along the way.
You maybe able to predict a person will become a drunk driver, based on his past behavior, but drunk drivers do it until they are caught. Mass shooters only do it once.
Anything short of confiscating ALL of the guns, is folly. Size, color, capacity, worth or operational description are just "descriptors". Think about the effort to combat drunk driving. It has been a crusade since 1981, lead by MADD. MADD can't stop drunk driving, but, with maximum effort, it can be minimized. The difference between drunk drivers and mass shooters, drunks don't want to go out in a "blaze of glory", ala Hollywood.
I haven't gone through the list of mass shootings, but, most of them had their weapon before they thought about killing. There a few exceptions.
If you can't or won't confiscate all guns, NO EXCEPTIONS, what proposal will work?
And I am a gun owner. And you may not have my guns. And I don't want to give the impression I condone senseless gun violence. But, if I'm at the place of a mass shooting, I don't want the gunman to be the only one with a weapon.
Self defense is a human right.
1
Chris Rock has a great suggestion and it's no longer a funny part of his act. Make the bullets cost $10,000 apiece.
4
Our Country, the USA, has lost its moral compass. Money and power are the only things that seem to matter. The amount of money and power connected with the gun lobby, the NRA, the political contributions, the ability to control people, the power in politics, the money in the business, the ability to avoid dealing with costly mental health problems are what this is all about. Thoughts and prayers are a joke and continue to be code for
"get over it".
Believing in the dignity and value of human life is a pathetic cliche of the right, (who have been and remain in power in many corners of our country resisting any gun control laws). From this retired Military Veteran's perspective, the US is a sad shadow of what we once were.
3
Thanks to the NRA & its allies, we are averaging nearly a mass shooting a day in America. The only people who gain more freedom from this insanity are those in the gun industry & undertakers.
3
No one I know says the gun situation in the US is just fine. Unquestionably one of the nation’s top crises and everyone can agree we need a serious debate about mental health, firearm regulation and all related issues. However, you are not being a serious participant in this discussion if your answer is a good teacher/bystander/student w a gun can ‘take out’ an unhinged shooter.
23
Sorry. I can't be shocked. It's is similar to demanding that I be shocked that a lifetime heavy smoker has lung cancer. I'm not. I'm sad. I'm not shocked.
This will continue to happen as long as we lie to ourselves about guns. They are extremely good killing machines. They were developed to kill people and, later, animals. All the non lethal uses of firearms (target shooting, which is fun, mainly) are directly related to skills used to kill people and animals.
How odd our relationship to guns is shown by the fact that we restrict the use of weapons such as tasers and stun guns, designed to disable only, as they are "too dangerous" - they might hurt or kill someone. A device with a kill rate of under 1% is restricted while a firearm, with a kill rate in skilled hands that approaches 100%, is not.
This debate is not about your safety or my safety or the safety of "the children" or the safety of police officers.
It's about individual power and the right to kill.
1
According to some estimates, there are 357 million guns in private hands in America, more guns than people. Superimpose that on a significant percentage of US citizens that are firmly behind the right to bear arms, at all or any cost aided and abetted by the NRA lobby and good luck at any meaningful effort to control the continued proliferation.
Back in Vietnam, 50 years ago, I quickly learned, "Don't bunch up". It seems to have more relevance today.
2
We're #1! We're #1.
Another NRA death day celebration.
Replete with lamentations, tears. prayers, heroism and the ubiquitous claim that people not guns kill.
Be angry. Very angry. People are dying.
And get even by defanging the NRA, voting against pro-gun legislators (think Comstock), demanding gun control.
US #1 in guns in private circulation. More than all other
countries together.
US #1 in gun homicides--about 30,000/year. Where
gun restrictions are invoked countries have reduced gun
homicides. Also #1 in gun suicides.
US #1 in mass homicide events.
Restrictions on US government public health
agencies researching gun violence; constraints on
data collection and access.
Uniquely American NRA $$ and political influence a
cancer. We need to clarify NRA as conduit for Russian
$$, separate sporting and legitimate household
security from gun manufacturer lobbying.
US background checks and regulation regarding safety
precautions, access are a shambles.
The Constitution and NRA will render moot attempts at limiting gun ownership and access based on psychological profiling, judicial conviction, threatened violence. Any gains will be amorphous, submerged in the ongoing American bloodbath.
The tearful lament that shooters were mentally unbalanced and somehow should have been denied access to guns is a bullet riddled farce.
Tell it to the tombstones.
7
Your numbers are off. There were only about 17,000 murders or manslaughters of all kinds in the US in 2016.
El Salvador, not the US, is the most dangerous (homicides) country in the world. The US is way down the list, well after places like Jamaica, South Africa, Lesotho, Guyana, Mexico, Honduras, etc..
1
Let us also not pretend that there isn't a racial component to our inertia regarding gun control. While Trump stokes fears of immigrants and Muslims and Latino caravans, a white man shot up a synagogue, a white man killed two black people after attempting to shoot up a black church, a white man shot up a yoga studio, and a white man shot up a bar. We shrug, and say gun control doesn't work, and beyond thoughts and prayers there's really nothing to be done.
And yet. When the Black Panthers were the ones who brandished weapons, Ronald Reagan called for gun control. When Philando Castile was shot for honestly disclosing that he had a legally owned gun, the NRA looked the other way and said nothing in defense of Castile's right to bear arms. And when members of the New Black Panther Party were photographed displaying their guns in front of a Stacey Abrams sign, the Kemp campaign clutched its pearls and claimed Abrams was now too "radical."
Gun rights only apply to white people, you see. The moment all the people of color in this country demand the right to open carry, our suddenly anxious lawmakers will pass tough gun control laws swiftly enough.
3
It was a sad statement when our local news had to clarify to which mass shooting their story was related. Doesn't that make us stop and think that something is wrong?
4
For the NRA and the gun manufacturers they work for there is no downside. There business is highly profitable and they pay zero price when people are killed and hurt by their products. They argue that they can't be held responsible for the gun doing what it was made to do. So here lies a huge part of the problem.
Until the NRA and gun manufactures are held financially responsible they will continue to blackmail our country with threats and action. They will lie, cheat and steal to keep the status quo and even expand it.
Any person owning any gun has to register it, has to have a license to operate it which they need to renew regularly and they have to have insurance. A lot of it. Gun manufactures must be held to account for their product as well....just like GM and Volkswagon. That'll be an excellent start. Common sense is not radical.
1
Yes. Act. Demand a loosening of CCW laws. Learn to shoot. Carry the special PERMIT AND ID. Help mitigate the losses. The police can't do it alone. The rights of crazy men aren't changing. The rights to own guns aren't changing. Be a hero. This is a call to good men and women. Because what we're doing now is useless. You can never get all the guns, and men just keep getting crazier.
5
@Tellin' it
Is this the country we should strive for? A throwback to the imagined heroics of the wild west, with everyone inching toward the gun on their hip? To have every public gathering possibly become a shootout?
Every other country can, and has, done better. Let's not sell ourselves short.
20
@Tellin' it This won't make any of us any safer. More guns = more deaths. We agree on one thing: what we're doing now isn't working. Ramboing everyone up isn't the solution.
17
@Tellin' it - the problem is the proliferation of guns, not that we don't have enough. Look at every other developed country in the world, look at Australia - where they took away the guns and shooter violence almost disappeared.
Your solution is all wrong. More guns equals more violence, whether it's mass shootings, suicides, accidents in which children kill other children, parents kill their children.
I'm glad I live in a state with strict gun laws - the ones we have on our streets are purchased in states where the laws are lose and brought up here.
I grew up in a family of hunters who locked their weapons securely and didn't feel they needed semiautomatics to kill deer and pheasants, which they ate.
What little research we have, since the NRA has blocked dollars for this, shows that more guns = more death.
16
The bottom line is Americans don't care enough about these ongoing slaughters. Americans lives don't matter enough to the country at large, if they did something would change. We write letters, we talk, we say we're sorry, we argue about gun control. If we CARED MORE this would stop!
19
@Linda I totally agree.
2
Roxane,
Please keep up the good fight! We WILL get there!
Many moms, and dads, too, are motivated and went out this past election cycle to ensure that candidates who endorsed commonsense gun laws were elected. They were. Now we must all keep up the pressure until we have waiting periods, universal background checks, and other measures that ensure guns do not get into the hands of people who are mentally ill. We also need to keep pushing for bans on bump stocks and other weapons of mass death. I live in Washington State, the only state this election cycle that had gun control legislation on the ballot. It passed.
So, please keep encouraging people to stay engaged. This past year I joined Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly's group, Americans for Responsible Solutions. There are others, including the Brady Campaign, which I already followed. Moms Demand Action is a VERY pro-active group, and we campaigned for a number of state and congressional candidates, almost all of whom won.
Don't give up. Our numbers matter more than the NRA's donations to the GOP. Thank you for your work.
307 mass shootings in 312 days of this year alone.
And America does nothing.
We just shrug it off as our politicians take their $$$ payoffs from the NRA lobbyists who proclaim that "guns do not kill people".
Tell that to the grief stricken families tonite in Thousand Oaks.
Nothing changes. It's sickening.
1
People are numb Roxane
Mass shootings on regular intervals.
People are embracing the hate and violence led on by the president.
Hate crimes have surged.
Trump has divided people to an extreme, and has encouraged neo-nazis and violent acts.
NRA calls for more, more, more guns as the answer time and time again while GOP politicians embrace them.
People are numb, partially because many Americans have shown they want it just this way.
1
The NRA has a death grip on the GOP and Trump. Amendment 2 is the one and only document that gun worshippers emulate. Nothing else is of any importance for the country.
Ergo, expect an ever increasing and unending series of mass murders...the joke has become: Make America Great Again. Trump is helping us achieve it!
How can I possibly be shocked by Thousand Oaks? America elects gun nuts again and again. America is not willing to expend any more than thoughts and prayers on the victims of mass murder. America swallows nonsensical interpretations of the Second Amendment, including the Supreme Court’s, because Republican orthodoxy forbids any actual thought about the issue. We could be the UK or Australia or Canada, which see next to no gun violence, but we are too dumb and lazy. It will get worse.
2
Well written Professor Gay.
I was shocked when I was brought in my teens to the US from Germany. That was in 1950. Shocked about the gun culture. I had experienced the war and its end. The guns. Huge mountains of ammunition thrown into rivers by the Nazis. Tanks and guns exploded to prevent enemy repossession. Bombs, bombs, bombs. My home city was bombed to smithereens. We were sick and tired of the bombing and shooting. We celebrated Eisenhower and the victory of the Allies. We had all become flaming pacifists. Pacifism was a crime in Nazi Germany. Then I was shocked in the USA at the casualness about guns. I saw guns sold. Everywhere. Also ammunition. Proud display of guns. Since 1950 gun violence has increased, increased, increased without end. Americans do not recognize their violence. They appeal to tradition. America has much to be proud of indeed! Look at the admirably long history of political stability!! Its legal system has been a beacon for reform around the world! Also for Germany! But does gun violence have to be part of that? Can Americans wake up? The Trumpet call of alert is all around us! We need a mass uprising against that part of our tradition! We can do it! Stop the violence! Honor what America is really about! Let's start to be proud of our mission for life, liberty and happiness! Not death and madness!
39
And then there's the ongoing gun violence in inner cities like Chicago, Baltimore.
A call to 'take the shooting seriously', published by an eye-rolling columnist. Please treat the subject matter with more respect, Roxane.
2
Trump couldn't care less.
Let’s be clear: The NRA and Republican terrorists in Congress enabling Dangerous Donald are perfectly happy for civilians to die in mass shootings for the sake of their greater cause of no gun restrictions whatsoever. Again: They don’t care if people die!
2
I gave up caring after the Sandy Hook massacre.
The greed and stupidity of the gun merchants never ends.
2
The NRA is a sponsor of domestic terrorism, plain and simple. The vast majority of domestic terrorists who kill people in the US are angry, conservative, white males with gun fetishes. Yet Fox news and hate radio racists demonize black and brown people to no end. If you want to see the real enemy - take a look in the mirror.
3
Thank you.
Parents are to blame. You vote against your own interests and bury your own children. When all you had to do was vote when Newtown happen, but Republicans love putting others' babies in cages and letting theirs get murdered. Cult indeed.
2
To the NRA: Aren't you tired of making statements like, "We honor the Dead?" Why not make a statement that you also honor the Living by engaging in a meaningful dialog about gun control.
Re: the right to bear arms from the late 18th century, Yes, absolutely. Butt if you really hold a strict view of the constitution, keep in mind that they made their own ammunition.
5
After nothing happened after Sandy Hook and very little happened after Parkland and Las Vegas this incident will be quickly forgotten after the next mass shooting.
Of the 33,000+ Americans who die from gunshot every year about 2/3rds are suicides. And 80% are white men who tend to use handguns. While 95% of the gunshot homicides involve people of the same color aka race. The balance are evenly divided by color aka race.
While mass shootings are rising in frequency and number they are still rare and relatively insignificant. Family and friends shootings outnumber stranger shootings. What happened in Thousand Oaks last night could be any day of the week in Chicago.
But black iives do not matter as much as any white life. When blacks kill blacks white American does not notice nor care. When whites kill blacks the same truth exists.
16
What a country. I feel horrible for saying this but I don't hardly flinch anymore over this stuff. This is a very sick country. I'm so sick of thoughts and prayers and no action.
32
With this mass shooting, there's a huge difference from the others we have seen in recent years. A Veteran of war, who was hurting so badly, that he made an awful decision and now 12 innocent people are gone. This was preventable.
I was a Marine for 8 years, 2 combat deployments, one to Afghanistan and the other in multiple countries around the world. I come from the bottom of society. With two addicts for parents, 22 different homes from 14-18 years old and 4 different schools.
Sadly, we are the military's demographic. The lower class of America. The vulnerable children who are already scarred protecting our constitution.
I have known 15 Marines to take their lives. Weeks ago, I found out that one of my Marines killed himself and his wife. Yesterday, one of my Marines shot himself, yet you wouldn't know. A Marine I served with in Afghanistan took the lives of 12 innocent people. Ian Long, my brother arms who was lost in his mind.
Mental health is more than an epidemic, its a virus, gnawing away at our country. Mental-health treatment for Veterans is mostly a joke.
At the end of the day, people will remember this as a white man inciting terror, and they are not wrong.
But PTS caused this. We need more empathy for the vulnerable, more resources. We need to push back to save those who are on the brink.
This was preventable, so are the future mass shooting and suicides. Treating people with true kindness can it can make all the difference.
Happy Veteran's Day.
S/F
43
@Timothy Brutsman: A heartfelt post, Mr. Marine. But don’t put this down to a white man’s evil. As you state in your post, it’s really all about demographics. It’s a cruel fate: the military takes the most vulnerable, literally off the streets, teaches them the science of killing, then musters them back into society, broken and confused. Yes, Ian Long was white but hate wasn’t (didn’t appear to be) his prime motivation. Vets need help when they get out and society is great st offering them thanks (sometimes) but not so generous when it comes to providing for their PTSD issues. Congress has a great interest in providing tax cuts for the one percent but for retuning vets, well, not so much. Priorities, sir; like sitting Congressmen hitting up lobbyists for re-election funds instead of taking care of the men and women who went and put it on the line.
12
@Timothy Brutsman
Thank you for this post.
How many of your Marine friends used a firearm to end their lives?
We need more empathy for the vulnerable, more resources, and far less access to firearms.
Yes, let's treat folks with "true kindness." But just as we wouldn't give folks who are suffering from depression a cyanide pill and caution them not to take it, we shouldn't make it simple for our most vulnerable warriors to have an instant means of near-certain death at the ready.
