Hard to Reconcile

Enough is enough.

More people dead, many people dead, an infant, children, elderly, relatives, friends, all in the midst of expressing their faith in a small Texas church, all now dead at the hand of a gunman with the desire to kill to avenge some perceived wrong.

And just a few days earlier, death came at the hands of a driver intent on making a point, destroying a beautiful fall day, careening down a bicycle path leaving mangled bikes and people in his wake.

This is the real American carnage and it rightly evokes sadness, rage, and compassion for the victims and their families as they face the consequences of randomly expressed violence.  Yet the public’s and politician’s reaction to how each of these horrific events should be addressed and what burden the public is willing to bear differs in ways that can not be readily reconciled. The juxtaposition of these recent events highlights both why they are the same and why they are so different.

Since the September 11 attacks, Americans have willingly become more vigilant about their surroundings- saying something when we see something- and have accepted incursions on our freedoms to ward off the next possible terrorist act.  The Patriot Act allowed unprecedented intrusions into our privacy, and violated some of our Fourth Amendment rights.  While most of those invasions have been rolled back, our lives have changed in ways we now accept because they make us feel safe.  Armed servicemen and women watch over us as we come and go from New York City’s Penn Station.  Police Departments arm themselves with increasingly sophisticated weapons and means of surveillance.  In NYC, large batches of patrol cars line the streets in anticipation of an attack or to ward off potential attackers, and take off like a swarm of bees, sirens blaring, lights flashing, as part of the new street normal.  And cameras are everywhere, watching our every move.  We like the cameras because they help us track the movements of bad actors, most famously, the Tsarnaev brothers’ actions on Boylston Street finish line of the Boston Marathon.

While meant to protect us, the increased police and military presence has eroded our way of life.  Those of us old enough to remember probably could not have fathomed seeing gun toting military in our civilian settings.  The police swarms both increase our comfort level and rob us of autonomy.  The cameras that track the bad actors track us as well.  Who knows when the cameras will be interested in what I am doing or what you are doing? Looking at the big picture, it is reasonable to argue that we are sleepwalking towards a military/police state, with Big Brother components, just like many novels predicted.  We have traded freedom for perceived safety.

But what are we making ourselves safe from?  Fear of “the other”, the terrorist who has traveled from abroad or percolated in our midst?  Or is it random death in a mass execution?

If it is the random death, why do we treat the mass shootings differently than the car driving terrorist?  Both leave innocent people dead, people who were simply participating in their everyday lives.  Both are indiscriminate.  Is the difference simply that terrorists kill to support an ideology we find contrary to our values?  Or is it the illusion that we will be losing protected freedoms if we take measures to limit the free range use of guns?

We know that far more people have died in shootings in the US than have died at the hands of terrorists.

Yet due to a vocal lobby that terrorizes our elected officials, the NRA, we accept the idea that we are impotent to implement changes that may save lives.  And all because the Second Amendment cannot be interpreted in a common sense way to protect innocent people.  It has become the most sacred of all Amendments.  I doubt the Founding Fathers foresaw or intended that construction.

We willingly sacrifice freedoms due to the threat of terrorism, but our government and many Americans are not willing to make legitimate rules and regulations regarding gun sales, ownership and safety.  Some will argue that the increased military and police surveillance and presence has made us safer, and I agree.  So why can’t we accept some restrictions on guns if they will make us a safer society?

To those who argue that murder can be accomplished with a variety of weapons, I agree there are many ways to kill someone. However, there is a reason we have not had an epidemic of mass murder by machete. The ability to kill people from a safe and significant distance, as in Las Vegas and the Texas clock tower, and the devastating effects of an accidental gun discharge demonstrate that guns differ from other weapons.

Drafting laws and regulations to prevent gun violence must be evidence-based because data collection and interpretation is the gold standard to demonstrate the efficacy of new social programs. Indeed, it took proof and decades of incremental changes to make our cars safer and to walk Americans back from their tobacco addiction to better health.

What will be the most effective steps to curb deaths by guns?  What licensing, ownership, training, and storage rules could be most readily implemented and enforced to limit the endless bloodshed?  Gun related violence is a topic that desperately needs investigation, yet we allow the NRA to bully Congress and hobble the Center for Disease Control by preventing the funding needed to investigate. Gun violence can rightly be called an epidemic, yet the NRA and its exaltation of the Second Amendment prevent us from studying it to craft common sense cures.

As a society we often need to make some sacrifices for the common good.  We have made sacrifices to protect ourselves from terrorism.  We cannot allow a fearful, hyper-vocal group stop us from saving American lives, lives that are lost due to our inaction.  There is no simple answer, but as a first step, we must demand that scientists gather and analyze the data that will allow us to develop paths to reduced gun violence.