Mass Shootings in America Are ‘Unthinkable’?
After hundreds of mass shootings this year, and two in his own state, Glenn Youngkin can’t imagine why such things happen.
After a spate of mass shootings across the country, including two in his own state in November, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told reporters such an event was “unthinkable.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 600 mass shootings have occurred in the United States so far this year.
Youngkin was specifically responding to the killing of six Walmart employees in Chesapeake by their manager, who then killed himself. Only 10 days earlier, the Republican governor had to comment on the shooting of five University of Virginia students returning from a field trip. Three of them, members of the football team, did not survive.
Am I picking on Youngkin for his “unthinkable” comment? I don’t think so. He is a vocal advocate of the GOP’s “originalist” misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. (Nearly every Republican politician’s meaty left hand is forever covering that conditional opening clause, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary….”) Like nearly all members of his party with NRA money in their pockets, his stance is an unwavering unwillingness to discuss gun control. He calls the Second Amendment “absolute.”
Still, when you are speaking as a parent or a grandparent, it does feel unthinkable that any of your loved ones might be murdered. Or, rather, you cannot allow yourself to imagine that horror. It’s human nature to close one’s mind to such thoughts, to focus on the long odds rather than live in a perpetual state of fear.
But we should force ourselves to imagine it, however painful that may be. And we need to vote more politicians into public service who can think of it, too.
We have two daughters and three grandchildren. And it is nearly impossible these days to not imagine the danger they are in, no matter where they might be in our country. We know they might be methodically gunned down in school, at work, in a place of worship, at a mall, at the movies, at a concert, in a grocery store — anywhere.
As reported by The Violence Project, mass shootings (defined as having four or more victims), although increasing in the United States, still represent only about 1% of the deaths caused by guns. But that low percentage shouldn’t fool us. In terms of the more than 48,000 American deaths by gun in 2021, deaths by mass shootings alone still dwarf the total numbers in any other civilized country.
The motivations for mass shooters are many, including domestic/relationship issues, employment problems, hate, psychosis, legal problems, and fame-seeking — in that order.
It is difficult to fathom how to better things in all of those categories. How do we quickly offer services to young men (mass shooters are typically males, 25–35 years old) who are in a crisis with a girlfriend or spouse? How can employers better handle severing ties with underperforming employees and leave them with the hope of an economic future? How can hard-working employees stop being exploited by ruthless, tech-savvy employers? How can we turn down the hateful rhetoric of certain politicians and “personalities” like Tucker Carlson, when they have the support of billionaires? How do we get the psychotic “manifestos” of mass killers off social media?
One thing is a constant in this country: easy access to guns. As reported by The Trace, a group investigating gun violence in America, after more than 40 million guns were sold during 2020 and 2021 and gun laws in many states and even individual counties were loosened, gun violence increased. Even putting aside the pandemic, a distinct uptick of hateful rhetoric from the right, and economic instability and inequality, it’s not hard to see the basic reason why: As is pointed out by a Harvard professor quoted in the Trace article, more guns mean more violence. There are more guns in American hands than there are people.
And there’s that matter of the radical, purposeful misconstruing of the intent of the Second Amendment by Republicans to maintain that easy access to guns.
After 17 people were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that the Second Amendment was “a relic of the 18th century” and should be repealed. He said the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, in which the Supreme Court for the first time granted an individual right to bear arms, was a radical departure from the traditional view of the Second Amendment:
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a ‘well regulated militia.’
As writer Arianna Coghill noted in Mother Jones, after the two mass shootings in Virginia in just 10 days, Governor Youngkin, in a series of tweets and public statements, managed to never use the word gun. As she pointed out, Youngkin brought up the single Republican talking point about “doing something” about mental health.
The true mental health we desperately need in this country goes beyond making it easier for people in crisis to find help (given that more than half of gun deaths are suicides, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a good start). It includes giving citizens the peace of mind that their right to the pursuit of happiness will not be impeded by the corrupt practices and dirty money of the NRA. It extends also to politicians who in the midst of endless gun violence find this extraordinary American carnage unthinkable and thus offer up only their cheap, personally gratifying “thoughts and prayers.”
The NRA and its bought-off politicians have bullied us into normalizing the idea that there will always be plenty of guns in America. Liberals are quick to say that “no one is coming for your guns,” to reassure those who have set the terms of our discussion and don’t mind seeing our madness and grief continue. If leaders like Youngkin gaslight us with the idea that these shootings are unthinkable, we need to push back and ban all guns meant to kill people.