10
@Timothy Brutsman There is now a report of Ian Long having assaulted his high school track coach, a woman. She was pressured to keep silent about it lest this incident affect his plan to join the Marines. Clear signs of instability, lack of impulse control, interpersonal aggression, and major problems with anger management were swept under the rug about this man. His problems probably should have prevented him from military service. Having been a Marine clearly did not "straighten him out." Nor can his military service and "PTSD" fully explain his murderous/suicidal rampage. This man had been a ticking time bomb from the time he was an adolescent. While there is no obvious way for society to deal with violent individuals who have not been incarcerated for committing a crime, early psychiatric intervention might have been a possibility—although it is well known that sociopaths and psychopaths are not amenable to psychotherapy—but surely giving him training in the use of and easy access to guns set him on the path toward mass murder.
7
Continued protection for the second amendment and those adherents make every one of these massacres a government sanctioned killing of its citizens. When will we have enough?
2
Love for war guns outweighs all these folks' love of life. That is all. You cannot be for both.
1
Like you, Roxane, I was up early this morning. I turned on the local news and they were covering this latest massacre. I’m 71 years old, a military veteran, and I was in tears within moments. I saw the father whose last words to his only son were “I love you.” I cry as I write this, knowing that those words won’t help him today, but I also know they will help down the road; there is no better way to give your love to a child than to say “I love you” as they leave the house. I called my daughters, 40 and 36, and reminded them how much their mother and I love them. They understood.
The NRA tells us it’s not about guns, it’s about crazy people. They are liars. They know it is about guns. There are too many guns in this country, and anyone who says different is also a liar. That is not fake news.
3
One of the men killed had survived the Las Vegas massacre. How can this possibly continue???
When, exactly, will we be allowed to call this rolling catastrophe what it IS : White Male Domestic Terrorism. The usual excuses and “ reasons “ will be spewed, i.e. mental illness, lack of supervision, missed opportunities, blah, blah, blah. I really don’t care to hear this again. I want results. I don’t want my two Granddaughters to live in paralyzing fear OR inertia. WE have a choice: it’s the GOP/NRA Party, OR a decent, safer life.
CHOOSE. And choose wisely.
3
This gun victim graph is gut wrenching.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/heres-why-australia-will-never-understand-the-us-obsession-with-guns-20171003-gyt7ys.html
A radical thought, and one that will never, ever happen: take guns away from white men. All white men, except law enforcement. And let's see what happens next.
2
No more "thoughts and prayers." Thanks to the ubiquotisness of these random acts of gun terror, the new conversations will be, "Hi. How many shootings have you been involved in?" "Only two." "Only two? Which ones?" . . .
1
I ask and ask again: what is making white men mass killer crazy?
Of the 85 to 90 gun deaths that happen every day in the United States of America, many are white men committing suicide. For black men, homicide is the primary cause of death from gun violence. For white men, it is suicide.
Let US get to the bottom of this.
1
Right after you write your comment, call these NRA Senators. It takes two minutes.
1
There is genuinely no point in the Times reporting on mass shootings anymore. They are a daily occurrence. When something is this commonplace how can it be news? It saddens me that nothing will ever be done, but that's the truth. As Gay puts it, "cultural tolerance for mass murder appears to be infinite."
2
Just another law abiding American citizen exercising his gun rights.. Whats all the fuss about?
2
Another atrocity that will be swept away because of moneyed interests in keeping gun laws very loose. But why make a racist assertion that white men are singularly to blame for this situation? Too easy to get readers to jump on board with your agenda given the current sociopolitical climate?
1
How to survive gun violence in the USA:
Leave. Find a sane country and live and raise your children there.
If you can’t do that:
Don’t have children.
If you have children, home school them and
Send them to a civilized country for their college education
Don’t go to crowded places. This includes but it not limited to restaurants, places of worship, malls, fairs, concerts etc. Order food in, shop online.
Get a bullet proof vest and combat helmet
Don’t vacation in the south or west.
Have a nice day
3
We have ignored the second amendment. We do not have a “Well regulated militia...”
We live with suicide gunners committing acts of terrorism.
Law enforcement takes proactive measures to thwart acts of terrorists. Law enforcement needs to see terrorist gunners and bombers as the same.
Law enforcement needs our legislators to use the second amendment of our constitution as a guide.
We need a “well regulated militia”!
2
it's always a man, isn't it?
could that small thread by a place to start a real search for a way to end gun massacres?
does anybody actually care?
I find it passing strange that fiction on TV and in movies shows every kind of gun slaughter possible, even in slow motion. However, the local and national TV news shows are usually reluctant to show actual shootings as they occur or the torn and shattered bodies where the lay. Maybe if our children and citizens actually saw the reality of gun carnage things might change as they did when every night we saw on the news our young soldiers falling and dying uselessly in Vietnam. Well we now have our Vietnam in every town and city in our country. Ironic isn’t it.
I can no longer be shocked. But I am disgusted by the lack of movement in this country for gun control. And I fear for my grandchildren who have to attend school here. And I notice, when I am in crowds, and recently in a synagogue for a concert, I am fearful and look around a bit to see if I am safe. I recently shared this with a friend and she feels and does the same. Shame on the NRA bought legislators in this country for this!
“Be shocked by the massacre at the bar. It’s not normal”. But Roxane, it IS normal. After the mass murder of babies at Sandy Hook, I finally gave up hope. The price the American people are prepared to pay for your right to bear arms beggars belief. This IS normal. The new normal.
32
@Mary Jane Dickenson
Superstitious Americans prefer foetuses to living children. Just more proof of the wholesale irrationality of the American mentality.
2
I hate to say it but nothing will change as long as republicans have power.
They don’t seem to realize their inability to compromise will lead to them losing far more down the road. They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
4
I had a neighborhood connection to the massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. It felt very close to home even though I did not have family relations to the deceased or injured. I have no neighborhood connection to bars in CA. It feels nothing like the shooting in Pittsburgh. Just another echo of our failing society. I am not surprised by white men with too many guns killing innocents. Shocked? I'm just glad it wasn't me or mine. There is nothing I can do to fix this but vote for democrats and they have proven incapable of banning special interest dark money from any source, much less the NRA with their hit list. Therefore I am convinced politics will never fix this problem. Never. There's no point in belly aching about how ineffective or corrupt our politicians are. All politics have been corrupt in some way since the Romans invented the senate.
Every man for himself. Devil take the hindmost. Beware all white males, for they are more likely to be mass murders than anybody. Beware all right wingers, for they want guns to defend their rights, but then support the dictator TRUMP. Beware negotiating with gun toters. Nobody can think straight when their aim is to shoot straight.
2
a moving op ed but as usual directed to the wrong audience. this is the new normal whatever we hope otherwise. we are talking to ourselves
1
Gun deaths are our national sickness. It's only going to get worse.
2
Thank you, Ms Gay.
Tuesday says the recovery has started. We must recall America to its decent self. That is at the deepest core what it means to be America,
First thing in the morning, what every American expects in their mirror is not Freedom, or Liberty or Justice or Equality. It's not the Flag or monuments or prospects or parades or heroes.
First thing we want in the mirror, is a decent person.
Time to remind our trumpist friends and family of this fact. All that other stuff is great. But at base, we rise together, we stand together, because we see ourselves, we see each other as decent people. Lets do what decent people would do.
There is no decency in trump. None.
Recalled to decency, that throng behind him will stomp on the red hats as they desert him.
Come home America.
How anyone is to be shocked by anything these days would surprise me considering the press gives us the shock treatment for every less-than-shocking political story out there.
Unfortunately the stories that should truly be shocking get washed away in the deluge of unsubstantiated opinion.
“People treat the Constitution like a fast-food value menu, choosing which amendments are sacrosanct (the First and Second) and which are disposable (any of those giving civil rights to anyone but white men).” Perfectly said, Ms. Gay.
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Even a mass shooting event with a semi on the floor of the Senate will not change anything.
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@Reality You are correct. It has been tried along with several shot dead presidents and nothing has changed. I guess we must like it.
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Watching this madness persistently play out from across the Atlantic, Irish people are just baffled as to why this is allowed to happen. I have great sympathy for the families, but I can’t help but wonder how these politicians can sleep at night knowing that this will keep happening until things change.
The numbers don’t lie: America is on an island with these gun deaths. It’s like driving without a seatbelt every day; eventually you’re going to crash. I don’t live there, but it frustrates me so much to see people shot down. I just hope it is sorted out sooner than later.
How many more need to die?
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"American voters keep these people [NRA lackeys] in office,"
Thank you, Ms. Gay. Only one edit I would make. It's American non-voters who keep these people in office. Even our record-setting turnout election of earlier this week barely broke 50 percent.
Of course, you forgot, we forgot, everyday I forget he poor sick homeless I see in the subway bstations of the wealthiest town of the USA. How could you just live if your brain was not able to forget.
Despite being on of the oldest, wealthiest democracy of the world, the USA, the American citizens decided roughly for more guns and less universal health care.
Can we expect a change, I hope, I wish.
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Normality is defined by that which is commonplace. The explicit intent of this administration has been hyper-normalization. Overwhelm people with so much, over a short enough period of time, and you force “normal” to become something entirely unrecognizable from what once was.
Lulz.
Don't be paranoid. No one is going to assassinate you. These are motiveless shootings, not assassinations of perceived enemies.
Believe it or not, all those "other" amendments are taken seriously. And they protect everyone, not just your boogeymen.
The NRA is a gun propaganda machine with the second amendment as its cornerstone. The fear of our own government is being spread far and wide. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, govrnment is evil, therefore I need a gun to protect me and my family from the evil government. I saw a quote from Bill O'Reilly after one of the recent mass shootings, "It is the price of freedom." My question to you, Bill is, who is paying that price?
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307 mass shootings in the 312 days of 2018 says it all, sadly.
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It is not normal at all to be shocked by the umpteenth mass shooting in America. And we do not need more shock. We need action; real action, not clickavist feel-good pretend "action."
It is also not normal to remain steadfastly ignorant of how this idiocy makes American an international pariah.
It is also not normal to continually wring hands and do nothing substantive to combat the pernicious stranglehold of the fascist NRA on our Congress:
Scrap every such handwringing column in favor of a weekly updated list of
a) every Congress member and their NRA rating
b) every major company in each Congressional district with a high NRA rating
c) an update of boycott actions against such companies.
The only way to finally address this problem is finally rid the US Congress of the rot that comes from the fascist NRA, and then pass normal civilized gun laws like nearly every other advanced country has (those countries with gun violence rates a 1/10 or 1/100th of America's).
Enough is finally Enough.
This may be the most important, true thing that I have ever read in this newspaper. Thank you, Roxanne Gay.
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Dearest Roxane,
The world shakes it's collective head left to right.
America has no desire, will or way to make any sort of modification for the common good.
Pity, we liked you but it is no longer safe to visit.
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It shouldn't be too hard to develop a sensor "reading" the presence of a gun or gunpowder, and having the door automatically lock with such a presence
If you leave Target without paying, does an alarm go off when you leave the store? What triggers the door sensor?
If you are sitting in your office, how would you be able to keep a gunman wanting to kill you, from entering your office?
By having a sensor over your doorway which is able to sense a metal object like a gun, and the sensor locking your door while the gunman is outside.
And if the gunman waited for someone to come out of your office so that he could quickly enter, the door would lock and that person would not be able to leave and the gunman would not get an entry.
Meanwhile, a camera located outside your door activates when the sensor goes off, and you can see who is outside.
If the temple in Pittsburg had this sensor, no one would have been killed.
It is sad indeed that the hater in chief thinks that poor immigrant women and children are to be feared and are the biggest crisis to this country when it is home grown citizens exercising their 2nd amendment rights indiscriminately that are causing more direct harm.
I do believe that people are waking up. Change unfortunately is slow but until the reigns of power are taken away from the old guard and more women and minority voices are added we will be in this endless cycle. I will never become numb to violence and we need to reject the culture of hate every day by living in love and not fear.
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If we didn't do anything after Sandy Hook, there is really no hope that we will ever do anything that will end these senseless acts of violence. There is no comfort to be offered the families of victims. I don't pray-I sit here, horrified and ashamed. The only thing i can offer is shame-shame on all of us for not caring enough. And we don't care enough-we elected a president who is a horror, we continue to give the republicans a senate majority, we continue to be bought by the NRA. In three days the horror of this will be out of the memories of the vast majority of Americans. Didn't something awful happen in -was it Pennsylvania-last week or the week before? How many others died of gun violence in these two weeks? Keep writing as if it will make a difference. Thank you
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More die by gunfire in Chicago each day than died in the recent CA mass shooting. CA and Chicago have some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Gun control laws don't stop crime it seems.
Because gun laws have to be federal - in Chicago all They have to do is just walk over the border to Indiana and get all the guns they want!
Jerry
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I continue to be shocked by every atrocity. I feel it viscerally. It stays with me for weeks and longer. But I have grown numb to columns like this one, which is just more ineffectual boilerplate. Being commanded to "be shocked" is condescending to the many of us who cannot be anything but shocked every time. That so many claim to be numbed is outright scary. I fear those people almost as much as I fear the slaughterers.
The majority of Americans want strict gun control and are tired are reading about the latest mass shooting du jour. Phone calls and emails to politicians asking for gun control measures fall on deaf ears.
The only thing I can think of is for all voters who care about stemming the constant gun violence is to look up where the people they are asked to vote for get their money. If a candidate gets even one penny from the NRA, don't vote for them. Eventually, our obtuse politicians will catch on to what is going on.
Many people say they are too busy to pay attention to politics, but that's hogwash. Most people have access to the internet and can research information on political candidates easily. Take a little time from social media and incessant texting to do something constructive.
Too many of the problems our country faces today are the result of ignorance and laziness on the part of the citizenry.
No. Do the math. Mass shootings are NOT a significant cause of death in the US. Gun violence IS, but mass shootings are a tiny subset. The Washington Post estimates that when this event is factored in, 68 Americans have died in 2018 in mass shooting while 12,475 have died from all gun violence and nearly 20,000 die annually from guns used in suicide. 72,000 Americans died last year from opioid overdose.
Mass shootings are sensational dramatic events. Of course they are awful. But it is pandering to suggest that this is a national 'epidemic'. The New York Times knows better. This is cheap demagoguery.
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@Mark- this is the logic you reason with yourself.
No resolution here I'm afraid.
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I was so certain that things would change after the unimaginable brutal slaughter of all those precious babies and their loving teachers at Sandy Hook. I thought that maybe our public officials who are addicted to the money from the NRA would be so horrified that they would stop selling their souls for the few pieces of silver and make serious changes.
We got thoughts and prayers.
I thought that the slaughter of the kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School would change things.
We got thoughts and prayers.
I thought that the mass murder of 58 people and 851 injured would be the last straw and that maybe the U.S. Congress would make changes.
More thoughts and prayers.
The intentional slaughter of our children and of all of us in places of worship, in classrooms, at summer concerts, in libraries, in shopping malls, in grocery stores -- everywhere -- goes on.
How many deaths will it take till we know
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
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Ms Gay
Sorry, nothing surprises me anymore.
Except I am wondering when France, the UK, and other civilised countries will provide travel warnings to their citizens on foreign ministry websites regarding the real danger of travelling to the United States. No schoolchild, no member of a religious movement attending services, and no concert goer deserves to get wasted by angry white men in such a wanton fashion. Face it, Americans could care less, whether at the grass roots or by those elected to govern the country in the citizens' best interests-- NOT !
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His name was Tel Orfanos, he was 27, a US Navy veteran, and a country music lover. He survived the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year, only to be killed in this one. Let that sink in people. I heard his father speaking on NPR this morning, saying that we have more guns in private hands in this country than in war torn countries, implying I think, the insanity of this. Public or private life is now like being in a combat zone. His father commented that until gun violence is treated like an epidemic, these shootings will continue. We need to listen to this murdered young man's parents.
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@KCJ - I agree with you, but this is where the NRA has the politicians and gun lovers.
