Democrats Must Rethink The Gun Debate
A few days after the Las Vegas Massacre, I wrote “The American Ritual of Thoughts and Prayers,” which chronicles the routine in which the American people have normalized our disastrous relationship with guns and gun violence. All of the talking points are the same. The outrage is the same. Everyone takes their predetermined positions on the beloved and often lionized Second Amendment and then nothing happens. Rinse and repeat. I think it is time for my party, the Democratic Party, to rethink our engagement on the gun issue.
I honestly lost faith in any meaningful solution to America’s Gun Violence epidemic after we did nothing when first graders and their teachers were brutally murdered at Sandy Hook. I thought after a tragedy like that we would be compelled into action. I thought we would be compelled to do something after Pulse Night Club when 49 night-clubbers were killed by a single gunman. I thought we would do something after Las Vegas when a single gunman turned a concert venue into a killing field. But it seems that there is simply no political will to do something, anything meaningful.
I think it is time for Democrats to rethink our position on guns. Gun violence in America is a public health problem. Gun violence in America is a social justice problem. Gun violence in America is an economic problem. Gun violence in America affects our sense of liberty and inhibits our ability to pursue happiness. Democrats need to start talking about all of those issues. America’s gun violence problem will not be solved by control and control alone.
There seems to be a consensus in America that we do in fact have a gun violence problem, I think we have all seen the charts and graphics showing the rise in guns and gun-related crimes. Although the government has not actually studied the gun violence issue for over 15 year years. Things start to get murky when we pull back some layers and try and determine the cause of the gun violence problem. We have the “good guys with guns vs the bad guys with guns.” Which turns out not to be all that relevant, statistically speaking. In many cases, the “good guy” doesn’t actually prevent mass slaughter.
We have the “gun-free zone.” Which turns out to be another myth that is perpetuated by a gun industry whose business model is to scare people into buying more guns. We have a highly effective gun lobby in the National Rifle Association (NRA). Which serves the gun manufacturing industry first and foremost. We have gun control movement, who reacts with hysterics that is short-lived and actionless. We have the talking points on the right and left. None of it actually means anything, except that America continues to be saturated with guns and burdened by an epidemic of gun violence.
For starters, no one is trying to take guns away. Even if we were trying to take all of the guns it would quite literally be impossible because there are more guns than people in the United States. According to 2009, Congressional Research, there are 100 guns per 100 US persons. We have to remember that the United States is a country that cannot ensure that water in Flint, Michigan is drinkable years after it was discovered that the water was literally poisoning its citizens, American citizens. Do we honestly think the government has the ability to ensure the orderly round up of all the guns in America? Democrats should start with that point, no one is trying to take guns away.
President Trump was right when he responded to the Southerland Springs Church Massacre when he invoked America’s mental health crisis. This is an area where Democrats can seize the narrative. If the President wants to talk about mental health, let’s talk about mental health. Let’s shine a spotlight on this issue and while we are doing that we can talk about guns. We need to push for our gun epidemic to be treated like the national health crisis it is.
Democrats should talk about the economics of gun violence. Who are the real winners when mass atrocities occur? It is not the average Good Guy with a gun. It is an industry that has been exempted from any real responsibility. Gun manufactures win huge windfalls every single time some madman walks into a mall and opens fire. Let’s follow the money.
We should talk about how gun violence threatens our very liberty and pursuits of happiness. We now live in a country where there is quite literally no safe place. Mass murder has occurred in schools, malls, movie theaters, nightclubs, concert halls, workplaces, home spaces, parks, universities, churches, temples, mosques, hospitals, health centers, carnivals, fairs, public meetings, grocery stores, retail stores, there is not a place in America that hasn’t experienced the horrors of mass gun violence. That is a direct threat to our liberty. That is a direct threat to our pursuits of happiness. The only reason we have not been randomly killed by a mass shooter is that someone hasn’t decided to do it yet. That is our reality.
Democrats need to decide that we cannot control our way to a better gun future and we must stop suggesting that we can. We should also continue to push for meaningful and sensible gun safety solutions, like universal background checks, like information sharing between states, like mandating gun safety, like actually letting government professionals study the issue. We should allow doctors and mental health professional ask patients about guns and set up gun safety protocols. We should be able to limit or monitor high capacity magazines or reduce the amount of ammunition is a person is allowed to purchase without triggering another level of scrutiny. If we proceed on the path of simply banning types of guns and materials related to guns we are missing the point that there are more guns in America than people. America’s gun violence epidemic is a public health crisis. Let’s stopped trying to ban guns and try and help the men, and I mean men quite literally, who are likely to commit acts of mass murder.
