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Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago

When Britain replaced coal gas with natural gas in the 60’s the national suicide rate plunged. It just wasn’t as simple as putting your head in the oven anymore.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/

There is overwhelming evidence that, from infidelity to murder, the easier you make it, the more likely it is to happen. I suspect even the gun lobbyists know that.

At the root of their argument is distrust. As the left has wrecked the moral consensus of the 50’s, and in places either refuses to enforce the law, or changes it to the advantage of the law breaker, trust in the state declines and it becomes necessary to have the means to protect oneself. The more people have them, the more others will think they need them.

It’s very hard to see how the US can break that cycle, which is starting to look like a gyre disappearing down a plug hole.

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Bollis
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

If you didn’t have the gun lobby and a centuries old document to contend with I’d say 5 steps.

1. Secure the southern border to prevent weapons (and drugs/illegals etc) from getting into the country.
2. Legislate which firearms will be allowed. Ban any weapon that serves no other purpose such as hunting. All hunting rifles/shotguns etc must be licensed, with strict conditions for their ownership.
3. A government buyback scheme for any weapons which were bought in good faith but are now illegal.
4. After the buyback, a time limited amnesty to hand in any now illegal firearms.
5. After the amnesty, heavy punishments for people found in possession of illegal firearms.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

All very sensible suggestions but the gun lobby and the centuries old document do exist.

The latter is more than just an historical artefact, it has made guns a part of American culture (to many) as ubiquitous as a fridge or car.

Antagonism to the idea the government could forbid you having these things is deep rooted in a culture almost defined by individuality.

Any solution would take cultural change built on years of consensus building. Not much sign of that happening!

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Unfortunately you’re 100% correct. Until that day comes Americans will be burying their children much more frequently than other first world countries

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

This has been wilfully misinterpreted by many on the Right, the NRA etc: ‘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’.
“Well-regulated militia”!
NOT – everyone should have access to any number of semi-automatic guns in their cupboard!

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Just watch any old American Western movie to confirm that guns are part of our culture. But it has been such for 200 years. Why only recently have we seen what seems to be an increase in such events? Could it be a 24/7 sensationalist news cycle, which appears on your handheld device immediately?
The option to having a free nation, with some downsides, is to have a totalitarian one. I still chose the former. Sort of like capitalism with some unfairness vs. socialism with equal misery.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Precisely. With 250 years of broad gun ownership, why are these massacres only becoming slightly common (they are still a rarity) now?
Easy. The mass media sensationalize these stories because “if it bleeds, it leads” is still true. They have more reach now than ever back in the newspaper/radio days.
At least as important, the politicians try to score points by dancing on the graves of the victims. The Democrats are the clear leaders in this cynical minuet, but occasionally conservatives participate. (although how much time did the MSM or Republicans spend on the shooting of the Rep softball team?? – not much).
BW wrote: “We have become numb to the horror of mass shootings”
No, our horror, revulsion, and sympathy have merely been drowned out by the clamor from those who are making money or earning votes (or virtue signals) from these events.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

27 school shootings in 5 months hardly qualifies as a “rarity.”

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

It it bleeds… Hard to escape the press which enjoys the carnage.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Hardee Hodges

So now we have the suggestion that massacres of school children should not be covered by the Press! Quite extraordinary.

Terence Fitch
Terence Fitch
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

I don’t think a false dichotomy helps. Free vs unfree? Most societies have degrees of unfairness and social agreement. We agree to drive on one side of the road. It would be insane to drive randomly on any side you wanted to.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Every country has 24/7 news cycles now, though not many are as openly partisan as the Americans ones. None of those have school shootings like the States.
Also why is living in fear and feeling you need a firearm for protection classed as being free? Most first world nations have strict rules regarding owning and storing firearms, I wouldn’t class them as totalitarian, would you?

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Some are increasingly on the thither side of the line, however “first world” (!) their credentials. The chances that America, a country selected into existence by rebels, fugitives and other odd-bods, would ever put up with being like, say, Australia, are slim to none. (And Slim is on his horse headed out of town.)

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Australia and New Zealand had strong gun cultures too until a few massacres caused them to change their laws.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

They are minor players in the gun game with much less history. Different culture as well.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

This has been wilfully misinterpreted by many on the Right, the NRA etc: ‘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’.
“Well-regulated militia”!
NOT – everyone should have access to any number of semi-automatic guns in their cupboard!

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Antony Hirst
Antony Hirst
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I disagree. I think all free societies should have access to the weaponry needed to defend themselves against anybody. Be that the government, criminals or invaders. Of course, restrictions on storage, transportation and who gets to have these things must be up for debate.
The problem is the USA is callously treating many of its citizens like absolute trash and the inevitable and manifest psychosis and mental dysfunction that follows can only lead to chaos. Chaos plus “easy” access to guns…

Last edited 1 year ago by Antony Hirst
Michael Askew
Michael Askew
1 year ago
Reply to  Antony Hirst

A work colleague was sitting in a hotel room overlooking a crossroads with traffic lights in the USA, The lights went red and one car failed to stop in time and bumped the car in front. The driver in the car that was hit got out and had an altercation with the other driver. The outcome was obviously not satisfactory because he went back to his car, retrieved a gun from the glove compartment and shot the other driver dead.
Yes, everyone should have a gun. What could possibly go wrong?

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

Exactly – but the pro-gun people avoid the difficult questions and facts, with adolescent rhetoric.

A gun in the home is more likely to be used against a member of your family, and/or in a tragedy, than to protect.

There is no ‘well regulated militia’ – if Roe vs Wade was a mess that needs clearing up, let’s have some clarity on the ‘2nd’ issue.