Consider this: the Ebola virus, the deadliest virus known to humans, has killed approximately 13,000 people since 1976 (WHO statistics). Most of the cases were in Africa where health care and facilities are far below the standards of more developed countries. If an outbreak of Ebola were to occur in the US, there would be mass panic.
Yet, approximately 100 people die in the US every day from guns. That's about 3 times as many deaths per year than all the people known to have died from Ebola. Every year.
When is the US going to recognize gun deaths as a public health emergency, a real epidemic that is almost entirely preventable?
Everyone thought Bump Stocks was one step too far. Even the NRA agreed that they should be banned. So whatever happened to that? The inertia is too great for action that even everyone agrees is needed.
I can be active around it, but no way can I be shocked, not for more than a few hours, really. It's a frequent occurrence. One adjusts.
Realism. Nothing of any consequence, or at best a slight tightening of background checks, can or will happen with the Donald or Pence in charge. The banning of assault rifles, and bump stocks will await a Democrat president with majorities in at least one house of Congress.
Those are the realities and state governments are even worse. Even after Parkland, the "Gunshine State" only took token action as the gun lobby and the state legislature are joined at the hip and have been for decades.
The saddest, and most tragic insight Prof. is your comment that no tragedy of any awfulness will move the majority of gun owners. If you know one you know their minds are almost all closed. Yet surveys show the general public would support reasonable restrictions. Vote, work for it in 2020.
As a Brit and perhaps as a woman who is not mentally ill, I cannot fathom any reason why one person feels the need to harm others with guns or any device. We need to figure out what triggers these kinds of acts whether they happen with guns (readily accessible in the USA) or with other devices. That's the urgent need right now.
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"According to statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 307 mass shootings in the 312 days of 2018. They are a commonplace occurrence. This is a horrifying thing to say, but it is the truth."
Thank you, Ms. Gay, for this column. It is indeed terrifying. I met grandson's school bus for five years and we'd walk home together. Sadly, on seeing his school bus top the hill, my first feeling was relief: Safe, one more day. His understanding and participation of lockdown drills was just routine.
Oh! I'd give anything for people to be so enraged and actively engaged against gun violence and mass murders as they are against LGBT and same sex marriage...
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These events have become so common place that they aren't a surprise anymore. I'm all for radical action though. I'm beginning to find the the NRA's caricature of liberal positions more and more appealing. I can't say I'd be anything but ecstatic now if we repealed the second amendment and proceeded to take away people's guns. It's not a realistic outcome, but it's clear to me that this country would be a better place without the scourge of guns.
The actions generally being proposed - banning bump stocks, background checks, etc - they'll improve things slightly and I suppose any improvement is better than nothing when it comes to saving lives, but they won't solve this problem and no meaningful solution can be developed with the Supreme Court's insane and illogical interpretation of the second amendment. The second amendment is also very unlikely to be overturned or modified any time soon.
We're going to keep experiencing these mass shootings. They will continue to grow in frequency as our population becomes larger and angrier. At some point there will be multiple mass shootings a day. We'll still do nothing meaningful about it. After all, we don't do anything about the much larger problem of single-victim shootings that kill dozens of people every day in individual incidents.
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Almost 6 years ago, America witnessed twenty 6-year olds and their teachers gunned down by a troubled man with an assault weapon. Many "thoughts and prayers" went out. Nothing happened -- not even a move to implement background checks for mental health, not even despite 90+% support for that proposal.
If Congress could quake in fear of the NRA, shrug its shoulders and declare first-graders to be mere collateral cost of living in a free, gun-owning society, then no -- nothing that happens today or tomorrow -- or ever -- will bring change. As a society, we have accepted that random carnage is the cost we pay to live in freedom.
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Some freedom that is.
@Tim C, something DID happen, after Sandy Hook, after Parkland. The odious NRA supporters started hissing about the survivors! Not content with defending their right to own dozens of war weapons for a possible insurrection, Infowars and Breitbart, FOX and republicans in Congress started lying about hoaxes and paid actors, accusing us of making it all up. No, really! They pointed and sneered at survivors.
trump said the Jews at Tree of Life synagogue 'should have had security', which is stupid enough. Now, turns out the venue in California DID have armed security. Good guys with guns did NOT stop a bad guy with a gun cuz the bad guy shot them first. Boy, that place turned into a well-ordered militia situation, huh? 2A nuts will happily have us all targets in their bloody fantasy based on the Hollywood movies they claim to hate.
Why do we, in America, need armed, privately paid security everywhere now? When America was 'great', was that the case? Is that why we loved Andy Griffith and Mayberry? Mom and apple pie? Now little children are considered appropriate targets, their parents objects of ridicule. Now the killer's right to those smoke bombs and war weapons is considered more sacred than those kids lives. We will soon say: "I remember when my mom and I could go grocery shopping without running in fear!" I remember parks and outdoor concerts, don't you? How silly that we once thought public places as other than a trap!
trump supporters choose bullets over life.
I applaud this plea to our sanity and humanity.
I am a hunter and own several guns. I enjoy shooting and love getting out to hunt. Owning a gun is a privilege, but like all privileges, it comes with responsibility. We constantly check safety both on the range and in the field because the last thing we want is a tragedy.
It seems just common sense that we should've restrictions and limits enforcing a culture of responsibility just as we do for cars and driving. I think that many many gun owners would agree and polling indicates that they do.
We just need to care enough to make our politicians actually represent our values.
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@ricodechef, if the last thing you want is a tragedy, why do you re-elect NRA loving politicians?
That's the problem. A small minority of screaming republican fanatics want us all to accept tragedy as necessary for the NRA to prosper.
If you hunting folk would actually do something other than cluck to yourselves as you check your orange vests for rips!! If you would write to your legislators, cancel your NRA magazine subscription, actually use your electoral power. Seems to me you keep voting for those who get high NRA ratings, cuz liberalz.....
I have not, so far, been on site when a mass shooting has occurred. However, in 2011, 5 people I knew and 3 others were murdered at my hair salon in Seal Beach, CA and my stylist and friend for 20 years - who survived - was deeply and permanently traumatized by what he experienced that day. My daughter's best friend, her sister and their boyfriends were at the Las Vegas massacre and escaped, but are forever scarred by the experience.
I am growing more and more fearful of being in crowds, and look around wherever I am to see if there is anyone who looks dangerous - a white man in heavy dark clothing on a sunny day, for example. We are going on a trip to Europe in the spring, and I am sad to say that I will probably feel less afraid in the South of France than I do in my hometown.
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@sharong Thank you for sharing your story. It infuriates me when all we remember is the number killed in these mass shootings. For every person killed, there are multiple people forever scarred. In Las Vegas, that number is in the thousands. And that's not even counting the people who were wounded and who will in some cases have a lifetime of pain and suffering. Then there are the family and friends of those shot and their losses. Let's not discount the horrible impact that these incidents have on so many, many people.
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@sharong I think most of us no matter our location don't feel entirely safe anymore. Too many well armed emotionally scarred hateful people exist in this modern day America. In addition they are armed with a president that encourages violence which exacerbates their angst. 307 mass shootings in the last 312 days is more than enough reason to claim this country is no longer the safe haven it once was. I feel sorry for my grand children that will never be able to experience the comfort of not having to constantly be on guard.
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Can California be its own country, and outlaw, in effect, the Second Amendment inside its borders?
Mass shootings are the most glaring example of our powerlessness to run our own country, our own laws, our own government. I haven't had much luck changing anything, though voting for Barack gave me some hope.
Despair is on the menu for many, many Americans, and when you put drugs, alcohol, insane firearms laws, poverty, and the stunning pain of abandonment by family and town...violence can only result.
There was a reason the old West outlawed the carrying of six shooters in towns, they knew drunk cowboys, emphasis on boys, and male stupidity would often result in meaningless violence.
I served in the military, and learned to love firearms, but in this time of crisis, would gladly vote to restrict their private ownership and to outlaw AR-15 use entirely.
Change won't happen until the old white suck-ups to the super rich are tossed out of office, and I write that as an old white guy.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
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The frequency of mass shootings in this country correlates with one thing. It's not inequality of wealth or our racial divisions or our poor mental-health treatment or a generally violent society. It's the enormous number of guns in the country. It's been clear at least since Columbine: in this country almost anyone who has an outburst of anger or frustration or a mental illness can easily get his hands on a gun, or, in many cases, several guns. It's not just a matter of mass shootings either. Suicides and accidents, children accidentally shooting other children, a two-year-old killing his mother in a supermarket with the gun in her brand new concealed-carry purse. Too damned many guns, and too-powerful guns.
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This is a rare example of a writer to actually try and understand and empathize with the inexplicable, senseless inner forces currently driving the politics of the right, which threaten to suck us all down with it, and then trying to bring that chaotic emptiness back to the world of the feeling. Thank you, Roxane Gay. We need so much more of this.
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Ms. Gay, all Americans suffer from our cultural abuse gun sickness, not just NRA members.
If this was true, ie NRA members, the carnage would have stopped yrs. ago.
As usual, you offer up the same failed proposals, ie the panacea of extreme gun controls, up to and including bans.
The extreme right does the same thing. If only we could something about black/minority violence in the inner cities, our panacea will come.
Ms. Gay it is a national, cultural sickness suffered by all Americans including yourself otherwise it would have been cured by now.
Only a policy of legality, regulation, responsibility, and non promotion of the gun will do the trick, just like the dramatic effects it had with cig.smoking and drunk driving.
The death and injury rates were dramatically reduced.
We can do the same for guns if we want, but the cure is illusive.
The great majority of Americans on both sides do not want to follow the cure.
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@Paul
But pointing out where the NRA's position is Very important since they spend millions of dollars buying the No Gun Regulation policy they created.
Historically, the NRA was all for gun safety and gun control-but, things changed.
We need policies that other developed country's impose on gun ownership.
We need to dis-band the NRA and treat them for what they are-a terrorist supporting group who's policy's support ownership of assault weapons that only police or military personnel should own. (305 mass murders this year so far---more guns is NOT the answer).
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@Paul
Cigarettes and alcohol are dangers largely to their consumers..they destroy body tissues of their consumers.Guns kill other people..innoncents,children just about anybody..and the the gunner may choose to off himself..or not.
The point here is that preventive programs for alcohol and cigarerres were based on appeals to sel preservation. The gun lobby and second amenmenment distortionist perceive themselves as self protecting with their absurdly potent killing ,machines...they will not be dissuaded by the prohitionitionsts.
Some gun enthusiasts may be rationale but so are some dog fighting fans..nonetheless both groups must be denied their pathological p,erasures....guns need to be confiscated and melted down as their manufacture as well as ammunition must be outlawed.
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@tom mulhern- thank you for your reply. Again another knee jerk simple solution just like the right says do something about inner city youth killing themselves with guns and the problem will be over.
One correction, I was referring to drunk driving which indeed kills other people.
tom, the bottom line is that you can intellectualize, rationalize, scapegoat, ax grind etc. but it is a national sickness suffered by all Americans, not just the NRA, otherwise it would have been cured by now.
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Here's my takeaway:
(1) We have no mental health system in this country, so crazy people get neither treatment nor long term custodial care (it is being reported in local news that this guy was a disturbed individual before he went into the military)
(2) There is virtually no connection between the mental health system, such as it is, and the legal system, and the background check system. That's why it appears to be common that crazy people are able to buy guns.
(3) No matter how much liberals/Hollywood types/techies/ACLU, etc protest, it is wrong and harmful to have video games that involve killing people. It hasn't come out yet, but I'll lay odds this guy was a gamer.
We must have a way to remove crazy people from society and make absolutely sure they can't buy a gun.
Alas America- you are already living under tyranny. The tyranny of knowing that you and everyone else is under constant threat and will continue to be so indefinitely. And so unnecessarily.
The comparison with ISIS?? Individual gun owners in the US are not part of an organized military & are too disparate to instantly form resistance to this imagined “takeover” in the 21st century. In the western democratic world we have the great institutions of democracy-we need never to take them for granted but give our time and resources to strengthening them. That’s our true and effective power-not guns.
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"Sometimes they are there because I am a black woman with opinions and the threat is already implied. Every time I go on stage, I look out into the audience and wonder if there is a man with a gun in the sea of faces. I am not scared of him. I am resigned to the inevitability of him pointing that gun at me, at the crowd, and pulling the trigger."
I'm trying to remember all those times a black woman giving a talk at a university has been gunned down...and coming up empty.
Maybe someone can refresh my memory?
@AG I think you may have missed the point.
Thank you, Roxane for your self awareness, blunt yet deeply caring honesty and your desire to cut through your own reflexive indifference when it comes to the insanity of gun violence in this country. Thank you for imploring all of us to feel the horror and the specter of attack with which we are all forced to live. It’s almost unbearable, but necessary.
My wife and I and two young boys lived in and love America.
It broke our hearts, but we left.
The anger and the guns is a mix like nowhere else on earth. The land of God, flag and gun. False idols. I am so sorry.
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@Jim
I'm sorry, too. The U.S. is my native country. I served in the army, and worked in politics and law enforcement for most of my adult life. But now, I'm leaving, too. I just can't stand seeing what my country has become.
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Dear Ms. Gay,
I've admired your writings since the days (15 or so years ago?) when you wrote for Salon.com, and your voice/self (along with Laura Miller's) just........Stood Out.
I'm so glad to find that both you and she have found other perches from which to publish your thoughts and opinions. You both have a fine instinct for asking the right questions.....and leading other folks to do so, also.
I just posted your article on my facebook page, in response to friends who've wondered how to "process" this most recent shooting. I'm glad to see that it's being widely "shared".
If you were here right now (not likely; this is a large and remote horse farm in North Carolina), I'd tell you to pick out any painting or puppy (the two things I have in abundance here in this old cottage) you choose.
Thank you for your incisive and somehow encouraging voice in these dark times. Our country needs more folks speaking and writing as you do.
Quite sincerely,
David Terry
Quail Roost Farm
Rougemont, NC
2
We had an mass shooting in Tasmania in 1995.Thirty five people died.That was the worst ever in Australia.The government reacted by introducing very though gun laws and an amnesty for unregistered guns.Since then it's almost impossible for private persons to obtain a firearm and since then there has not been another shooting.As long as you Americans think,you need to carry a gun,just because your constitution allows you to,nothing will change.It's your mind set and obviously the inability to understand,that no guns mean no shootings.Should be a no-brainer.
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@Rudy, Australia doesn't have a nuclear navy. They barely have a navy at all. Maybe the USA should follow Australia there as well.
@Rudy: It's unfortunate that your country has no constitution guaranteeing the right of self defense. You can't say there is no violence, no crime where you live, can you?
@bruce2359 I live in seaside village that is a popular holiday spot all year around.Some years ago we had a series of break-ins during the main season.The culprit was caught.That was it.No violence either.Since we all do not carry guns there is no danger to be attacked and logically no reason for self defence.That is the same for the big cities in Australia.There are no shootings because there are no guns.BTW here you even need a licence for an air riffle.
4
I'm proud of my state, Washington, for having just passed actual basic, common-sense gun control legislation. See article here: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-state-voters-approved-new-gun-regulations-in-i-1639-heres-what-the-law-will-do/
It's a start. Other states may now follow suit, as ordinary people of any political affiliation (who are not blinded by the fear and anger stirred by our demagogic president and the NRA lunatic fringe) begin to see that "gun control" need not mean "gun prohibition." I hope the Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives will consult their constituents on this issue and take inspiration from states like Washington. We have much farther to go to reduce the number and lethality of guns in America, but we have started down that road. Women and LGBTQ representatives in Congress, progressive new candidates not beholden to big donors, and responsible, level-headed citizens can work together to address and heal the sickness caused by the gun virus in America.
1
Lobbyist and their money have to be taken out of politics.Citizen United has to be overturned.Is our new House of Representatives up to tackling this,are we as Americans up to tackling this? Sandy Hook should have been the line in the sand.Sick of "thoughts and prayers".
