(Pakistani kids playing with plastic guns)

‘Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts’ MLK, 1964

For the first time in my life I worry about not owning a gun. At the same time, I’m also nervous getting my first gun (illegally). I’m not alone:

Fear-based gun buying is up, with over 2.7M federal background checks for firearms purchases, the highest March number since the FBI began releasing data in 1998.

This must be the bottom of the right to bear arms debate, where the logic goes: we fear guns therefore we should get one. 

If you can’t stop a problem, allowing more of it usually isn’t the right answer (see opioid crisis). You’d think one gun per household would be enough [Incidentally, the spread on painkillers is even higher in the US at 269M, practically a bottle of painkillers per adult and child]. Common sense tells us there are too many people ready to unhinge to have guns hanging around. The answer just can’t be more, like it is everything else. 

Change may not be welcome but it’s here. Again, change is being dropped on traditional philosophy (right to bear arms). And once more there are only two sides entitled to hash it out and solve – the right and left political parties. Hmm. But politics is what got us here!

We’re being shot, en mass, in safe public spaces by our own citizens and still the NRA manages to consistently secure legislative victory after legislative victory for the last six decades. Do they pay off politicians or just mobilize better than any other lobbying group (except, maybe Pharmaceuticals…). We won’t unravel the truth on that one any time soon.

It’s time to at least look at the problem in a different way. Instead of figuring out a workable gun solution, for example, why not focus on driving a more peaceful culture overall — why aren’t we pursuing crosscutting models designed to divest us of future violence. Smart regulation doesn’t come from lobbyists, companies or lazy lawmakers.

I’m no doctor, but mass shootings sure feel like a sign of sickness in our society. The truth is mass shootings are an American phenomena – a big, scary, visceral, multi-modal dilemma which can’t be solved through patchwork, politics or crisis-policy.

Are mass shootings an outgrowth of terrorism; an effect of gun laws; the product of intense adolescent gaming? Who knows, we don’t study it. We really don’t try to prevent it. We just hope it doesn’t hit our community.

Violence begets violence. Look around: we’re inundated with violent content and themes like nowhere else on earth. Guns are everywhere now. And it’s not pop-pop; it’s mow ‘em down, waste ‘em all. It’s at a point where it almost seems normal.

It’s not normal – although it is becoming our reality. Which is exactly why we shouldn’t re-design our schools to be like fortresses, or prisons, or arm our teachers. That would be accepting it as reality – giving it license – which we must not do.

Don’t feed problems: this feels like advice I wouldn’t have to give my kids. Yet our lawmakers can’t seem to understand reality enough to find reasonable lines in the sand and take measurable action. Astonishingly, Congressional workers have already been shot at – so we can’t say what it will take anymore.

At some point we have to move forward into a future we don’t fully understand and can’t control. In doing so, we’ll need to revise some freedoms in order to preserve greater liberty.

May that some point be now, not after the next election or the next killing.

/ /  KJStarace 2018 (578 words)