EDITORIAL: Have we finally decided enough is enough?
Want to fully appreciate the strangeness of our times and the peculiar set of priorities some of us have? Think about this: It might well be easier in some places for a teenager to get their hands on an assault weapon than a copy of a novel like “The Handmaid’s Tale” or a history of American racism like “The 1619 Project” from a local library.
And also keep in mind that in the primary election season that just ended, some candidates on the right tub-thumped about transgender student athletes or the specter of unisex bathrooms in schools, while keeping entirely mum about the fact that those schools have become forbidding, locked-up fortresses. That’s due to entirely pragmatic concerns about the safety of students and teachers in a society awash in weaponry and individuals who harbor bizarre delusions and deranged grievances.
On Tuesday, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, became the latest site of American carnage, as 19 students and three adults were killed by an 18-year-old high school senior who apparently marked his passage into legal adulthood by going out and purchasing two assault rifles. It came just days after another 18-year-old randomly murdered Black customers at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., and it joins a sad and familiar litany of places where innocent people have lost their lives in mass shootings, including Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Pulse nightclub, the Tree of Life synagogue and on and on.
President Biden spoke to the rage and despair many Americans feel about mass shootings on Tuesday night from the Roosevelt Room at the White House. He said, “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. …The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two weapons is just wrong. What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?”
The president pointed out that the frequency of mass shootings in the United States makes us unique in the world. Furthermore, the amount of routine gun violence we tolerate makes us stand out among our developed peers. Every day in this country, at least 35 people are murdered by someone wielding a gun. In 2021, 45,000 Americans died of gunshot wounds, when you include victims of suicide and accidental shootings. That would be more than enough to fill the baseball stadiums in Philadelphia and Cleveland. In contrast, the number of people who are murdered by guns in places like Britain, Sweden, Australia or Canada is infinitesimal.
In fact, people who live outside the United States frequently point out that we are blinkered and parochial, that Americans know little about the world beyond our borders. Maybe we would be better able to comprehend how severe our gun problem is if we asked non-Americans what they think about us. Some believe America is a sick society, in thrall to toxic individualism and lethal violence. Some are reluctant to even travel here because they believe we’re all armed to the gills and constantly poised to pull the trigger at the slightest provocation. The United States, in their estimation, is just a dangerous place.
But even if from the outside we can appear to be a sick society, we also have a capacity for renewal. Over decades, rights have been expanded for women and minorities, environmental laws have been put in place that have made our communities safer and more livable, and labor laws have made our working lives more fair and equitable. The list goes on. None of these changes happened overnight. They happened after concentrated effort and agitation, with citizens making the pressure for reform impossible to stop.
That needs to happen with our gun laws, more urgently than ever.