2
I wish I lived in a country where only law enforcement and criminals had guns.
Weapon control needs to be obtained by constitutionally OK special laws. And reverse psychology that makes them obeyed. Henry the VIII of England did it this way with the military style long bows and arrows of his time
1. All military capable weapon owners ordered to practice shooting at official local ranges for 2 hours immediately after attending (or missing) church on Sundays. Severe penalties for bad scores and absenteeism.
2. All military capable weapon owners to be automatically enrolled in the local State militia and be liable for call up for all emergencies and national wars.
3. Mandatory attendance at gun shot wound treatment example classes at local hospitals.
I suspect gun ownership interest and its faux status would tumble in a very short period.
Last night 12 people were senselessly killed. In Canada, Europe, and many other places around do the world a random act of violence like this would be incredibly shocking and horrific. As I write this I am only 9th person to comment on the terrific article. There are currently 471 comments on the revocation of Jim Acosta’s White House press credentials. How sad that we find that more worthwhile to comment on. What has become of us as a nation ?
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I am a Canadian. Owning a handgun, legally, is next to impossible. There are enough illegal guns to fuel gang wars. However, the overriding ethos in Canada is that NO ONE NEEDS A GUN. Ever. Except for police and military. What American ethos demands guns is beyond the ken of most Canadian--and most others in the world. No explanation for owning a gun makes any sense.
@Bernard Shinder
I wish I could explain. I live in a well off neighborhood in Nashville. I don't feel afraid in my neighborhood of working professionals and retirees. I take sensible precautions like locking my doors and windows but that's like using a seatbelt when you get in a car. I don't understand why some of my neighbors feel the need to sleep with loaded handguns in their night stand. But to them danger lurks everywhere and they need to be prepared.
Citing the gun violence archive does no one credit, they deliberately inflate their reported numbers of mass shootings with erroneous reports and misleading statistics. Just as an example, looking through their reports for October of this year a lot of the sources for their statistics are not actually mass shootings, but separate, unrelated shootings that were all lumped into the same news report because they occurred at roughly the same time in different locations. Furthermore, a majority of the "mass shootings" reported by the archive are non-fatal, sometimes featuring only 1 or 2 people with only minor injuries or even no injuries at all. Consider also that the vast majority of those incidents are gang on gang violence or criminals fighting police.
Yet articles like this one will still use these stats to give the impression that tragedies like the one in Thousand Oaks happen every other night. Either the author is ignorant or deliberately spreading misinformation.
2
@Joel The fact that you feel the need to challenge exactly how these unaccetable number of violent gun incidents are logged is a clear indication that the "excusing" away of this violence has been ingrained into our public conversation. We need to get beyond nitpicking how the facts are displayed - they are simply the facts. the more guns we sell (not for hunting or sport), the more gun violence there is. Proof that a good guy with a gun does not stop a bad guy with a gun is the 29 year veteran of the police force who sacrificed his life to limit the carnage to 12...
In America, we have become quite accustomed to having the will of a few, overrule the desire of a majority.
Most Americans favor gun control, but it doesn't matter.
More Americans voted for Clinton than Trump, doesn't matter.
More Americans didn't want to see Kavanuagh confirmed, doesn't matter.
I think you get the point.
1
I am shocked. Repulsed. Sickened. And heartbroken. We've had 307mass shootings so far this year (which is calculated based on four or more people dying per event). 33,000 people have died. Families have been broken. And yet a minority of people continue to convince our Congress that it's a shame, but legal because of the 2nd amendment.
3
I can't be shocked anymore. This is the new normal. We need to vote every single NRA bought politician out of office. Otherwise there is no hope for any meaningful change.
Well said. That statistic in the second paragraph is horrific.
If I had children, I would have to seriously consider whether to raise them in the US. We have a culture of violence in this country. The obsession with guns and our intentional mis-interpretation of the Constitution simply adds fuel to the fire. We support domestic terrorism and mass murder by not speaking out. We are told. "If you see something, say something." We've seen a lot, but no one is saying anything.
I just don't care anymore. That's not to say I don't feel sorry for the victims and their families. My thoughts and prayers, blah, blah, blah.
The reason I don't care is because our elected officials don't care. People who care about an issue do something about it. I don't have any hope that this dysfunctional mess we call Congress will even attempt solve this problem. History is on my side.
Thank you. I really don't know how we continue on each time a mass murder takes place. Everything just continues on as normal and then we're numb for a few days until the next one. And as for the politicians who do nothing, perhaps they want us to live in terror? With all of the gun violence and vile lies we are subjected to everyday... when will it be enough? What has happened to this country?
2
The horror of it is that the horror is a commonplace occurrence now. So much so that I saw interviews with two young men who said they and some others survivors of this brand new Thousand Oaks massacre had also been at and survived the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year. Where will they be next year and the year after that? What do we tell them when nothing changes?
2
Yes and yes and yes. Thank you for this piece.
The problem is sort of law that could have stopped this particular shooting would have to be so restrictive as to deny an ex-soldier the right to own a handgun through some kind of subjective determination he was mentally unstable (despite no prior criminal activity).
Even if we banned assault rifles or banned felons from owning guns, it wouldn't have stopped him.
So it's a more challenging problem than just gun control.
2
@Mmm
Having grown up in a country where nobody had any guns I can assure you gun control does work. The US should try it. The result will be obvious.
45
@Mmm Still, it would be a good start.
How can I be shocked by what happened in Thousand Oaks? It was completely predictable. Like the ex-soldiers who blew out the brains of Chris Kyle or went on a rampage at the Navy Yard or shot up a church in Southerland Springs or the Texas Tower shooter way back in 1966, or all the ones in between, the shooter fit a profile that is a clear risk factor:
Male
Ex-military
Mental Health issues
EASY ACCESS TO FIREARMS.
This pattern is similar to other mass shooters:
Sandy Hook / Parkland / Aurora / Columbine / Isla Vista / Umpqua / Virginia Tech and many more:
Young
Male
Incel
Mental Health Issues
EASY ACCESS TO FIREARMS.
We have a lot of males in this country. A lot are young and can't get a date. We have a lot of ex-military. We have a lot of folks seeking mental health treatment.
But when we give them all EASY ACCESS TO FIREARMS, we are going to have the same predictable results.
Until we hold our politicians and the NRA accountable in the harshest terms imaginable under the law, we will continue to sacrifice lives to our love of guns.
Going shooting with one's brother will do nothing to help solve the problem. Looking him in the eye and telling him he is part of the problem will hurt, but until we do that, we are spinning our wheels on the graves of the dead.
1
Until we as a country decide our love affair with the Second Amendment has caused and is continuing to cause so much devastation and heart break, this tragedy will continue, unabated. Until we as a country decide enough is enough, it will continue, and the NRA and the people they support in Washington will continue, unabated. According to the last stats I read a person, man woman child, was shot every 15 minutes in our country. If that is a fact not to give us pause and question, what is?
1
Ban handguns. It is that simple. There is no need to own a handgun, ever.
1
I am glad you keep saying "This is not normal" during this administration.
I feel like every legislator taking money from the NRA needs to be required to view the morgue pictures from these crimes. They simply ignore the will of the American people for a lobbyist check and the votes from a minority.
1
Another mass shooting, unmeasurable harm, changed lives, broken families, tragedies; more charts, more comparisons. We know the solutions. Other countries have greatly reduced the amount of deaths occurring from guns. What attitudes about gun ownership prevent our culture from erasing these horrible statistics? How can we tolerate and live in a country that now ranks #1 in the amount of deaths related to guns?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/11/06/562323131/gun-violence-comparing-the-u-s-with-other-countries
So sad that the first first responder on the scene, the first "good guy with a gun" to enter the bar, ended up dead. So sad for his family. He was reportedly a 29 year veteran of the local sheriff's office.
We won't put gun laws in place, we won't reduce the carnage, and we won't stand up to the NRA. We are, indeed, long past the time for radical action. We have let that time pass us by. So as you say, let's change the script! Let's recognize that we have made a choice, and let's celebrate our freedoms!
Just like soldiers who die in service, the gun victims have made the ultimate sacrifice - for our freedoms! We mourn and thank our military dead, and we owe the same to those who die for our gun freedoms: our 2nd-Amendment Dead, or for short, our Gun-Dead. We should celebrate and thank our nearly hundred new Gun-Dead every day! Each night, their names should be scrolled across our computer and TV screens, over a background of the NRA logo and stirring images of the heaviest weaponry we can buy. Our Gun-Dead families should be celebrated alongside our Gold Star families, and they should receive generous payments which the gun manufacturers and NRA would happily provide in return for the chance to remind us daily what might happen to us unless we arm ourselves right away.
To kick things off, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank today's inevitable Gun-Dead for their sacrifices at the altar of our freedoms! The gun manufacturers enjoying their profits, the NRA and the gun politicians enjoying their donations, and about a hundred Gun-Dead every day: Together they defend our cherished freedoms. Thank you, one and all!
1
I've stopped in or driven past Thousand Oaks a million times.
It's a backwards world when a gun association controls our political system. Blood isn't green like money.
The second tragedy of these mass murders is the continued coverage of them that makes all of us bystanders and creates an acceptance of them as commonplace.
Excellent article, Ms. Gay. Thank you.
1
one U S government employee by himself was able to stop the worldwide manufacturing of Quaaludes. This gun thing here in america will take a few more people and a whole nation that wants this scourge to stop. maybe a strong push from the authorities to remove guns from homes with laws not just passed but enforced that would make getting caught with one such a social no no that mandatory jail time would be involved. Guns=Jail time and removal from society. this can be accomplished but not without support from the populace.
1
I'm sorry, but I'm not shocked. Not anymore.
This is what America is now.
1
Please understand that thoughtful, passionate arguments such as this one will NOT change the minds of gun advocates. When you see another mass shooting, you demand more control on guns. When they see another mass shooting, gun advocates feel safer for having their own guns, and consider whether they might need even more of them to feel secure.
We Americans have to decide that we want to make our country civilized. We currently allow massacres, mass incarceration, millions of children living in poverty, corporal punishment of children in school, a poor "healthcare system", an absurdly skewed and corrupt system of political representation etc. etc. Life in America is much harder and uglier than it should be in most respects. And that is if you're lucky enough not to be one of our many crime victims.
1
I continue to be horrified at these almost weekly mass shootings. The people need to continue to vote the NRA huggers out in Congress and your state legislators. It's all about money and how much these officials that we vote in take from the NRA. Vast amounts. So are they representing the NRA or us, the American people?
1
“We must elect politicians who will ban assault weapons”— so simple. Why can’t we make this happen?
1
OK. I'm a middle-aged white male who is appropriating, but...
You go girl!
Could not have said it better. Excellent column.
We. Must. ACT!
1
Sorry but I'm not shocked by the latest massacre.
There's only one thing that would shock me today: Actually passing any serious and sensible gun safety laws.
2
How can we be shocked that a dozen additions to thousands of gun deaths has happened? Saddened, yes, but shocked? I am no more shocked about gun deaths in America than was Captain Renault was about gambling in Ricks.
What would shock me would be Republicans going against the NRA.
1
I have noticed that the usual suspects aren’t even offering “thoughts and prayers” on social media this time. Nor did they do so after the synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania. There has been a dearth of the “if only God was allowed in the schools!” nonsense as well. Could it be that these people always knew “thoughts and prayers” were just a way to deflect condemnation? Did they always know that “banishing God from schools” (which hasn’t ever been the case - the only thing prohibited is official, mandated school prayer) didn’t explain mass murders in churches? Has it always been that the NRA values gun ownership over human lives; and gun advocates would rather cling to the movies in their minds - the fantasies where they step in with their trusty firearms and save the day! - than acknowledge that human lives are more precious than their delusions? The GOP is the party of death, indeed.
1
After every mass shooting we say "it could have been worse". It makes me wonder - will we know when the "worse" happens? Given all the mass shootings what could the "worse" possibly be?
1
Thank you, Ms Gay. As always, an insightful and eloquent piece. Politicians say, after one of these events, "This is not whom we are". But, in fact, it is whom we are. We glorify guns and the so-called right to bear them not understanding the historical context of the 2d amendment, nor the horrible damage being inflicted by people who elevate that amendment over all others. Why do we let a fearful and ignorant ( or venal) minority put our lives in danger?
1
We want guns more than we want our children and our families to be safe. We are willing to live with the fact that there is a possibility of being shot literally everywhere we go. Ironically, we go overboard on security at airports while ignoring the statistical possibility of being shot is much greater.
I have never understood how this country could tolerate the massacre of little children so well that it would rather spoil the childhoods of innocent kids by having them attend school under armed guard and teach them survival tactics when a madman with a semiautomatic visits their school one day.
Psychotic mass shooters have more rights in this country than we and our kids do.
1
GOP is at the mercy of NRA gun lobby. For NRA, neither the Constitution, nor the 'Christian Gospels' mean anything;' talk to me through my gun' is the way NRA interprets Amendment two, which is THEIR Gospel...
Add to this the number of assault weapons in the country, their easy acquisition, the palpable hate that divides the country, fueled by a combative President, the heroin epidemic, and one get's surprised at the fact that 307 mass shootings have occurred in 312 days?
The utter foolishness of sending US forces to stop a group of helpless , bedraggled immigrants,. makes an utter mockery of "Make America Great Again"
1
No, I'm am not shocked by another mass shooting in the US and I don't expect any major changes to the nation's gun laws to deal with all of these senseless killings. Most of the shootings in this country will take place in ones and twos and will not be considered important enough to make the national media. They will take place in neighborhoods that most readers of this web site do not visit, places like Chicago's Austin neighborhood which has already recorded 52 homicides so far this year. Of the 506 homicides recorded so far this year in Chicago, 430 were caused by shootings but only 4 involved the police. (Data from the heyjackass.com website).
Americans aren't shocked. At all, anymore. Shootings are background noise we don't notice. I have voted, every chance I've had, for candidates who want to limit automatic weapons and increase background checks. Does it do any good at all? In this election, Republican voters in Red America turned out in droves with campaigns supported by the NRA, and the Senate is so Red that Supreme Court justices who support gun "rights" will breeze in, no problem. The killings will continue. I am disgusted, and feel pretty helpless. Maybe I'll get myself a Kevlar vest.
1
I am always shocked to the core when a shooting like this happens anywhere else in the world, but America. When they happen here, I shrug my shoulders and whisper “another lunatic with a gun, what’d we expect?” Not enough people care in America and too many think that prayer is somehow an adequate response. Go figure.
1
Sorry , I am not shocked . Just not ...12? Now Vegas ...That was kinda shocking . If I read there have been no mass shootings in a year , at some time in the future , I will be shocked . I dont think I will live to see the day ....Sorry ...really sorry .
1
The gun lobby, with their nefarious logic, will respond to this tragedy as follows:
“California has the nation’s most strict gun control laws, but the laws did not prevent these 12 people from dying. This proves that gun control laws do not work.”
1
We can pretty much guarantee that the praying politicians don't work in places that allow guns (the only people who have guns in congress are the capitol police) and neither do the NRA officials. Perhaps the solution is to make these folks endure what the rest of us do. Everytime I go to the movies or church or any other public gathering place I look for the exits so I can get out if there's a shooting. Living like this is nuts.
1
We are failing our children.
We are shaming our ancestors.
We must do something.
Fast.
1
This morning I saw a photograph— possibly in the NYT—the placard read Pro-life. With five conservative justices, we could be on the verge of decimating Roe vs Wade. My question is where are these pro-life people after these horrific shootings? It seems the life of the unborn is sacred. What happens to those of us who are actually alive and our children who are actually born? Shouldn’t our lives be valued? They are to me.
