Gun violence in America

About 3 ½ years ago, in August 2019, after two weekend mass shootings in the United States, I wrote a column about America and guns. This past weekend we had a similar event, as we’ve had so many times between then and now.

The 2019 column equated the recurrence of tragic multiple-death American massacres with the theme from the Bill Murray movie “Ground Hog Day,” in which Murray wakes up every day at 6 a.m. and re-experiences the events of the previous day, over and over again.

The following is a republication of the 2019 column, in recognition of the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, of last Saturday night. American gun policies have changed very little since then. The column, sadly, could in all likelihood bear repeating after the next shooting catastrophes in the weeks and months to come. 

The following sentences that are in parentheses describe the 2019 massacre, but those are the only differences from last weekend’s tragedy. Everything thereafter is repeated verbatim from 2019. 

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One more mass shooting last weekend in an American city, Monterey Park, California, this time. 

(Two more mass shootings last weekend in American cities, El Paso and Dayton this time.)

As of this writing, 10 people are dead, with many more injured.

(As of this writing, 31 people are dead, with many more injured.)

Killings were indiscriminate, from a rapid-fire pistol.

(Killings were indiscriminate, from rapid-fire rifles.)

The apparent perpetrator was an Asian man age 72.

(The apparent perpetrators were white men in their 20s, as are most of the mass killings in America these days.)

The scenario is like the movie Ground Hog Day. The news flash, the cell phone and TV photos broadcast over and over, the local law enforcement news conference, the interviews with survivors, the pundits’ and politicians’ analyses, the thoughts and prayers for the families, and the grief. Especially the grief. The replay wheel goes on for several days, fades away, then returns with the next brutal episode.

America has always been, and remains, close to my heart, as it is for most Americans.

But it’s increasingly clear that American exceptionalism has to include the level of gun carnage here, absolutely unmatched in any other advanced nation.

We are not a great nation. Powerful, yes, but not great. No great nation would tally 40,000 gun deaths a year, from suicide, domestic violence, disgruntled former employees, gang wars, drug and crime violence, ethnic hatred --- the motives as many.

And no great nation would tolerate that tally.

The Second Amendment is the only one of the 27 amendments to the Constitution for which the drafters saw a need to give a reason: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

The U.S. Supreme Court a few years ago determined that the “well regulated Militia” rationale is irrelevant, and that the right to bear arms stands on its own.

OK – but that doesn’t imply that the federal and state legislatures can’t take reasonable steps to protect people from gun violence.

In 1994, following a rash of mass killings throughout the nation, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a bill banning the manufacture of a large number of semi-automatic “assault weapons” and large-capacity ammunition magazines. The action followed a letter sent to the U.S. House by former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan calling for the ban.

Public opinions polls showed more than three in four Americans favored such a ban.

The ban was to last 10 years. In 2004, when the 10 years were up, Congress failed to renew it.

American history contains a huge serving of violence, with Western Europeans heaping it on. The spread of white settlement from east to west across the continent saw the brutal decimation of native American tribes, the importation and breeding of African slaves to make money for white landowners, and the defeat of Mexico and appropriation of a huge tract of Mexican territory.

When settlement ran out of land to conquer at the edge of the Pacific, America conquered the kingdom of Hawaii, and claimed the Philippines as spoil of the Spanish-American War.

Guns were an integral ingredient of American conquest, and were used to preserve what it had achieved. The American military arsenal today is greater than those of the next 10 nations’ arsenals taken together.

Guns are embedded in the American tradition. They’ve been used for defense and conquest. And they’ve been used to kill thousands of U.S. residents every year, old and young, male and female, black and white, rich and poor, of myriad ethnicities.

The National Rifle Association raises the specter of gun confiscation anytime some form of restriction is proposed. That’s just plain silly. Hunters and target shooters don’t need military-style weapons, and they don’t use them.

There are basic, elementary steps that we need to take to curtail the carnage. They won’t stop all the killing. But they can stop some of it.

Until lawmakers have a change of heart, or until they’re replaced by others with some political courage, nothing will change. Columns like this will continue to be written, and before long we’ll experience the next showing of Ground Hog Day.

Haven’t we had enough?