Guns and shame.

Last week a man killed seventeen people at a high school, this is unlikely to be news to anyone at this point. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written on the topic by this point, I can't add anything new to that. At this point the idea that we should continue doing nothing should be unconscionable to everyone.

I don't understand why you have to be told to care about other people.

The arguments on social media, and in statements by elected representatives or other public figures always talk about how it is impossible, that restricting gun ownership won't change anything, that it is a mental health issue, and nothing changes.

Let's talk a little bit about the mental health issue. Lot's of words are written about that too of course, but a common thread from gun control advocates is that most mass shooters aren't actually crazy and I feel like this is a disingenuous argument in a some ways while still being perfectly accurate in others. It is true that most shooters aren't suffering from any diagnosable disorder and that people who do suffer from diagnosed mental illness are more unlikely than the rest of the population to go out and shoot up a school, it also isn't really fair to say that killers are in their right mind when they kill fifty people at a nightclub. As horrible as people can be to each other we actually do tend to avoid murdering when possible, and it is usually possible. So something is wrong with these people that isn't wrong with the rest of the population.

Right?

Well not really, this is what I meant by the argument being right and wrong. Most people would agree that it isn't a sane act to kill dozens for really any reason at all, yet it happens a lot in this country, far, far more than it happens anywhere else in the world, combined. Many other countries have lax gun control laws, but no other country as the combination of lax laws and mas murder that we do. The common thread in the shootings therefore doesn't seem to be specifically about gun access, nor is it about being mentally ill, but rather an expression of the culture itself being sick.

It is something unique to America and it is something present in all of us to various degrees. The willingness to use violence to express ourselves, violence as an identity even, white maleness being the default status with the presumption that owning that status makes you more deserving of success, in short, toxic masculinity.

Mass shooters are overwhelmingly white and male, and when they pop up in other countries they often are as well, outside of military action or terrorist attack anyway, though the difference may be academic. But they can't all be outliers in a sense, it doesn't seem likely that the shooters are all subject to a very specific mental illness that causes them to massacre people. While the act may be insane the mindset behind it doesn't quite qualify, it is the same mindset behind the Trump presidency, or the pervasive culture of sexual harassment, or white supremacy.  It is a cultural illness that we all suffer from to one degree or another, and it won't go away until that gets addressed.

The good news is that it is being addressed, as much as reactionary assholes struggle against it, the bad news is it is gonna take a long ass time to fix and it won't be easy.

Does this mean I think that guns aren't the problem? Far from it, while they aren't the underlying cause of massacres, there is no arguing that they make it easy to kill people in large numbers, and while a true fix to the problem requires cultural and societal change, we can slow the bleeding by limiting the weapons available. Basically America isn't mature enough for firearms. Virtually none of us are but primarily when I say that I am referring to white male America, and while perhaps the best fix would be to ban ownership of guns by white males, allowing all other portions of the public to retain that right, I suspect that would be more problematic than a blanket restriction.

Although can you imagine a world where the white dude has to walk carefully because they know that every other man and woman they meet could be armed and they aren't? This idea pleases me greatly.

Anyway, take away the tools, institute massive buyback programs and fines for private ownership, if we must retain private ownership then restrict the manufacturing and provide the same licensing and insurance requirements that you need to drive, including being listed in a centralized database, if insurance companies suddenly have to start paying out for every instance of gun violence you can bet your ass it will become prohibitively expensive very quickly, alternatively or additionally disallow firearm ownership in a home and institute a system of armories where citizens can store their weapons in a central location. Checking them out only for specific reasons.

While I personally support a blanket ban on all firearms outside the military, and by that I mean taking them away from cops too, I realize that is unlikely and will take what I can get, which at this point is nothing, but it doesn't have to be.

I hear ideas about a school strike until gun control legislation is passed, that is a cool idea to me, but it shouldn't take our children forcing us to choose between their lives and their educations for this to happen. It is shameful that it might come to that. And every last one of us should be feeling it. 

I am often ashamed of my country, and this past week has done nothing to decrease that feeling.