Thank you Roxanne Gay for very beautifully written article. We cherish those beloved babies we hold dearly in our arms. Please vote out those politicians with A-plus ratings and let these children have a chance for long happy lives. If you’re really pro-life vote for gun control.
2
Thank you for this column. It is shocking how blase we have all become to these mass killings. My kids do active shooter drills at school with the same boredom as they do fire drills. Politicians mouth the same empty platitudes and do nothing. Media put the survivors on our screens the day after, and then move on to the next click bait news. What does it say about us as a society that we accept the slaughter of our children and neighbors, worshippers and first responders so that the gun industry can continue to accrue its bloody profit unfettered?
2
No, we have not become tolerant, we are simply tired of decades of talk and anger that never result in anything more than another round of worthless thoughts and prayers. In other words thoughts and prayers that really mean were sorry but the money surrounding this issue is much more important than the life of your loved ones. Money talks, life is expendable in the face of money.
29
I always read the comments on each opinion piece that posts them. Today, I realized I had read these very same comments many time before. In fact after each shooting the same thoughts appear with regularity: frustration, helplessness and anger at NRA-bought lawmakers, mental health issues, how other countries handle the situation.... on and on. The second amendment is dutifully discussed. Opinions expressed, thoughts and prayers offered. Then all is forgotten until the next time and the recurring nightmare continues.
I was reading my new issue of New York Magazine, the one that features pictures and stories of kids who were wounded in various school shootings, when the news of Thousand Oaks was reported on my radio. I almost vomited. I still don't feel recovered from the Tree of Life and Kroger shootings. Is "shootings" the wrong word now? Should we be saying... screaming... "murders?"
I am not numb to any of this. I am horrified and sickened and and feel great despair because it seems no one - no one who might be able to - will do anything about the flood of guns in this country. Not that anything *can* be done at this point. How would we ever collect back all the millions of firearms out there?
And there's no protection for any of us against it. This newest shooter was known to be suffering from violent mental illness. He was interviewed by mental health professionals when they were called for an emergency intervention and he was "cleared." Did they ask if he had any guns? If they asked, did they take them? Law enforcement obviously knew this man was a problem; did they try to stop a gun massacre before it could happen?
Of all the sad stories in this America - and there are far too many of those - this is the saddest and the worst. I will never be numb to stories like these but have no hope that anything meaningful will ever be done to stop this endless madness.
1
My concern is that we will see caravans of Americans fleeing the USA for the safety of Canada on our southern border, we do however have far more sensible immigration laws than the US and I will give Trump credit for trying to have Canadian immigration standards where we have a point system and excellent refugee screening.
It's a beautiful essay, as always, Roxane. But I'm less sanguine than you. This is yet another 'yawn' moment, another blip in the screen of psuedo-reality which seems to characterize the current zeitgeist of our country. Guns do, and must, matter more than people, because in our capitalist society, money does, and must matter more than people. As Trump said regarding halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi butchery, “it would not be acceptable to me.” It's money, not people, that matter.
Second, as long as Americans cling to the canard that it is mental illness that prompts men to murder, we'll never get to the heart of the matter. As long as our leaders continue to neuter the issue, we'll never fully understand and begin to find solutions to the male problem of violence. Many will call me sexist for pointing out the obvious: men feel justified in slaughtering other men, women and children with weapons of war. Fine, make me the problem, then turn back to the perpetrators and find out what it is about the X+Y that equals mayhem.
Then, and only then, can we work together to cure the disease that is destabilizing our lives, our future, and our nation.
25
"Many will call me sexist for pointing out the obvious: men feel justified in slaughtering other men, women and children with weapons of war"
No. The vast majority of men do not. It's not that your post is sexist; it's just false. In a country with approximately 325 million people, claiming that the 300+ plus men who have perpetrated these mass murders (this year) are somehow reflective or indicative of the other 160+ million is just an error of arithmetic or judgement.
"Second, as long as Americans cling to the canard that it is mental illness that prompts men to murder, we'll never get to the heart of the matter."
And sorry, I must have missed it: what's "the heart of the matter" that you think we should all attend to? You vaguely imply "maleness," but - like I said - that's only true if you make some very specious assumptions.
Sorry. I'm not shocked anymore. It's hard to be, not when almost every day, or week, or month brings reports of random gun violence destroying the lives of hundreds of Americans whether at work, at school or at play.
No one is safe anymore. Nowhere is safe anymore. Not even in one's own home or House of Worship.
We're all targets now.
And THAT is the only thing that's shocking.
Note how our decades of NRA-liberalized gun laws again help the perpetrator rather than the citizens he killed (including himself). Even worse, one year prior to retirement, the NRA's model "good guy with a gun" became a dead hero at the hands of a trained killer.
Our laws are misguided, based on a dubious interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The mass-shooters with glocks and smoke grenades or assault rifles did not exist in 1787. A vet with probable PTSD is not a "well-regulated militia". To stop the killings start by laws that protect hunters while protecting people from those who would hunt them.
3
I was talking to an Australian when news came on about the latest mass shooting. He remarked how Australia eliminated the daily carnage by buying up all the guns in his country. It's true. Australia is now disarmed while our politicians limit the gun control dialogue to talk about assault weapons. This underscores how far we have to go to yielding a weapons-free society. If we accomplished it, the mass murder culture we have spawned would soon wither.
1
I used to take a "balanced viewpoint" about the issue of gun ownership. I was raised in a culture where guns are sensibly used for hunting deer and small game. I was taught to shoot as a teenager and saw the respect and care that people had for guns. I have slowly evolved to think that the only sensible solution is to aim to take all guns out of the hands of everyone in America. I realize this is heresy. Maybe by aiming for zero we can get to a sensible place again.
1
The same legislators who will not deal with the reality of one person's ability to endanger groups of Americans because of easy access to weapons even when mentally ill or being on the police rosters as a danger to the public are also expecting us to believe that they are so morally sensitive that even a fertilized egg sends them into a stance of protective frenzy.
The reality is the NRA check in the mail.
I would contribute to my Senator if he would give up his dependence on an organization with ties to Russia and that yanks his chain for favorable legislature in exchange for "thoughts and prayers" every couple of weeks/every week/every day.
3
After Sandy Hook, NPR did a story where a reporter went to a gun show in upstate New York and asked people for their opinions. One of the attendees said, "They're trying to take away our guns for no reason." I'll never forget that. Dead children meant nothing to him -- they amounted to "no reason". That's when I realized that nothing whatsoever will move these people. Either they must have restrictions imposed on them or else they must be forced to enlist in a "well regulated militia" just as the Second Amendment stipulates.
51
@Livie
The "well-regulated militia" idea is considered a joke, but it should not be. Our courts made a horrendous error when they protected part of the 2nd amendment ("the right to bear arms") but forgot what it was for (the militia). Imagine if every gun owner had to spend X number of hours in militia training, then service; the more guns, the more hours. You don't show up, your gun is confiscated. How could any 2nd amendment supporter object?
Here is a possible radical solution of the kind Ms. Gay wishes for. Make it easy to get a gun restraining order. Let anyone - friend, neighbor, family member, employer, doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist or social worker - identify a gun owner who seems to them to pose a risk to the police. The police would then confiscate their guns and put them on a list to automatically fail any background check. The gun owner would then have to go to court and prove themselves not to be a safety risk in order to have their rights restored.
It is abundantly clear that changes in gun control will not come from the ballot box. The relentless grassroots efforts of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) changed the culture of driving under the influence in this country. Perhaps it is the right moment for women and mothers to take the reins and mount a similar movement in Congress and in every state legislature across the nation. Just call it Mothers Against Gun Addiction (MAGA). The red caps are already made. Shame those who are now wearing them and do nothing.
5
Endless gun massacres in America despite massive popular support for reasonable gun control. The public, flagrant buying of our politicians legalized and normalized by Citizens United. See a connection?
44
I am shocked and dismayed! The gun absolutists across the country could care less. The president will talk about armed guards, the NRA will talk about good guys with guns, the politicians will offer “thoughts and prayers” and nothing will change. My shock and dismay are meaningless in the face of their apathy and intransigence. The level of carnage is long past the point that should have triggered a response, for the NRA and the gun absolutists this is an acceptable level of collateral damage as a price of “freedom” leaving only suffering for those harmed and protective numbness for the rest of us.
3
I can't help it. I'm completely numb by these shootings. It's not that individually I don't care, though. When the news shares painfully disturbing details about the slain, it still makes me sad and angry, but I see this headline crop up and I literally click over it to see what else is going on.
But I realize that is part of the problem. Outrage sometimes results in change, and indifference never results in anything positive.
5
My plea to the 95 newly elected women in congress: form a pact against taking money form the NRA, step number one. Show that it can be done then encourage all congress women to do the same, followed by the rest of congress for taking NRA money. Follow the money.
Agree to vote in sensible gun legislation banning national sale of automatic weapons, bump stocks and other such unnecessary gun paraphernalia. Why some ask? Because automatic weapons are meant for armed combat not civil society. Because with one mass shooting per day and many more that are suicides and family violence, it is time to protect civil order and society the same way seat belts do. Because we are a lot safer without automatic guns than with them.
In any other country this opinion would not be considered radical but it is here.
17
@Mother
May I expand on your thoughts a little? You mentioned in your first sentence our 95 women in congress and that is the key. How many mass gun shooters or mass killers of any sort are women? How many women are rapists, pedophiles, or violent criminals? The problem isn’t guns, it’s men. The more women we can get into positions of power the better. Any time I see a woman running for office against a male, the woman gets my vote. It doesnt matter which party. In my experience, women are more moral, definitely less violent, and just as intelligent as any man. It is time to give women their chance to lead, and to deny leadership to those most prone to violent behavior.
@Stephe, I agree!!
And yet the sheriff giving an interview after the shooting was asked why these shooting were more prevalent in the US and he said that he didn't know if that was the case. Really?
15
I am pro-gun, but I think everyone that is moved by this article should probably write their congresspeople. It's very clear to me that if we had a more direct form of democracy, we would have substantially stricter gun control--and maybe even repeal the second amendment. And I like Democracy. I wish we had more of it.
So... I disagree with a lot of you. But... it's becoming ever more clear to me that the majority of Americans want things to change. So long as it's determined with some semblance of democracy, I'll respect the outcome.
By the way, I'm pro gun because of the following idea; the quote is attributed to Thomas Jefferson:
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Many people have asked the question "Sure, but do you really think that the citizens would stand a chance if the government decided to employ tyranny?"
And the answer is: Yes. Insurgent forces are almost impossible to eliminate. The two clearest examples are the Vietcong and ISIS.
One could certainly make the argument that even though the 2nd amendment provides a physical and lethal barrier against tyranny, that the cost we pay isn't worth it. But... I seriously have a hard time believing that. Gun deaths are higher in America than other countries--but still relatively low. It is not clear to me that the benefits of less yearly deaths is worth the additional cost of potential tyranny.
1
@BB I really appreciate your thoughtful post. I remember being really moved by the words of an acquaintance's Hungarian father who, having lived through the Hungarian Revolt, believed the 2nd Amendment was a precious safeguard to our liberty. But I am at the point where I can only think that my right to own a military grade weapon for such a theoretical purpose is not worth even one of the lives lost at Sandy Hook, or in Pittsburgh, or in Los Vegas, or in Santa Fe, or in Parkland, or in....Better for us to enact gun legislation and clean-up our election system so we can actually live in a functioning democracy based on "LIFE, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...
10
@BB I would argue that the examples you cite are not relevant to the hypothetical situation that you worry about in the U.S. But I think that our differences come down to differing opinions about how likely it is that citizens would need to take arms against their government, and that they would have any hope of succeeding if that were the case. My considered opinion is that both parts of that scenario, especially the second, are vanishingly small--much too small to accept the seemingly endless massacre of innocents as "the price we have to pay."
1
@BB
Our nation was built upon the idea that the ballot was stronger than the bullet. You may want to read up on that.
We have tried insurgency before.
The American Indians tried that. You had Southern Tribes who fought Andrew Jackson. They were insurgents. That ended in the Trail of Tears.
You had the decades-long Comanche War largely in Texas. And they ended up on reservations in Oklahoma.
You had the Confederacy.
The Anarchists came along in the early 20th century.
We had some Puerto Rican nationalists.
The Black Panthers and a variety of black power movements that embraced violence.
We had the American Indian Movement.
The Militia Movement.
The Eco-Warriors.
All these folks were armed. All have been effectively defeated.
Your guns are not effective political weapons. Your vote is.
The opinion piece is trying, once again, to convey the horror of our current predicament and starts by citing another webpage that details incidents of shooting where there were at least 2 injuries. Although I can sympathize with the goal of trying to get people to realize the gravity of the situation, suggesting that there have been 307 mass shootings is simply false. Are we really saying that any incident where more than one person is injured (not killed) is enough to qualify it as a mass shooting? This would mean that virtually every shooting in a public place would qualify as such. The difference between mass shootings and other gun violence is not the outcome and the number of deaths or injuries, but the intent of such crimes. We can not fool ourselves into believing that a fire fight between rivaling gangs (as one simple example amongst many) is in the same class of crime as Sandy Hook, Pulse, Last Vegas etc etc etc. There's a reason that these crime are covered differently in the media.
1
@Peter A mass shooting is generally defined as a single shooting that results in death or injury to at least 4 people, including the shooter. These stats weren't difficult to find https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
@Peter
You should get your facts correct, Peter. It does not make you look smart or clever to get them wrong...or lie.
The Gun Violence Archive defines Mass Shootings as "based ONLY on the numeric value of 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter."
Now, I don't know. I thing four folks being shot is quite a lot, but you may think that's just par for the course in your family. If someone came along and shot the four folks you care about most in this world, you might think, wow, a lot of folks I care about got shot. Or maybe not.
Gun lovers are always looking for ways to minimize the horror of their passion.
@Peter A mass shooting is constituted as one that has four or more deaths.
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/mass-shootings.html
I guess it's a good sign I'm even reading this article, because to me it is just another day in America. Nothing is going to change, and after a while a person simply accepts what they can no longer fight. Didn't Maya Angelou say, "When you don't like a thing change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain." So don't complain. Accept. Ms. Gay, youre brother is a gun enthusiast, and so you tried it and liked it. See, you're half way there. Embrace it. This is America. (And BTW, I'm staying in Europe.)
7
We need to stop sanitizing murder. Bring out the bodies. Show the carnage. Why are we so afraid to do this? Show their torn bodies and blasted faces. We'd get sensible gun laws soon enough.
20
So you wonder if there's a guy out there in the audience, in the dark, armed and ready to serve you his special brand of right-wing justice because you're black, a woman, and opinionated?
I have wondered that too about you, Ms. Gay, as I have wondered that about your colleagues Charles Blow and Paul Krugman, the latter especially after Pittsburgh.
You have a rare and special courage to get out there in the public after having made your views about society and all its train of ills known. Yes, I have feared for you and all other people of good will.
I have had many disappointments and heartbreaks in my life. I hope that I don't have to wake up to another one, the very one that you fear. But that's the America that we live in. This asinine "freedom" to own an instrument of death is so much a part of the shredded American fabric that I wonder if it's worth it anymore.
Absent any decency in America, I despair daily. It shouldn't have to be like that.
13
Thank you for this piece.
9
Thank you as always, Ms. Gay, for your powerful insights. So, to echo what you have said what others are saying, it is ok to cherry pick when it comes to how life is valued. If there is a fetus in my womb, every white man from here to Timbuctu will tell me what to do about that and protest my right to any type of agency over my body. If I give birth and my child is in school or at a night club, then we look away if she gets shot. Oh don't get me wrong, we have got thoughts and prayers! Either we value life or we dont. We don't. We don't in policy or practice unless it is to control women! Also look again at Veteran Mental Health! All of these issues, gun control, care of our veterans, our values continue to converge. They are intertwined. We must take genuine steps for gun control and mental health access. I know I am Captain Obvious here. I need to vent to the Times readers. When will it stop? Why is this country so invested in keeping the violence going? What is the secondary gain behind supporting this pathology?I wish this wasn't a rhetorical question.
