It’s been amazing to see over the last month how we’ve all come to agree and act in unison against how horrible it was that a flag killed nine people on its own.
To be honest, every single new shooting incident that occurs no longer horrifies me further. They’re just making me more depressed. And the collective decision to resign ourselves to each new incident only furthers the feelings.
There’s an old joke, maybe you’ve heard it. Floods are threatening a region, and a man in is home is at great risk. As water starts to arrive on his street, a car pulls up outside, offers to take the man to safety. “No thanks,” the man declines. “God will hear my prayers and save me.” When the water keeps coming and rises to three feet deep, a boat shows up, offers to take the man to safety. “No thanks,” the man declines. “God will hear my prayers and save me.” When the water is ten feet deep, and the man is forced onto his roof, a helicopter shows up, offers to take the man to safety. “No thanks,” the man declines. “God will hear my prayers and save me.” Shortly afterwards, as the water keeps rising, the man drowns. In heaven, the man goes to God and says, “Why didn’t you answer my prayers? Why didn’t you save me?” God responds, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter, what more did you want?”
This is what I think about these days every time I see someone offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of a tragedy.
“Thoughts and prayers. Let’s hope this never happens again. Surely the odds are good for that miracle by now.”
I made a comic last year about gun control, where I tried to calmly and patiently lay out reasoning why we needed to at least work towards determining some kind of action. At the heart of how I phrased the comic was the somewhat massaged statistic of (at the time) there being 77 school shootings in 55 weeks. And gun advocates grabbed onto the leeway in that statistic – it didn’t matter that the number of shootings included incidents occurring between gang members on school grounds, or that it didn’t count shooting incidents by students occurring at colleges if the shooting occurred at college buildings off-campus. There were a ton of gun-related incidents and deaths near and at and in schools, but there weren’t exactly 77 incidents when a shooter started marching through a school to kill people.
The statistic didn’t meet the expected stereotype standard of a ‘school shooting’ – and it’s mildly horrifying just typing those words – so therefore the rest of the argument didn’t hold water. And so therefore we didn’t need to do anything.
Criminals will still find a way to cause violence even if you limit the tools of violence available to them, goes the argument. This is an argument by insane people. Yes, criminals will still murder and kill and rob and cheat and destroy and damage. That doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for them to do so.
You’re willing to take a driver’s test to make sure that you’re proven responsible before you drive a potentially-dangerous automotive. You expect that all others on the road are equally proven responsible.
Can’t we expect that people should be proven responsible before they can own a gun? Wouldn’t you be willing to prove your responsibility and expect that others who own guns are responsible as well?
It’s not a perfect metaphor. You could stay indoors and never interact with a car for the rest of your life. On the other hand, you can’t avoid someone bringing a gun wherever they want.
I am not brave or bold in suggesting any changes or improvement in terms of gun control. Not because any idea I have is revolutionary, or that I am the first and willing to make changes. I am not brave or bold because I do not own a gun. It’s much easier for people on the outside of any group to insist or demand changes, just as it is easier for people on the inside of a group to deafen themselves to the criticism based on it coming from outsiders. Needed cultural changes are better instituted by those on the inside – unless there is someone with enough power to be able to make the changes occur anyway.
Are there different possible ideas? Sure.
Why can’t we outright ban certain weapons if their danger surpasses a certain limit? Why can’t we require a certain degree of assessment of the gun owner to assess responsibility?
The Constitution says that people have a right to bear arms. It doesn’t say anything about bullets. Why can’t we ban bullets?
Why can’t we require anyone owning a gun to also own gun insurance – with heavily regulated maximum premiums for different types of guns, increasing with the level of danger involved, and increasing depending on the risk associated with the individual (and if you live with someone who is a risk, your owning a gun potentially obtainable by them is thus a risk)?
There are all sorts of potential ideas, some reasonable, some intensive, some extreme. But I don’t own a gun. They are easy for me to say. I am not brave or bold by doing so.
We need people to actually be brave or bold.
I get that people are attached to their guns. I don’t think we need to take them all away. But more guns aren’t the answer – in no recent incident was some super-action-hero-on-the-street-in-waiting suddenly able to pull out his or her own gun and put down the violence. And the status quo can’t be the answer either, if these incidents in all their forms do keep on happening.
Alienating those with guns isn’t the answer – the more you criticize from the outside, the more the inside just digs in their heels. So we’ll approach you with a reasoned calm approach if we can. But we need you to approach us calmly and reasonably as well.
You putting your head in the sand to ignore that these incidents keep happening – whatever the impetus, that gun-related deaths keep happening – makes you just as guilty as us when we stand silently and don’t continue working towards pushing for a solution.
These incidents cannot keep happening. And thoughts and prayers will not get us to a perfect world where shootings never happen again.
We can in theory all be reasoned and calm, but it’s a desperate issue and we need to start actually acting. We need a miracle for it to stop, for everyone’s sake. Time to start working toward one.
