Mass Shootings: The Price to Pay for Liberty?
What has once again been largely left out of the public debate on gun control prompted by the Las Vegas massacre, is how tightly gun rights are bound to right-wing ideology, at the core of which is the fear of a tyrannical government. The shadows of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War fall over the darkest corners of the gun culture: Should tyranny come, our freedoms can only be defended by taking up arms—so goes the narrative. That these guns will inevitably be misused by sociopaths to slaughter innocents is the price we have to pay for the capability to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government.
They have a point. The revelations by Edward Snowden of the scope of national security agencies spying on U.S. citizens were chilling. Whatever nominal limitations were put on mass surveillance in the Obama administration may well be mere window dressing, as far as the NSA and CIA are concerned. Those operators are secretive by nature, and the only way we can feel safe from surveillance is by trusting the people whose mission is to monitor, capture and kill enemies of the state—trusting them to be motivated by true democratic principles. For now, their focus is on terrorism and hostile foreign governments, but if the government were to be taken over by a strongman (such as Donald Trump would like to be but is too scatterbrained and undisciplined to emulate),* the tools of these agencies could readily be turned on American civilians—in particular on what we like to think of as the free press (the irony of right-wingers’ beliefs that “the media” are dominated by socialists is particularly rich; do they really believe that these news organizations are arms of the “Deep State?”).
I do not share the right wing’s paranoia about our government, but I get their concern. Maybe I’m too trusting of our institutions. For many on the Right, the NRA is their bulwark against dictatorship; any NRA loss is a step toward capitulation to the Deep State. They are worried enough that the percentage of gun ownership in the U.S. is going down: they are alarmed by the naivete of a citizenry incapacitating themselves to strike back at the government’s myrmidons who would come to take their property, their land, their children, their way of life.
If it’s any solace, we can be pretty sure the right wing paranoia has been lessened by their darling Donald Trump having replaced that arch-fiend, Barack Obama, as President. They are, however, wary of any sign of a Trump leftward shift.
Guns for Fun – What’s that about?
Guns have allure in their own right. Having briefly fired a fully automatic machine gun (as well my own semi-automatic M-14) in target practice when I was in the army, I confess to the thrill of having the power to act violently at a distance. Acting violently at a distance is part of our evolutionary heritage; throwing rocks and spears enabled our Stone Age ancestors to kill or maim dangerous animals at a safe remove from being gored, trampled, or kicked, where such use may have been necessary to stave off starvation. War against rival humans was facilitated by the use of projectiles. The innate lure of ballistics is reflected in our love of the many sports where an object is launched at a target—a baseball, a basketball, a football, a soccer ball, arrows, and yes, bullets. Even our reliably liberal and pro-gun-control Rachel Maddow of MSNBC spoke of the kick she got out of shooting a pistol at an indoor firing range.
Thus the joy that gun enthusiasts get from their firearms is understandable in evolutionary terms, even though somewhat warped to those of us who go on the web to see gleeful demonstrations of firearms, and to hear gun owners talk about the “sweetness” of machines that can blow your head off. It may seem twisted to find a multitude of advertisements for handguns in hunting magazines (not the weapon of choice to bring down a deer at 70 yards) —but their ubiquity can be explained by (1) the hold of gun culture even on those owners who firmly believe in more stringent background checks; (2) the usefulness of a handgun to defend against Bad Guys, particularly appealing to women as a leveler; (3) a gun is a gun is a gun—an exciting toy to play with, even if the targets are not living animals. Rachel Maddow understands the last.
Agency: the Pleading of Gun Enthusiasts and their Representatives in High Places. (“Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People”)
The first things out of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s mouth in response to questions about gun control in the aftermath of Las Vegas, was that this was not a time to talk about gun control while people were still grieving and trying to make sense what happened. Variations of this ever-ready platitude were voiced by the usual suspects: Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, et al, with eyes on their gun-happy right wing base. As pointed out by Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker, the aftermath of such a tragedy is precisely the time to be talking about gun control.
Along with the contrived appeal to our respect and sympathy for victims and distraught survivors, we hear gun proponents’ tired old refrain that people, not guns, kill people—trotted out as if it were some remarkable insight, rather than the “duh” canard that it is. That rationale is implicit in the focus on the evil nature of the perpetrator and the citation of the weakness of our mental health systems. On TV we were greeted with Trump’s pronouncements that the shooter was an “evil, evil man,” (duh again), and Paul Ryan speaking sanctimoniously about improving mental health measures. For Ryan it is a purposeful diversion: as a smart person, he knows very well that very few mentally ill people are murderous, and serious (and long overdue) attempts to serve the large number of mentally ill appropriately, would overwhelm attempts to single out the murderers among them. Besides which, many psychopaths are capable of appearing sane in the sense of being in touch with reality; it is only after their atrocities are discovered they are adjudged insane.