12
No, I'm not shocked. In fact, I'm not even going to read this column. What can you write that wasn't written after the previous mass shooting, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that...
53
Well written - and heart-breaking. That we are in a place where people now instinctively know what to do when they hear those "firecrackers" go off. Is this what our fathers and grandfathers fought for in WW II? That we are at the mercy of a foreign-funded pro-gun lobby? I too have practiced at gun ranges and I too am not a bad shot. But what part of "a well-regulated militia" don't people understand? Random mass murder is not a characteristic of a well-regulated militia.
14
Sickened, but not surprised by the recent shootings in CA. This is part of our life now. Social service, mental health treatments and gun control, are not coming our way anytime soon.
12
I appreciate this article a great deal. At the same time, I can say -- I have not been numbed. I am not used to the shootings. I am not used to the latest deaths.
I am more enraged by mad act. I am increasingly angered by the NRA, by those 'leaders' who take money from them and the gun manufacturers who keep the wild west myths alive. I am more and more devastated by the heartbreaks and tragedies of the victims.
With each shooting, my confusion is compounded as to how this insane state of affairs has let America become a dark, violent cartoon of freedom abused. Sportsmen with automatic weapons. Mentally fraught individuals with legally purchased weapons. Schools with teens bullied and so alienated as to turn on their peers.
Churches, synagogues, mosques as sites of violence -- with 'leaders' telling them to hire armed guards. Schools so often attacked that many have already added those guards to watch over the metal detectors.
All the while, The 2nd Amendment receives more worship than any human feeling, any human empathy, and any other civil regard for other Amendment, as Gay notes.
So, no, I am so far from being numb that I read the latest, and will read about the next, mass shooting as though it is the most horrific act of the decade. I am saddened beyond belief, thinking about the families, the communities, the additional impact that ripples for years.
And hope? I have to. Because I know more gun deaths are coming. And Trump, and Congress, will not help.
18
@SGK
"...a dark, violent cartoon of freedom abused..." - so well said!
Superbly stated. This should be required reading for every public official in America.
21
Travelling thru air ports and hotel breakfast bars this past week whilst this terrible and latest tragedy unfolded gave me a view on how people are responding to mass shootings. Over morning breakfast, as the news was breaking, a couple laughed and carried on with the TV going on behind them, seemingly oblivious to the vents.
Life goes on?
I have to have government mandated testing, licensing and insurance to drive a car. Same for an flying an aircraft. Yet virtually anyone with a heartbeat can go in and buy a gun that can take away the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for many. My lay exposure to the legal system informs me that my rights end at the point that my actions impinge on those of another. Can gun ownership, in the aggregate, be considered similarly?
21
THANK YOU for the reminder because I have been lulled into the not-shocked mode. Instead, I am, sadly, inadvertantly resigned, and I am the mother of a seventeen- year old in South Florida who started a protest to bring attention to the ludicrousness of all of this, especially the NRA connection to politicians. I cry as I write this because I know we can't give up, and I know we can remedy this, and I think about the victims constantly, and I am tiring of the fight.
27
It's an every day occurrence because of statistical probability. I'm sure a skilled actuary could do a prediction as surely as they can do predictions for life, casualty and property insurance. We have about 50 million people taking mind altering drugs, probably 5 to 6 million of them are seriously mentally ill. Finding the potential shooter in this number is impossible. Then you have, depending on which estimate you believe, somewhere between 275 million and 350 million guns in circulation and they are generally easily accessible. State and city borders are porous so in state tighter gun laws are only of limited effectiveness. In this scenario mass shootings are as predictable as night following day as indeed are the generally high level of homicides particularly when you throw in the criminal element on top. It's not all a coincidence that the US has gun homicides stratospheric levels compared to every other developed society in the world.
We can fix this but we're not going to because one party is in thrall to the gun lobby and until this changes stand by for the next mass shooting.
17
I can no longer be shocked by mass shootings. The fact is, Americans do not yet care enough to do anything about it. Perhaps one day we will.
And when we finally wake up, no half measures please. No "stricter background checks" or "screen for mental health issues" or "smaller magazines" or whatever. NO.
REPEAL AND REPLACE THE 2ND AMENDMENT. It's the only way. We need the power to confiscate hand guns and semi-automatic rifles. We need to drastically limit what guns people can own for hunting and the like. This is no longer the 18th century, and we need drastic change.
Until then, I refuse to be shocked.
39
How about we re-examine how we handle mental health before we focus on disarming? Aside from the gun culture, we have become a violent nation. If we don't defuse the most violent among us, gun laws won't matter. The British press talks about gun-and-knife violence. Violence, the end, should overshadow the means by which it is carried out in our concerns. Besides, gun laws will not disarm criminal gangs. They will find ways around these laws, and guns will still be plentiful.
3
@Steve Hansen Knives are a bit different aren't they? An AR 15 fires about 200 rounds per minute. I dare say few can throw that many knives unless perhaps you work in the circus.
@Steve Hansen - First of all, why on earth does it have to be one or the other? addressing mental health and taking action to reduce gun violence are not mutually exclusive, they're complimentary.
Secondly, you state "Violence, the end, should overshadow the means by which it is carried out..." That's absurd. Guns make mass killings possible. Period. Acting to keep guns out of the hands of people who might kill others is rational, necessary and does not infringe on the rights of legal gun owners.
This is the typical gun lobby excuse. "Don't make me give up anything." "Don't make me have any responsibility." "Don't do anything that might do anything." It's disgusting.
The mental health approach doesn't work. As our recent history shows, plenty of shooters are not mentally ill - they are just violent. Those that are, often can't be identified in time or at all. More pressure would not improve the rate of identification, but would make pariahs out of people who present themselves for help. Potential shooters would not present themselves, therefore could not be identified. The end result could be worse.
It is interesting to me that gun advocates who bawl about their "rights" show no respect for the basic human rights of mentally ill people (as a whole *less* violent than the general population, which should tell you something).
I can't think of any excuse why gun owners should not take at least as much responsibility as drivers. License, insurance, and safety regulation for every firearm. It won't eliminate all gun violence, but it will help a lot, and that's worth doing. All the rest is NRA propaganda.
This is good David - more of this
Less of your defense of Nationalism as if to ignore the real meaning of the word in today’s definition vs your fantasy definition
Too bad the GOP and Dems have nothing of this reform in their purview
Instead everyone is focused on a dumb culture war where two sides are battling with irrelevant consequences to their economic outcomes.
Rural America unfortunately needs to depopulate down to the bare minimum to support an industrial agriculture, oil and gas, mining, or industrial base that will not grow over time.
The GOP thinks making stuff is the way out, which is not where the future rents are in the economy. If we want to look like rural China where the state has to support factories through price cycles or suffer massive unemployment, that’s the future. Tariffs are our handouts to that policy that us in the city are paying for to support a doomed policy.
The Dems have no coherent economic plan - if they did, they’d be the heroes in this stupid partisan battle because, we’ll we are in the 21st century and GOP thinks it’s 1950.
Too bad, we are doomed - there is nothing on the horizon that will help blue collar in rural communities. Blue collar in the cities, can still work in non-tradable fields and extract wealth from time-starved rich knowledge workers. That’s what immigrants have been doing and crowded out lazy second generation Americans - only takes one generation of Americanization to lose all motivation
2
It is time for gun owners to band together and demand meaningful reform. They are the most informed and know what to do. It will likely require sacrificing something for the greater good, but sacrifice is an essential element of patriotism. How long can they stand silent in the face of such suffering and slaughter?
21
@Orange Nightmare "How long can they stand silent in the face of such suffering and slaughter?"
Apparently, forever.
Unfortunately, I can't be shocked. I feel terrible for my neighbors here in California having to go through this...but I live in a country that values guns more than it does its own children. I live in a country where the leader of our nation foments violence in almost everything he says and does. I live in a country that thinks that conflict should be dealt with by weapons of war. So...no...I cannot be shocked anymore. So I yawn instead, I shake my head for the ten thousandth time and then I move on because there is nothing left for me to do in a country that does not want to solve this problem.
29
This reflected my sentiments to an eery extent. I am a current college student at UC Santa Barbara and when I, like Roxane, opened my iPhone this morning to read this bit of news, I wasn't shocked. I wish this weren't true, but it is how I felt. I think what's been useful for me, however, is to reflect upon and unpack the fact that I wasn't surprised. By forcing myself to face my apathy, I started to feel deep emotion of another kind: passion, anger, motivation. A lack of shock in response to a mass shooting does not have to equate to a lack of action. In fact, if one takes the time to disect why they didn't feel that shock, they may be more spurred to take political action than ever before.
16
As you say in the article:
"there have been 307 mass shootings in the 312 days of 2018. "
Its really hard to be shocked almost every day. Everybody has already forgotten about Pittsburgh (except for the folks in the neighborhood).
As a country, we made the decision (in every election) that these lives are an acceptable price to pay for the rights of people who want to own assault rifles and other high powered killing machines with minimal oversight. After the total lack of action after Sandy Hook, there are no shocks or surprises any more.
22
The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result”. So it could be claimed that American culture is by definition, insane. If not it’s even worse. If there is no expectation that somehow (thoughts and prayers) this long series of violent murders against its own citizens will stop, then the value of human life is absent. So what is it? Insanity or immorality? Either will necessitate action, not further reflection.
14
This has become an accepted fact of life: we have to accept the death of untold number of Americans because of our love of guns.
I wish someone would tell us why we are safer having hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in the country, knowing that ten to thirty thousands die every year from gun wounds and another tens of thousands are maimed. Every decade a hundred thousands die.
How unsafe would we be if we banned guns in the way other advanced democracies do? How do those countries manage to protect their citizens who are unarmed? Or do we care that so many die because of our love of guns?
13
The last time I was shocked or saddened by one of these incidents was after the one in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub. After that, my contempt for this country grew to a point that I stopped paying attention. So no... I’m not shocked or horrified or even surprised by the depths to which this country as sunk. The list of places I will not go grows longer with every incident. There is no longer any good reason to trust in my fellow citizens.
Our military enables war crimes. It wages war and uses drones to assassinate its enemies. People generally applaud these actions with barely a thought given to the innocent victims. And now we have a terrorist enemy in our own neighborhoods; well armed, stalking us, and randomly striking with seeming impunity.
Civilization is a fragile thing. Ours has been destabilized by endless war, political demagoguery, and freely available weapons provided to any mentally ill person. Why should any of us be shocked by another shooting?
15
I listened to Schwarzenegger on the Axe files, and one of the points he made was that you have to bring the abstract/long term down to the immediate damage. He was talking about climate change.
Here, Gay does great service re: gun violence. The anecdote about the dad teaching the daughter well how to act in a mass shooting was powerful. The last paragraph I hope hits home with people: our babies with their gummy smiles deserve to live in a safe, joyful world.
15
It is sad that all these lives came to a premature and violent end while living the so-called american dream. The inability to effectively control guns seems suicidal for USA. Maybe the people of USA will realize this only after the intensity and frequency of such incidents have increased to much more than present.
3
I have personally run up against the stubborn and authoritarian mindset that personifies resistance to gun control.
This reveling in ignorance does not bode well for the future of America.
This same ignorance is the mentality that elected Donald Trump and will insure that future efforts to protect lives will be a steep uphill battle.
My expatriate status began over the two unnecessary wars began by Bush in 2003 and has resulted in my efforts in France to pursue humanitarian efforts.
I believe my time would be better invested in my adopted country than in fighting the lost cause of gun control in my native country.
America has faltered in its commitment toward freedom and is now controlled by people who would sacrifice children’s lives for the sake of making more money!
19
I am one of those parents who, when my son was in high school and then when he left to go to college, took every opportunity to school him per the best things to do if shooting broke out in any particular venue. He is now grown, gone and on his own. Occasionally, he tells me he is going to a concert here or there or going with friends here or there and I find myself reminding him of the "best things to do if..."
How crazy is it for me to think I need to continue my reminders? He is 35 and a National Guardsman. That's how crazy it is.
But...
We now live in a time when we have young people who have been potential victims in more than one mass shooting.
We now live in a time when a country with 4% of the world's population owns 46% of the world's firearms.
And, while he is, to everyone else, a grown man, he is, to me, my boy.
I received an email this afternoon encouraging me to "Speak up, Speak out." I have. I do. But the volume of my voice is modulated by money. The more one "contributes," the more one is "heard." Which means nobody is listening when I "Speak Up, Speak Out."
I won't stop "Speaking Up." I won't stop "Speaking Out." But I recognize more and more that I do it not because I think it will bring about change but because, were I to remain silent, the very stones would cry out. And no one is listening to them anymore, either.
19
The decision is to stay or go; change is not possible. Were I in my 30's with a degree in STEM, I would leave the country. What happens once a year is exceptional; what happens everyday, like it or not, is who you are.
Implied in almost all the columns and comments I read about gun violence is the idea that, "America is better than this." Like a decaying fish, that idea smells of, "Going through a bad patch." America's is a supremely violent culture. The stuff of us is metastasizing; mass murder already is a part of, "The fabric of our lives."
14
American gun culture is an ironic response to a history that cherishes freedom, liberty, and bravery. The heroic minuteman, who resisted the British juggernaut, provides a template for how American gun owners view themselves either consciously or subliminally. However, unlike during the War of Independence, the threat that is perceived is no longer external. Today, Americans feel the need to defend themselves from the tyranny of other Americans, no matter irrational or paranoid that seems. Unfortunately, others get caught in the crossfire, including my fellow Canadians, murdered in Las Vegas, who have no inalienable right to own guns with which to defend themselves. This irrational paranoia now manifests itself as a fanaticism which equates the ability to kill with military savagery.
There’s the other factor in American gun violence: America is an intrinsically violent place. Its violence has overflowed into the world in recent history, the Middle East turned into a target on a global firing range. America, you need to confront yourself and those in your communities who would espouse this bloody mentality. It is a privilege to drive to work,but a right to carry a gun in the process? Can you not divine the differences between privileges and rights better than that? We don’t give children matches, we should not give an immature society the ability to mass kill. Yours is a daily problem: will you or your children return home each day? Take away the guns, feel free and live.
16
America is afraid of everything and everyone. At the same time, you value the power of machismo and bullies. So, of course, when a nutjob gets his hands on a gun mass shootings are the result. Guns do not protect people, guns kill people. It would be very interesting to know how many of your readers know somebody that has been affected by a mass shooting versus how many people have successfully defended themselves using a firearm. I suspect the former is much greater than the latter.
15
Thank you for reminding us of how morally corrupt we have become. The shooting of a synagogue affected us in a different way that I am trying to understand than the shooting in Las Vegas or the one yesterday in California.
I hear from gun owners how virtually impossible it would be to have gun owners give up there guns and go as far as to predict a civil war if the government attempted to declare certain guns illegal to own and demand them to be given up.
Here is my proposal.
- all gun owners must be licensed and insured as driver's are
- all guns must be registered and inspected annually as motor vehicles are
- certain guns (AK automatics) could only be used in licensed gun ranges
-
12
People asking "do what?" The answer is: Constitutional Amendment. It's time we who still care, and feel shock, got serious about this.
10
The US experienced 17,250 murders in 2016. With 362 murders, I can walk around Japan (1/3 of our populations) and never worry. In China, there were less than 1/2 the murders despite 4 times our population. In countries from Slovenia to Iceland, the murder rate is less than 1/10 that of the US. What is wrong with us? While guns are a huge issue, it is far deeper than that. We are violent society. In Japan, there were ~1300 rapes in 2010, in the US 85,000, in China ~31,000. I could go on. What is wrong with us? The horror is NOT a handful of mass shootings. It's the daily death and violence we live with in communities across our countries. While it is easy to demand gun control as some panacea (and I favor it), there is little evidence it will dramatically change our basic nature. While conservatives irrationally fight gun control, liberals do the same on criminal sentences. Just as there should be control of guns, if you commit any crime with a gun, you go to prison for 20 years. period. The time is now for a comprehensive to make this society safe for our children. Control Guns, Eliminate Violent Offenders.
