We're (Still) Past Thoughts and Prayers

Your Gun Isn't Worth More Than My Child

I wrote this piece back in 2017 on RealClearPolitics in the wake of a lone gunmen opening fire from a hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada. This week, the bloodshed extended to small children at Catholic Mass in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Per the Minnesota Star-Tribune:

Dressed in their green uniforms, they were praying at the adjacent Annunciation Church at a children’s Mass to start the school year.

The Wednesday morning liturgy had barely begun when high-velocity rifle fire — as many as 30 to 100 rounds, according to witnesses — started ripping through the windows and striking the children, leaving two dead and others wounded.

Our leaders, for more than quarter century, have demonstrated that our children dying in their classrooms is of no concern to them. “But my rights!” isn’t good enough. Your gun isn’t worth more than my kid, or any kid; and it never will be.

That the leading cause of death for Americans 1-19 is firearms is an abomination. I don’t want to hear one more word from anyone calling themselves ‘pro-life.’ Life ends at the barrel of a gun, and too many parents are burying their children. Too many kids won’t have a future. Generation Lockdown will carry their mental and physical scars forever. We’ve failed them, pure and simple. In a just world, we’d have solved this problem. In a modern nation, our ‘leaders’ would have handed back the 30 pieces of silver to their NRA overlords.

Heroes like Fred Guttenberg give me strength, and keep me in the fight. It’s dark right now, but there is light out there. Tonight, hug your kids tight.

We’re Past Thoughts and Prayers

Another year, another massacre in an American city at the hands of a disturbed individual armed with military-grade weaponry. Because nearly 20 years ago Columbine wasn’t enough to drive us as a nation to action, we’ve been cursed with Newtown and San Bernardino and Orlando and Las Vegas and too many others to count. That a single individual attacking a crowd of 20,000 people and killing or wounding more than 600 is considered just another tragedy in the tortured pageant that is 21^st century America is both unbelievable and unacceptable.

On cue, Twitter and Facebook lit up with the “thoughts and prayers” of every elected politician of every political stripe. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stood in the well of the United States Senate and offered condolences to those lost and injured in Las Vegas with the full knowledge that neither he nor his counterpart in the House, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would take one step toward measures to stop such violence. One wonders if they even know they’re acting anymore.

Just as “liking” something on Facebook is nearly an automated response, “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of a tragedy are now the minimal viable response for politicians faced with a tragedy they are unable to face and with whose underlying causes they’re unwilling to contend. Our elected leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, owe us better on the issue of guns, as they owe us better on so many problems we face.

The issue of firearms in America has achieved near-religious status among those who believe that any law-abiding individual should be able to sling a .357 on their hip wherever and whenever they choose. The Second Amendment may only be seen in its purest form -- that Americans have the right to bear arms, as many arms as they can afford or carry, regardless of their purpose.

For our elected leaders doing nothing isn’t just an answer, it’s the only answer. They willfully stand by as tens of thousands of Americans fall victim to gun violence every year. When too many people died in car crashes, seat belts were mandated. But not with firearms. Guns are a big business, a bigger lobby and among our biggest political footballs. A lot of people make a lot of money ensuring our Second Amendment rights, whether we choose to exercise them or not. When asked whether the Trump Administration would push for stronger gun regulations, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders demurred, saying now was not the time to embark on such a fight. If not now, when?

Las Vegas also reminds us that when it comes to guns in America, might makes right. Whether you support the National Rifle Association or not, it is as effective a political force in this country as any. It is savvy and sophisticated. In the wake of the charnel house on The Strip, the NRA was mostly quiet; it knows the game. Give it a few days or weeks and the outrage will blow over. It’ll use selective threats on those Republican members of Congress who dare to suggest that now may be the time to take a harder look at modest gun regulation.

The NRA cloaks itself in the Constitution, in the flag and in America writ large. Its political power is matched only by its willingness to use it. Earlier this year, the NRA produced a series of videos aimed at the mainstream media that were both frightening and telling. The NRA created those messages at the height of its power -– when its allies control the White House and Congress. There can be no compromise. Body counts? They’re someone else’s problem.

There are millions of American gun owners who are responsible and equally as horrified at the events in Las Vegas. But there are those for whom toting one’s weapon is a means of showing independence: from fear, from other citizens and from the tyranny of the federal government. Ironically, though, these folks likely also support mass surveillance of American citizens in the name of protecting us from radical Islamic terrorism. They may also believe in “law and order” so long as the long arm of the law doesn’t look in their direction or shoot someone they know.

As a nation, we may think of 9/11 as the event that most shook our sense of security. For many reasons, it did. Now, though, parents have to wonder if their kids are safe at school. Is their teenager safe on campus? Can they go to the birthday party at work? Is it safe to go to the movies? Is it safe to go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night? Can they take their wife to an outdoor concert and come home safely?

These are questions we rarely ever had to ask ourselves. We never would’ve thought about them. But too many mass shootings later, there is no segment of society, no demographic, no geography, no political bent that is safe from the AR-15 or the AK-47 on American soil. That is a disgrace. What’s worse than that? So many of us are so desensitized to these horrors that we’re beginning to believe that this is now just part of life.

Don’t. Don’t allow yourself to fall into that trap. We cannot and we must not forget the shattered latticework of lives affected by these events. Change can only begin and end with us. It won’t be delivered to our doorstep by Amazon. If chaos truly presents opportunities, let’s take this one and make something of it. We owe it to all those kids, office workers and concert-goers who will never have the chance.