A Word on Mass Shootings

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For the Right, mass shootings are a feature, not a bug.

I’m tired of dancing around this. Because it’s true of the people in power and the MAGA base that supports them. Mass shootings are a tactic of the Right. Deployed to terrorize Americans. Priming America for authoritarianism. The Right doesn’t stop mass shootings or work to curb gun culture.

I’ve seen the polling showing that most American voters support gun control. But I’ve also seen the local activists and parents on the Right terrorize school boards and local communities for the past couple of years over masks, trans students, and critical race theory. These same folks could easily organize a similar response on gun safety. They choose not to. Because they don’t want it to stop.

America generally doesn’t value human life much these days. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times have covered our country’s indifference to mass death as straight news and questioned if we as a nation value human life at all. These articles acknowledge the reality that there’s no moral outrage or social movement that’s come from these tragic, preventable deaths. The Right chooses to let mass death continue, and frankly, the rest of us haven’t put up as much of a fight as we should.

I’ve known this about America since Sandy Hook. But as a parent, I feel it so much more intensely…