5
@Chris Please don't look at Japan through rose colored glasses. They have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the Times just wrote about how the rate is going up among children. Children! One could, and should, also ask what is wrong with *them*.
Ms. Gay, I really loathe what I'm about to tell you. I was red-hot outraged at the last number of mass shootings, but I woke up in the morning, saw the news of the Thousand Oaks shooting, and I couldn't feel anything except "I've had it with those Americans." (Which is a bit disoriented because I am one, but I live in Canada where we have our mass killings too, but far, far fewer of them.) I thought, "How many people have to die before they run the NRA out of the country and boot out a big bunch of Republican Senators and enact strong gun laws?" The adults in the country have left those Parkland kids who have been campaigning for gun laws spinning in the wind with their pleas unanswered. The almighty gun rights are more important than the faces of bloodied innocents. Truly money and the sense of power from a gun speak louder than blood. And the hogwash that's perpetuated — "if guns were in schools this wouldn't happen ... if bystanders only had a gun." Anybody who falls for that and doesn't see the big-bucks weapons industry talking does need to look harder at the consequences. Come to think of it, after reading your article, I'll go look at the photographs myself.
10
On Tuesday, Georgians narrowly elected a warrior in the fight to curb gun violence: Lucy McBath. If you who don't know her story, her son was senselessly shot and murdered by a stranger for playing his music too loud. I can think of few things more motivating then losing a child to steel your resolve to change something and curbing gun violence was her main platform.
Lucy together with the other activists to curb gun violence with a Democratic congress and with God's help will bring meaningful change to this daunting and growing problem that's been ignored by Republicans. Watch for her name in this debate - as it relates to this urgent issue, she is one of the unsung hero's emerging from Tuesday's election.
15
“A gun is the answer...” That’s the message which millions in this nation have deeply internalized. It is A message insistently driven by America’s most effective lobbying organization which many of these millions belong to and believe in with near fanatical fervor. And after each seemingly weekly mass shooting, they echo that organizations response that it is people, not guns, that kill. In fact, it is that organization’ message that a gun is the answer which keeps on killing.
1
The Republican party gunslingers are in contempt of civil societies both at home and abroad, look at Trump's threats to shoot refugees on our border. More guns hasn't made America safer, just the opposite, we've become one of the most violent unsafe countries in the world. The allowing of the flooding of the USA with weapons appears an intentional act by our authorities to destabilize American society like they have destabilized countries overseas by flooding them with weapons. The flooding of America with weapons now looks like a cynical ploy to fully militarize the police so martial law can be declared under the guise of keeping Americans safe from fellow armed Americans.
It is the guns, and the nasty people who worship them and their violence in contempt of the unarmed and nonviolent. American authorities have enabled Middle Eastern style sudden death in public places to flourish in the USA by doing nothing to stop these weekly gun atrocities.
5
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The US has wreaked carnage abroad for so many years with guns, bombs and now robotic drones. This along with our violent domestic past is glorified by our media. We are reaping what we have sown. I believe that until we as a country renounce all violence we will continue to suffer.
6
last 2 paragraphs sum it up pretty darn well.....
and too many guns equals too many shootings. please note, this was not an assault rifle but a handgun (modified). Most shootings in our country are with handguns, not assault rifles.
For every instance one can claim that a gun saved people, I would guess there are hundreds or thousands of the opposite.
7
Lovely piece. What an imperfect being we is; eh?
We don't accept mass shootings! It's that we have no way of stopping this total madness. I am not desensitized to mass murder. And I have absolutely no idea how to keep them from happening. We have millions of guns, some in the hands of very unstable individuals. We have voted in an administration that supports and promotes more guns as a solution to too many guns. I mean, really! Just how immoral and out of touch with reality can such a wide swath of our citizens be? And we have the 2nd amendment.... and the NRA, fighting for the right to manufacture and distribute MORE guns. Seriously, what is the average person supposed to do?
I vote. I donate. I petition. I raise my voice. And still, it continues.
7
Shocked? It's a miracle with the amount of guns on the street that it's not happening more frequently.
Grief and sadness for the victims and their families. Anger at the gun lobby and our political leaders. Fear of my neighbors who are packing heat and may be on medications, taking drugs, drinking, arguing with their spouses and children or isolated and depressed contemplating a disastrous way out.
5
I agree with Professor Gay that it is horrible that we are raising a generation of children that are prepared for school shootings. I go through training as a teacher. I can actually rattle off the important things to do. In Kansas, legislators tried to pass a bill that would allow teachers to arm themselves, as if this was a good solution. I doubt many of these state legislators are funded by the NRA. These are hometown state GOP assemblymen who win elections with 6,000 votes to 1,000 votes. The NYT article from Mr. Kristof that appeared yesterday is about the NRA's effect on society and how it scares the public into support. It is apparent that gun culture has infiltrated American life. Gun and ammo companies make money off our fear and they have managed to make themselves a part of our daily lives. At what point do Americans stop voting for politicians out of fear? At what point does society wake up?
7
I believe that, come January, the House will try to do something, but I’m sure it won’t make it through the Senate and most certainly won’t be signed by this president. CA has strict gun laws, but they clearly aren’t enough. I’m still unclear why anyone outside the military or at a gun range needs quick firing ammunition but he could have harmed more people if he’d had a assault rifle.
I despair for all of us, and yes, I am shocked. I continue to be horrified.
5
Each one of these is worrisome. As I understand it, California has some of the stricter gun laws in the state. Aside from just taking all the guns away forever, I’m not sure what could’ve been done on a legislative level for this kind of thing. I am always reminded of that Malcolm Gladwell article comparing this mass shooting phenomenon to the way a riot slowly builds. It seems that the math here is “guns plus some uniquely American strain of anger.” How do we address that second part?
5
We are not shocked. As long as our gun culture and our consensus that war keeps us safe is our belief, it will continue.
3
I recently had the opportunity to ask a 17 year old young woman what people her age worry and talk about among themselves and her first response was "getting killed at school". It is an appalling thought...just let it sink in for a minute. She said getting killed; not where are we going to hang out this weekend, not where am I going to college, not who likes me..it was getting killed in school. She said this is on their minds every single day in some form or another. What does this do to their ability to learn, work and play?
We are raising a generation of anxious children who will pay the price for our government refusing to take action on this issue.
27
@Darby Stevens Yea, and the vast majority of these stupid kids don’t vote. They will buy a gun more often than voting.
I have to sadly admit that at this point I am used to these events and pay them little attention. I am 70+ years old and have just seen this problem getting worse and worse. I believe its caused by the extreme anger and negative we see all day every day.
11
On a personal note, I have been sickened by sometimes finding myself wishing that the Congress people and lobbyists in thrall to the NRA would personally experience the nightmare of having close family = their spouses and children involved in one of these incidents. Not as retribution, but in hopes that it might change their actions.
I hate the idea that I would wish this horror on anyone. Perhaps having these kinds of thoughts is another effect of how the violence in daily life is affecting people.
27
@Nancy
Yes, you think when something hits close to home, the people in power would have an epiphany.
But after their colleague Gabby Giffords survived a gunshot to the head in a mass shooting, Congress did exactly nothing. And Steve Scalise, who was shot and nearly killed, returned to the House (after multiple life-saving surgeries) with his views on gun access and ownership completely unchanged!
12
This is a beautiful essay, the best you’ve written, Ms. Gay.
18
@berman
agreed. It's the best thing I've read that reflects the context of these tragic killings in our gun mad society, while keeping the focus on what is important to most of us: life.
1
It is common after these incidents to see a right-wing politician offering his thoughts and prayers.
God isn't going to do anything to improve the situation. Neither are Republicans.
43
How can we be outraged, we would live in a permanent state of rage. This is just one symptom of how much is wrong with the US, how far from a normal country the US actually is. No one who hasn’t lived outside the US can really appreciate how truly abnormal the US is. These kind of events are much rarer in the rest of the world because of gun control. Voter suppression is much rarer because of nonpartisan election commissions that set boundaries and manage voter registration. Health care is a right in the rest of the developed world, no one goes broke because they get sick. Public transport works in most of Europe. Europe generates a similar GDP as the US with much lower CO2 emissions.
American exceptionalism is just an excuse for not learning what works from the rest of the world.
218
I think the majority of people oppose semiautomatic weapons, want strict background checks regardless the venue/seller, and want other forms of training and safety devices. Some of us want to ban handguns, too. But, we aren’t represented by our government anymore. The route to gun control is through a healthy democracy.
46
What I found amazing about the shooting was the father of Cody Coffman, a name I know and didn't even have to look up. His father was on my screen all day and part of the evening. He told me how his son's phone was traced to the club and hadn't moved. Alysyn Camarota, on CNN, kept asking him question and he kept answering. His son was dead and there seemed no point.
Later, having confirmed his son's death, he was back, with his father in-law, and told us how much he loved his father in-law, as well as his son. Mr. Coffman seemed much to well prepared for public mourning.
8
If we adults of a certain age tell the truth, we'd admit that we grew up in relative safety; far removed from the daily gun violence that plagues the country today. Guns, conversations about guns, even seeing a gun outside of a cowboy movie, war footage, or deer-hunting season--was extremely rare. We lived out our childhoods, teen and young adult years in communities that were safe and protected. Nothing like today. So when we hear about another killing, another senseless rampage, innocents slaughtered due to gun violence--let's admit this is the problem we've allowed to fester and poison life in the U.S. Don't we owe it to our children to put a stop to it?
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@Ann yes - we need to resurrect the sense of community, compassion and love thy neighbor and this time for everyone in America.
An excellent article. As a foreign long-time admirer of the United State, I'm thoroughly astonished at their gun culture and associated violence. When will the lawmakers come to their senses and take the last step towards truly becoming a civilized country?
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@Rognvaldur Hannesson They won't.
Even though I lived in the US for ten years, I never understood the gun culture. It seems to me that most people advocating guns always talk about protecting themselves and their families as if they live in a constant state of fear. Where does this fear come from, why are those people so scared?
Ms Gay's suggestions just don't cut it from my perspective, banning semi-automatics wouldn't reduce the number of mass shootings, it would just mean that 10 instead of 20 get killed each time. Tightening background checks wouldn't do much, after all, when I lived in Colorado pot was illegal but there was plenty of it around and underage drinking was as common as mud. If a person really wants a gun, they will get one in a country awash in guns.
The only way forward that I can see is to create a lobby with megabucks to fight the NRA, it seems that the only language that members of Congress pay attention to is money so surely the solution is to pour money into politicians to get them to vote against the NRA.
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@Mark Bau a lot of this fear is rooted in racism and fear of violence after economic collapse. Within cultures with lots of illegal activities, such as drug commerce, fire arms allow folks to rob each other and enforce vengeance on those who rob you.
@Mark Bau That's an interesting question you ask about fear - what are people so darn scared about? Maybe it's the fact that here, unlike most other countries, we live with a lot of people not like ourselves. In most countries everyone kind of looks the same, thinks the same, speaks the same. Here we don't. We have different races, skin tones, languages, dialects, religions, ethnicities, all trying to coexist, but we don't really trust each other. Some other commenters mentioned Japan and how they don't have a gun problem. Yeah, we'll they are very homogenous, that's why! So instead of hating others, they hate themselves, and have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, so there's that...
1
Money is ruining our political system. Surely there are Republicans who believe there is a need for some gun control. Unfortunately, their reliance on NRA funds requires they refuse to approve any legislation that would affect gun use. Money influences the vote on health care and pharmaceutical issues and energy and ....
Yes, I am outraged that my letter to my representative has no influence. Yes, I am horrified that we continue to accept (how intolerable) so many tragic murders week after week and year after year. But my donation to the coffers of my elected officials has no influence. It’s time to eliminate the influence of campaign financing.
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Loved your analogy of the power and responsibility and awe of a gun, juxtaposed against the awe and responsibility towards a young baby.
Anyway, it's one thing for folks to hold up the 2nd A as sacrosanct (I don't think any sensible gun control folks would want to suggest it as otherwise), but what we do need to focus on are the parameters of the 2nd A. How on earth could our founding fathers have in any way foreseen that we'd be thinking it ok to put AR-15s, bumpstocks, in the hands of Private Citizens, and whether there be a fear of a tyrannical govt or not? No amount of AR-15s could ever 'overthrow' the US government, which only further proves the ridiculous explanation by certain 'gun nuts', that they need such weaponry to potentially 'fight the government'. It's laughable.
The good guys with guns argument also clearly doesn't work to stop mass shootings (unless you consider 12 dead and 21 injured, 'success'?)
We need a multi-pronged plan of attack. Not just better controls on weaponry, but better access to mental health care, affordable meds for those with schizophrenia, etc., better-paying jobs (so young men in particular don't feel so lost, aimless, alienated), and families and communities across the country need to look up from their glowing devices, and instead into their mirrors and figure out where and why we failed so many young people...how we missed the often very obvious signs of a troubled person in our own midst, etc.
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@Lisa
My grandson, 29 years old, frequently says he thinks that our govern
I tell him just what you say: that people with guns would be powerless against the forces any government can command. But they are well-equipped to shoot each other. It doesn't convince him.
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A couple of weeks ago, Ms. Gay, you were exhorting all of us to vote for Democrats no matter what our individual consciences argued to the contrary. "We have a responsibility to participate in this democracy, even when the politicians we vote for aren’t ideal or a perfect match," you wrote. "Voting isn’t dating. We are not promised perfect candidates. Voting requires pragmatism and critical thinking and empathy and now, more than ever, intelligent compromise."
My House representative, Democrat Kurt Schrader, took $5,000 from the NRA this election cycle and has over a 70% rating from the NRA. By your arguments, I still should have voted for him, but I didn't. I voted for the Pacific Green candidate instead. I guess that makes me selfish and impractical; someone whose "disillusionment is more important than the very real dangers marginalized people in this country live with," by your definition from less than two weeks ago.
What are we supposed to do, Ms. Gay? Triangulate, hold our noses and vote for tools of the gun lobby, or hold our representatives to account? We can't do both.
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Stay in Japan, Colin, where gun violence and gun deaths are almost nonexistent...and human life is valued.
Japan is a role model.
In 2014 there were just six gun deaths in Japan, compared to 33,599 in the US.
"Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws," says Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun.
"They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don't play a part in civilian society."
"The moment you have guns in society, you will have gun violence but I think it's about the quantity," says Overton. "If you have very few guns in society, you will almost inevitably have low levels of violence."
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729
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@Colin Barey, Vote Democrat. A vote for a third-party candidate is wasted. Because of Republican laws that let big money buy elections, both parties need it. Vote Democrat, change those laws, and then we will have some hope of instituting sane gun control. We have to play the long game.
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The nra is a problem but don’t compare their shortsighted ignorance with that of a president who is threatening our very existence. The nra didn’t abandon the Paris accords. They don’t discredit the fbi, cia. They don’t appoint Supreme Court justices. They don’t cut taxes for the rich.
False equivalency is what it is.
I understand what Ms. Gay is saying. It appears we are all becoming numb to these shootings. Deadened and desensitized. We can no longer arouse the energy to be shocked, perhaps because we just don't want to feel the pain anymore.
I know I feel more fear now for myself and my friends and family. The fear of being caught in one of these shootings has diminished the quality of my life. I get nervous going shopping at the mall, or riding public transportation, even of being at my medical clinic. I know anything can happen any time.