People obviously kill people, with knives, box cutters, bicycle chains, lug wrenches, paper weights, etc. However, equating guns with knives is so preposterous it’s hard to believe that anyone with a working brain would bother to say it. So it would appear. But in fact it is said not out of stupidity (non-stupid NRA representatives say it all the time), but to bring attention to human agency as the source of the abominations, and draw it away from the inarguable fact that firearms multiply the capability to inflict harm manyfold . . . and often at a distance, which is precisely why those who fear government tyranny equip themselves with arsenals of guns rather than knife collections. (Should you accuse them of hypocrisy? Well . . . not if you don’t want to get shot at.)
Appealing to agency works so well because we are such intensely social animals (another key to our evolutionary success) that we spend much of our emotional lives observing, thinking about, and judging, the behavior of other people. We naturally try to interpret, and gossip about, people doing bad stuff—it helps to avoid danger—and are riveted by the spectacle of a truly evil person doing horrific things. This is the phenomenon gun enthusiasts employ to take our eyes off the extraordinarily lethal power of guns. It is the phenomenon that explains the apathetic responses of ordinary people, to the effect that “I guess there are just bad people who will find a way to do bad things.” Score game-winning points for the NRA propaganda machine.
The importance of human agency explains the fascination of the news media with the Las Vegas shooter. The why question gets equal time with the how question—and the how question gets caught up in analyzing the purposes, tactics, and state of mind of the shooter, i.e. why he made certain choices.
In sum, don’t expect legislators in the thrall of the NRA to impose substantive gun restrictions any time soon in the USA; Outlawing Bump Stocks is a Mere Token
If I turn out to be wrong about the inaction of the national legislature to move meaningfully on gun control, I will be delighted. But I’m not counting on it. At the moment, it appears that maybe the national legislature may do something to outlaw “bump stocks,” which are but one of the many modifications to convert semiautomatic rifles to fully automatic; one expert says that he has seen the conversion done “with a paper clip.” See the fine reporting by PBS correspondent William Brangham here:
Bottom line: outlawing bump stocks is pretty much an empty gesture in eliminating the conversion of semi-automatic rifles to fully automatic. A sop which some Republicans may throw to anti-gun proponents to blunt their gun-control campaign, while leaving the core of the NRA agenda untouched.
Getting worse long before getting better.
The law currently before Congress to loosen restrictions on silencers and make them easier and cheaper to buy has a good chance of passing, if not this week, then at a time when the furor over Las Vegas has died down.
Does easy access to silencers mean mass shootings will become easier . . . and more frequent? The ostensible purpose of easing restrictions on silencers is for the protection of the ears of gun users—a legitimate purpose as far as the letter of the law goes. But of course it goes farther . . . a silencer serves the purpose of a stealth killer by making his location less detectable, both by sound and sight. Silencers or “suppressors” have varying effects on muzzle flash depending on the make, but they certainly make it dimmer. (See link below.) My understanding is that the position of the Las Vegas shooter was first detected by muzzle flash. That would be one reason that the shooter moved from room to room—knowing he would eventually be discovered, he figured a sniper taking aim at him would have to be ready to fire at either window; it’s difficult to sweep from one window to another accurately in the matter of two seconds it takes an automatic weapon to unload 20 rounds. Perhaps the Las Vegas police will now employ two snipers to defend events such as the country music concert; but in Las Vegas public events with crowds regularly take place simultaneously.
Suppression of muzzle flash with silencer
Usually, I like to recommend that you contact your legislators over controversial issues, but in my case both senators are already in favor of tighter gun restrictions, and my representative in the House is a tea partier to whom any gun restrictions are anathema. Stalemate. If you have a representative who might be persuadable, by all means try, but in truth it may help to back off the gun issue and save your ammo for a cause that might realistically have better chances of bearing fruit: climate change and curtailing use of fossil fuels; health care; mental health care; factory farming; voting rights, . . . and so forth.
Corollary to the preceding: getting behind the banning of bump stocks is to squander energy on a side issue. Most gun violence in America occurs not in the mass shootings which grab headlines, but daily in a steady, excruciating procession of suicides, accidental shootings, jealous rages, personal fights escalating out of control, gang warfare, drug deals gone bad, and robberies. Most of these deaths occur in marginalized communities way below the radar of MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, to mention a few of the organizations who cater to middle-class and upper-middle-class white people. We on my list of blog recipients hear little of them, but there is where the most appalling running tragedy of gun violence in American is happening.
(BTW I’m not sure that silencers/muzzle flash suppressors will work well with fully automatic weapons, even though a web search seems to indicate they would. I’d think the heat generated by rapid fire would warp the silencer and make it less effective, but what do I know about guns? Not much.)
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* We are in a Catch-22 with regard to the Trump presidency; if he is removed from government, his successor, Mike Pence, has potential to rise to strongman status, especially if embraced by the military folks who serve as the President’s security apparatus. Pence would serve as their puppet, since he appears to be quite a dull fellow in both bearing and intellect. His main claim to fame seems to be keeping every silvery hair on his head in perfect containment. If Trump is not removed, we may be in for a different kind of disaster. (And a still longer-range disaster is already under way as regulations for our and our environment’s health are removed or not enforced; Pence would make this situation at least as bad if not worse.)