Collateral Damage

(Source: Washington Post)

As I simmered at the irresponsibility of Wednesday's ratings-driven media, a much stronger metaphorical punch to the gut was in store: thanks to a minority of Senators in Congress, expanded background checks for the purchase of guns was defeated. Not a limit on clip size or ammunition or assault weapons. A simple background check that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill (while strictly outlawing a national gun registry) was deemed too intrusive on this population's ability to own firearms.

Never mind that over 90% of Americans support a background check on gun sales. Never mind that only about 35% of American households even own guns. Never mind that current NRA president Wayne LaPierre supported universal background checks back in 1999. All of this does not matter.

To those 46 senators who voted against the clear will of the American people, who looked gun violence victims and their loved ones in the face and decided to vote against a commonsense measure to help prevent future tragedies, who listened to a vocal minority and lobby in a cowardly dereliction of duty: I am embarrassed for you. There is no rational argument against this.

If you are a member of the NRA you are part of the problem. Your financial support helps fund the campaigns that help intimidate weak-willed members of Congress into voting against the American people's wishes. This was not a difficult issue; when was the last time this country backed something at a rate of 90%? If you are part of the majority of NRA members who support universal background checks and do not leave the organization, you are no better than the senators who voted against this bill.

But here's what is the most insulting thing for the American people. Everyone opposed to these measures is saying the same thing: those gun deaths that occur, year in year out, whether by mass shooting or homicide or accident are simply collateral damage. They are collateral damage in the name of easy access to guns. They are collateral damage in the name of a perverted reading of the 2nd Amendment. They are collateral damage in the name of irrational paranoia. The victims of Columbine are collateral damage. The victims of Aurora are collateral damage. The 20 dead first graders at Sandy Hook? A necessary sacrifice in the name of "gun rights." Shameful indeed.

What Is Sandy Hook About?

A makeshift memorial at Sandy Hook Elementary School (Source: TIME)

Over the past few days there have been a very vocal contingent of those calling for increased gun control in the wake of the horrible massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. We've seen New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press. We've seen Joe Scarborough, a former Congressman given the highest rating from the NRA, come out in favor of increased gun control. Even West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin - who was endorsed by the NRA in the 2012 senate election and even made a campaign ad in which he shot a copy of the cap and trade bill with a rifle - has had positive things to say about potential gun control legislation.

One notable absence from the national dialogue about guns in America is the National Rifle Association. They've been silent on their Twitter account and deactivated their Facebook page, mere days after bragging about the more than 1.7 million "Likes" it had received. This is not rare, as the NRA has remained silent in the face of national tragedy before. Additionally, many senators refused to talk about their support for gun rights over the weekend. Meet the Press asked 31 pro-gun senators if they wanted to appear on Sunday's show. Not one accepted.

For such a principled group like the NRA, to be silent when those principles are called into question does not look good. There are two main reasons for something like this, neither of which bodes well for the group. On the one hand, they could be wavering in their views and slowly coming to the view that many Americans have: this country needs stricter gun control. I highly doubt this, as the NRA is the group that held their annual convention in Denver not 11 days after the Columbine massacre less than 15 miles away.

The second - and more plausible reason - is that in this day and age, many of the NRA's positions are indefensible. No citizen needs assault weapons. Someone like Nancy Lanza didn't need five guns. Hunting these days is for pure sport, not survival. Other countries have tightened gun restrictions in the wake of shooting tragedies with positive results. Why can't we do the same in America?

While the NRA and many elected officials have been silent, some pro-gun individuals have spoken out - but not about guns. They point to everything but in order to deflect the blame from easy access to guns. Mike Huckabee is the forerunner here, blaming everything from no prayer in schools to gays to abortion pills to smartphones to evolution. But he's not alone. I won't dignify other talking heads who have spoken out about this in even more ridiculous ways by analyzing their statements here.

I'll agree that mental health plays a role in this tragedy, and it is certainly something to talk about, but it's not the main point. I would pose this question who feel mental health plays a greater role than access to guns: what's easier to ban, mental disease or firearms? The answer is obvious.

So at the end of day it's not about God or gays or smartphones. It's not even primarily about mental health. It's about guns.

On a more personal note, this is not some screed from some lifelong anti-gun crusader. I've shot many kinds of guns, and while I have never been a card-carrying member of the NRA (by any stretch of the imagination), I have not been very vocal about restricting guns in the past. I even planned on owning a gun when I lived in a part of the country that allowed it (essentially anywhere but New York City).

Newtown has changed that. There's no valid reason I need a gun. There's no reason this country needs to have higher gun ownership per capita than one of the poorest countries in the Middle East with a weak central government. I refuse to add to that statistic and add another firearm to a country already saturated with them. I don't need a 21st century killing tool governed by 18th century doctrine. I feel - and hope - that after the heartbreaking events on Friday that many will join me in this thinking.

Newtown and Gun Control

Children being led away from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT after the shooting. (Source: NYTimes)

I looked on with horror, as much of the nation did yesterday, as news reports were coming out of Newtown, Connecticut about the horrible tragedy taking place there. To imagine what occurred in that classroom yesterday morning is something impossible to do without going to a dark place, and that's not what this post is about. Instead, it's about one aspect of the shooting that makes it all the more heart-wrenching.

This did not have to happen. This did not occur out of the blue. I don't mean to say that there were specific signs relating directly to Adam Lanza. I'm saying that we've seen massacre after massacre, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Geneva County to Binghamton to Aurora. The guns from these massacres appear to have been bought legally - they were not purchased in some back alley black market deal. They were bought from gun shows or dealers.

And it appears that the guns used in the Newtown massacre were also purchased legally by Lanza's mother. With so many guns out there in the country - there are almost 300 million guns in this nation, whose population is 315 million - some are going to end up in the hands of those who have no business having one, as happened today. The answer is not more guns in this country, as the NRA would have you believe, but less guns. It's simple math: the less guns there are in this country, the less opportunity for massacres like the one that occurred in Newtown.

There's another underlying factor here, and it has to do with mental health. We don't need to wait for the psychiatric profiles to come out to know that a person who would do this to children is not well. But even with the best mental health services available, there will still be sick people in the world. We cannot prevent that. What we can prevent is the preponderance of firearms out there. Because if a mentally ill person is determined to hurt others, he will. The problem is that his ability to hurt others is exponentially increased when he is carrying a gun.

Look at a country like the UK, which has very strict gun laws. Their firearms-related homicide rate is nearly 100 times lower than the US's. One hundred times. Some point to America's "gun culture." I cannot really speak to that without a sociological background, but I will share a quote from the Economist blog from today that gave me pause:

Even in a country as accustomed to gun violence (and, increasingly, mass shootings) as America, the murder of 20 children in their elementary-school classroom is uniquely shocking.

According to this quote, had this been the murder of 20 innocent adults it would have been a talking point for a week or so before being replaced by another news story. We have massacre fatigue, which speaks to how regular mass shootings occur in this country. Let's not forget that today's tragedy is overshadowing a shooting earlier in the week in Oregon in which a man opened fire with an assault weapon on Christmas shoppers at a mall, killing two.

We have to ask ourselves if the continued loss of life is worth such easy access to firearms. What are we gaining as a society by maintaining such an easy buying process for guns? Do the more than 11,000 people killed every year in America in firearm-related homicides outnumber those who have used their firearms for self-defense? What about the almost 19,000 people who kill themselves with a gun? If anything positive can come out of such a horrendous event, it is an honest look at gun policy in this country. It's just incredibly tragic that it would have taken a room full of dead children for it to happen.