Furthermore, there is a sense of hopelessness, that after all the blood and tragedy of the past few years, the people in charge in our government have done little or nothing to stop it. It's as if we have a cancer, and the doctors just look the other way when we beg for help. In other words, it's a nightmare.
Our hope may lie in the newly elected officials, in particular the women, who will take office in the House in January. It's in the women that I feel some hope, the mothers and grandmothers and aunts who will now help run our country with their women's protective and nurturing spirits. Those qualities give me hope, that they will do what it takes to stand up to the NRA and say enough. Perhaps the women can do it. Stop the guns and stop the carnage.
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"Our children must die....so our guns and bullets can live"
This is effectively what the National Terrorist Association and the Republican Guns Over People party is saying to 325 million people and every international visitor who visits the United States of Guns.
America has no democracy, as we witnessed on Tuesday.
America is a victim of many different right-wing hijackings, including the hijacking of basic public safety in deference to a well regulated right-wing dementia, being necessary to the paranoia of a murderous state, and the right of the peaceful people to be randomly slaughtered by an angry white male, whose insanity shall not be infringed.
"Drop dead, Americans....and may our guns and bullets live long happy, rewarding lives"
NRA-GOP 2018
Nice GOPeople
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Might i suggest that adding to the election coverage, the Times specifically poll all new elected officials, including incumbents, and ask them what new gun control legislation they are going to propose and vote for. Get a firm commitment, keep this over time, and continually remind us (and them) whether they have kept their commitments. Gun violence will not go away without a steady drumbeat to make it go away.
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The other side (meaning those who want increased access to guns and fewer laws restricting their purchase) will counter with the following:
1. The second amendment guarantees the availability of a firearm to each and every citizen.
2. Restricting the availability of guns regardless of type (assault rifle, etc) is an infringement of a constitutional right.
3. Restriction of the second amendment right threatens all constitutional rights.
4. Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. By extension, only gun owners can’t protect society from politicians threatening their rights (yes, read their literature; it can be apocalyptic).
The other side needs to be reminded that the people who die from gun violence are a “tax” for their second amendment right. It’s the only constitutional right that people die for on a daily basis. Gun owners should accept the morally bankrupt proposition that innocents die so they can keep this fantasy that guns are an instrument of freedom.
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@Festivus. The first three "reasons", of course, ignore the fact that there are bad laws, even in the Constitution. The fact that slavery was constitutional didn't make it right, and the same goes now for nearly unrestricted individual gun ownership. I wonder if the other side has any objectively valid reasons to give.
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@Festivus
"The second amendment guarantees the availability of a firearm to each and every citizen."
That's NOT what the 2nd Amendment says. It reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
What part of "a well regulated Militia" don't you understand? Even the Supreme Court, in its Heller decision in 2008, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership could continue to be regulated.
When the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, there was no standing army - only local militias. And "arms" back then were pistols & single shot muzzle loading muskets.
You want unlimited access to guns, hand grenades & mortars? Join the National Guard.
2
Roxane, thank you for always sharing your passion, outrage, and soul-searching. It often echoes my own inner-workings, as does this article.
In addition to what you wrote, I'd like to add that the gun violence that low income people experience every day in their neighborhoods (some urban schools have had metal detectors for over a decade, maybe 15 or 20 years) isn't normal either. And it's more complex and ubiquitous.
As a nation we treat urban gun violence as if it too is normal. This is a tragedy, too.
As a nation we have to acknowledge that urban gun violence is just as much a crisis as mass shootings. Mass shootings get more media coverage, but urban gun violence is much more common. And it affects many different racial and ethnic groups.
I went to graduate school for public heath and in 3 years of study it was impossible to avoid the stats, even if I wasn't working on a paper about gun violence. Some urban residents are so traumatized by the constant violence that their bodies' biochemical responses to the constant violence are slowly killing them via health challenges like diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease, obesity, PTSD, anxiety, and depression, not to mention substance abuse.
As a public health educator, I want people to know that the grief we collectively feel after each mass shooting is similar to how hundreds of urban communities feel every single day they lose souls to gun violence. I just want to make sure their stories are remembered, too.
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I can't be shocked because this is life in America.
You say act? I think the only thing a lot of us have the power to do is to be sure our wills and estates are in order.
(A very strong slate of Democratic candidates for Ohio office and I assume lots of Blue effort were all defeated by a few rallies of the President.) That said, I appreciate your sentiment.
17
Look what dialogue of fear and extremism have created. Fear mongering and media sensationalization have bred a culture of individual protectionism at the expense of collective safety. When the cost of your own protection is at the risk of life ending detriment to another person, then it becomes clear, collective wellbeing and safety are nothing but a pawn to individual fear.
20
A beautiful, heartfelt piece, Roxane.
Thank you. I needed that today.
19
Trump's response is to limit those seeking asylum. As he rants and raves about the dangers of those in the so-called caravan, he ignores the fact that most of these massacres are inflicted by one white man with a grudge and guns. Just as his suggestions that arming more people will protect us are belied by the facts: four officers were injured responding to the assailant at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. One very experienced officer lost his life trying to protect others just yesterday in Thousand Oaks. The Las Vegas shooter wasn't worried about armed guards at the concert as he took his time aiming at concert goers.
If it's not guns that hurt people, but people, what are the plans to figure out how to identify and help those who might decide to inflict harm in a mass shooting (or to a single individual)? Where is the safety net for effective mental health treatment? And where is the order lifting the prohibition on government methodically recording and studying gun use nation wide that would provide evidence to identify trends and causes and possible solutions?
It's not just about gun control. It's not just about bad people. There is no magic bullet. But failing to identify and better understand why our nation is steeped in the blood of victims killed by gun fire is absolutely essential to finding realistic solutions. We don't allow that. Federal agencies are barred from collecting basic information. Let's try doing that - quickly.
44
Do what?
I can only agree with Phillip (Canberra) and from my own observations when travelling abroad. Our Australian society is imperfect, in particular the numbers of women’s and children’s deaths and other family violence events are really dreadful. But if there were more guns, it would be exponentially worse. An amnesty where gun owners were paid off was pretty successful, but surely wouldn’t work in the USA.
Good luck!
25
You said it all. Thank you for putting this horror into words, because the numbness seems to haven taken hold of our society and so many of us just turn the page ... but even if we do nothing else, we must at the very least care enough to be shocked, instead of blandly accepting this as the new norm.
69
It is very hard to have shock over any mass shooting, because they have become a fact of life. One day you will go to a store, movie, school, a mall, church, temple, mosque, a concert, a night club, airport, train\/bus depot, subway,, an elevated train, a park, a play ground, a bowling alley, an arena, a stadium, etc. and chances are you have a better chance of getting shot by one of the 300+ million guns in this country, than winning a lottery scratch game.
Thousand Oaks joins a long list of horror, starting with Columbine. It goes back further, but going back nearly 20 years. Think of all those who dies in mass shootings, and in one on one shootings. The total number of victims exceeds the current population of Denver, since 1999.
So, it is not an "infliction", it is a stage four malignant cancer.
And the worse part about this, after each mass hooting, you grow less sensitive. Though, what happened at Tree of Life, or Las Vegas, jolted the sensitivity.
This country, cannot unite on the most simple matters, nor does it want to come to a realization that they have a horrible epidemic. Politicians care more about the NRA sponsorship, than dealing with the epidemic.
When the politicians finally get fed up with the NRA position, probably another Denver sized population will be dead. They are waiting for something that is far worse than Las Vegas.
Until then, Americans have to realize that the next time they leave their home, they may not come back.
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@Nick Metrowsky My lamentable advice - stay away from crowds.
1
As I finish up my workday here in Canberra, a town which to my knowledge has never had a mass shooting, I am not worried about a disgruntled former employee bursting in. Instead, I am looking forward to a weekend at a small seaside town about two hours away, where I will not be looking over my shoulder or worrying about my children's safety if they go down to the beach by themselves.
As a transplanted New Yorker, I believe that there are two main reasons why I currently enjoy the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
First, we have a functioning social safety net here in Australia. For the most part, people who need help, get help.
And second, we had a leader, who was very conservative but who also DID something when 35 people were killed at Port Arthur, Tasmania. I probably would not have agreed with much of John Howard's politics in 1996 but he saw a problem in the wake of that mass shooting and dragged his conservative colleagues down a path that eventually led to much stronger gun control regulations.
I am afraid that until the United States rediscovers both of those things, these killings are going to happen again and again and again.
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@Phillip
To Phillip
Americans' hostility towards the good things in life enjoyed by more civilised countries -- universal health insurance, affordable higher education, and generous paid holidays -- is part and parcel of the 'rugged individualism' in American cultural DNA. It's a society which applauds the overachiever who pulls an all-nighter, never mind the damage to health or quality time with family. A country which tolerates scores of young men undergoing permanent brain damage playing football. The list goes on of programmed social injustice in a very sick place to live.
32
@Phillip
Sir, in '96 there were 18 million Australians.
There are 19 million New Yorkers, 28 million Texans and 39 million Californians . . . to name a few.
76 senate members and 150 representatives in the Australian bi-cameral legislature.
100 senators and 438 representatives in the U.S.
To suggest changes in a country of 320 million with statistics about a country w/ 5% the amount of people and the decisions made there is not helpful. Period.
At the very least, such apparently 'simple' recommendations from an ex-pat are not well-taken. It's a lot more complex here than it is in other lands . . .
2
@Phillip: If only national arrogance did not prevent us from following the example of more enlightened nations!
6
So very well written and thought provoking. It is difficult to put feelings on paper so precisely during times of crisis.
Thank you for writing this piece.
120
I agree with all that you have said, Ms. Gay, and I'm stunned once more by what we accept in the US. What we allow to have happen is horrifying. The kids who walked away from this latest abomination are not, however, all that calm, I'm sure. Violence takes its toll. Even bystanders are deeply affected. As you say, however, the people who have the power to make a change just haven't learned the lessons the rest of us have. It sure could happen here -- and it is happening. We can't save everyone and we didn't save this veteran, but we can take steps to limit the manufacture and sale of all guns. Really. I know we can.
49
@Martha-I believe women who are the preservers of life can end this affliction. Just as they reduced vehicle deaths due to drunk driving. If enough are supported to run for office and to assume leadership positions, we will turn this tide.
15
@Ann
I certainly hope you're right, Ann.
1
In 2008 walking on a gravel road in a log cabin community in North Georgia a yard sign in front of a cabin, Obama will take our guns away. That was 10 years ago, and since that time gun shops and shooting ranges have popped up all over these mountains. The latest, a year or so ago the Ace Hardware store opened up a whole line of guns, pistols to assault weapons. Their right across from the paint department.
The country has lost the battle with sensible gun legislation, just as we have with the climate.
211
I agree, as a nation we have gone off the rails in terms of guns. Down deep there must be some type of paranoia that drives this fanaticism. Also seems to be the preferred means for people on the precipice of going crazy to make their mark. There seems to be no end in sight, but hopefully our mental health professionals will get this figured out and maybe some type of prevention can be implemented. There is no congressional spine to deal with the NRA. This problem will have to be solved by society.
12
@cherrylog754: I am surprised that they found someone in town capable of preparing that sign, It must have been a major intellectual challenge.
2
I have not seen any mention of this shooting in my social media feeds. For perhaps the first time following such an event, nobody posted a response that entailed "sending thoughts and prayers". Such responses presumably enabled the sender to feel satisfied that having duly acknowledged the heinous act, he/she was free to move on. I also did not see any rants about the need for more gun control, swiftly followed by the usual rejoinder invoking 2nd Amendment rights. Responses to the Tree of Life synagogue shooting were also strangely muted, but perhaps that was quickly overtaken by election news. Or maybe after so many mass shootings, everyone is numb, convinced that neither Man nor God has the will to intervene.
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@Phillip Goodwin
God might have the power if his Catholic and Evangelical leaders were not so beholden to Republicans.
2
I don't know why our country is so prone to gun violence. If we can figure that out and we are able to do something about it, maybe changes will come. For now, i am assuming nothing will change.
9
@Nightwood -- Our country is prone to gun violence because of a flagrant lack of gun control. Period.
6
@Nightwood
We're prone to gun violence because there are more guns than people. We're not inclined to get along, we're crowded, and we're not treated fairly. Guns are just short hand complaints.
Take away all the guns, problem solved.
Can't happen?
Take away all private donations to political campaigns.
Can't happen?
Ban all privately funded lobbyists.
Can't happen?
Set term limits to the supreme court to 11 years max.
Can't happen?
Amend the constitution. It's allowed.
7
@Nightwood The problem is our country is addicted to fear and the NRA is the pusher. We have no balancing addiction to knowledge, understanding or empathy. The fear is augmented by hatred, ignorance and mendacity. I have never heard a call to open borders, bring criminals into our country and women enjoy abortions from anyone but the far right.
Guns are part of the problem; the biggest problem is willful ignorance.
3
More former athletes and veterans than we probably want to admit may be walking around with brain injuries. I can only guess that many are not aware of it, or of the risk such an injury might pose. When we think about what improving gun policy looks like - especially with respect to handguns and carry permits - this unfortunate feature of our society should be factored in to any analysis and possibly directly into new regulations.
18
@Alan:
Yes, and just look into how Trump/GOP and the past few presidents have treated and are still treating the VA.
SEE: (yes its an older article, but still relevant) http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/why-does-the-u-s-government-treat-military-veterans-like-human-garbage
2
@Alan: yet it's white males doing this. That seems worth focusing on. Surely, men of color experience head trauma from athletics and PTSD from being a vet at similar rates?
2
So long as high powered weapons with large capacity magazines are commonplace:
So long as loneliness, isolation, and ostracization is commonplace:
So long as mental health treatment is rare, out of reach and horribly stigmatized:
So long as violence is glorified in our culture:
So long as owning weapons are equated with patriotism, freedom and liberty:
So long as weapons are viewed as just tools and not deliverers of death:
So long as we have a free and open society where people freely move around, and congregate:
We will have mass shootings.
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@Bruce Rozenblit:
Other developed countries have these issues but DO NOT have mass shootings.
(Yes, the fact that we consider guns part of our "rights" is a major issue).
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@RLiss: You are correct that virtual universal access to guns sets the US apart from other developed nations. But with so many guns and accessories in circulation, what law changes could materially improve the situation? When the UK severely restricted guns after a school shooting in Scotland, there were not so many guns to remove from circulation. In the US. this particular horse seems to have bolted long ago.
17
@Phillip Goodwin So should we therefore throw our hands up in the air, because the problem seems 'insurmountable'?
Also, I wonder if there are any stats on mass shootings, and how many of the shooters purchased the particular weapons within the year leading up to the crime? From what I often read in the news after mass shootings, the perps often were found to have purchased weapons within a year of committing the murder. Maybe, for whatever reason, those who've had weapons for a while (and yet, haven't killed anyone) aren't necessarily the ones we need to worry about. Maybe it's the newer/potential purchasers we need to focus in, in restricting how much they can buy, how often, and the types of weaponry, accessories, etc. That focus point alone might be enough to make a considerable dent, without worrying about how to 'confiscate' guns that were already/previously in circulation.
17
There is no action I can think of and perform that would result in any change.
18
@Kyle Schwartz
Other countries have taken thoughtful and intentional steps to reduce the number of guns in the hands of citizens, and it has led directly to far fewer deaths. We can do just the same. People said there was nothing we could do about drunk driving, either, but there was, and we did, and it worked. Guns can be regulated and licensed like cars are regulated and licensed.
151
The person you were responding to was writing as a citizen. The actions you describe were taken by governments.
Our citizens have tried over and over to change the gun laws, and those brave kids in Florida are just the latest example. Our government has shown over and over it will not change the laws.
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@CP
Owning guns is not like owning cars in that we have no right to own a car in our Constitution such as a 2nd Amendment. Driving an automobile is a state dispensed privilege; owning a gun isn’t a state privilege but a Constitutionally protected right.
3