An excess of guns will generally lead to excess of death (aka use of guns!) in more or less the same way as an excess of opiates will lead to addiction (which evidently was a real struggle for the US medical/pharma/regulation orgs – ethically or cognitively challenged?

Almost no-one and no organisation is calling for the banning of guns or repealing of the 2nd. The NRA just pretends they are because it enrages their base, and empowers the NRA.

If you can’t use a thing responsibly, then you should have it taken away from you. There is a well organised system for driving – the US needs on, as per the 2nd amendment, for weaponry.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

Many people today have absolutely no impulse control – a sign of a decadent, indulged people.

Jim Davis
Jim Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Billy Bob, your solution would turn the entire country into Chicago, i.e. only the criminals would have hand guns and ordinary people would have no way to protect themselves. Chicago, New York and DC have the most strict gun control laws in the country; and the highest murder rates. Amazing how those pesky criminals have no interest in following the law, while the sheeple are willing to line up for the slaughter.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Davis

People who think only about what is in front of their faces at any moment in time can be dangerous and have incredible outcomes. “Let’s ban all guns!” Sounds wonderful until you are completely defenseless against an intruder who doesn’t respect the law.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Davis

Then it’s up to the police to clamp down and remove those firearms from the streets, it’s their job to uphold the law

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Davis

Aren’t a majority of the firearms used by criminals in Chicago bought in neighbouring States? There if you had nationwide laws this wouldn’t be an issue

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Great suggestion! Now that we have gotten rid of that millennial old book, called the bible, let’s get rid of our founding documents too! Then we can let the imbeciles create a whole set of new utopian laws. Wonderful idea.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

What’s wrong with the law being set by the government of the day, rather than one that was in power 250 years ago?

Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

That is not the deal we signed up for.

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

The govt of today lack wisdom or any real sense of common values. In other words it su..s.

Phil Rees
Phil Rees
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Fine in theory, but what will you do when you find the number qualifying for those ‘heavy punishments’ in 5 number millions? I suspect they will.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Phil Rees

Then many Americans will face heavy fines and having their guns confiscated without compensation. If they continue to flout the law then they’ll do a stint inside the same as any other criminal

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

The majority of recorded deaths by gunshot is suicide. Which echoes the point you make. See https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
Banning guns to protect the children is a simple call. Banning guns to make people who want to kill themselves use other methods is a tougher argument to make.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  AC Harper

The school in question was NOT following its own policy. It had numerous entry points rather than only ONE. Blame the leaders of that school and school district.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

So rather than restrict ownership of automatic weapons, you instead want the nations schools to aesthetically resemble a heavily fortified North Korean prison camp?

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

My kids’ school had 4 entrances. During the day, only one was unlocked, so visitors had to go in that one. Just like WalMart, Home Depot, the grocery store, post office, …
OMG, a police state! Idiots.

Last edited 1 year ago by Terry M
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

There’s no windows somebody could jump through then, or would you put bars across them to make school even more prison like?

Philip LeBoit
Philip LeBoit
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

Few other f&*kng countries in the world have to plan schools with only one entry point.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

excellent!

Thomas Hutcheson
Thomas Hutcheson
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

I was born in 1942and remember the 50’s well. Somehow I missed noticing when the “moral consensus” was wrecked — unless you mean about same sex marriage — and have not seen refusal to enforce the law (except temporarily by some police departments after mass protests).

Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings
1 year ago

I was born in 1952 and I remember the sixties well. I believe the rot was showing up then. JFK assassination, Vietnam, Watts, Chicago, Detrout, free love, Woodstock, massive resistance and the list goes on. The seventies got off to a roaring start with Roe, Watergate, impeachment hearings, Nixon resignation, the Pentagon Papers, the peanut farmer, stagflation and the Iran hostage mess. The hits just keep coming.

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Tom Jennings

Yes boomers ruined the country.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago

To take two obvious examples.

BLM riots ($2bn damage. 19 dead) regrettable but understandable if your progressive, but Capitol Hill riot evil personified. Vice versa if you’re conservative.

Three senior opposition politicians in the U.K. have refused to confirm only women have a cervix in TV interviews.

In the 1950’s rioting with criminal damage and murder was universally thought wrong (even if your side were the perpetrators) and everybody could differentiate between men and women.

To consider the State’s failure to protect, you could take a look at Julie Bindell’s article about restorative justice, consider that shoplifting up to $1000 is no longer a felony in SF, or consider how progressive DA’s released rioters throughout the BLM riots.

In the U.K., rioters who pulled down a statue and dumped it in the sea (criminal damage, whatever your view of the cause) were acquitted.

I could go on for hours but suspect if you’ve somehow missed these societal developments its unlikely to be an evidence led discussion.

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Bollis
M. Jamieson
M. Jamieson
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

It’s very interesting to look at the rhetoric of the gun lobby today, compared to the past. THe NRA, back in the 50s, was a very moderate voice, interested in what constituted effective legislation, and notably did not really go in for promoting the necessity for firearms for protection against the government or other citizens.
When they became a prominent voice in the discussion in the 90s after the early mass shooting incidents, the necessity to protect agsint other citizens and the state became quite prominent. Not only a reflection of social breakdown, I think, but also instigating it. I suspect in the service of the corporate entities donating to their lobby efforts.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  M. Jamieson

Every gun that’s misused creates a need for 10 other people to buy a gun. Every 10th person has mental health problems.

It’s a marketeers dream.

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  M. Jamieson

Really you are giving them too much influence. People generally aren’t stupid enough to blindly follow only one organizations talking points. Plus they don’t have a lot of money anymore comparatively to other orgs.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 year ago

The shootings are not the only evidence of American and general Western beserkness. Consider the deference accorded to the racist chancers Black Lives Matter and the creeps promoting transgenderism in schools.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

As much as I think BLM and the whole trans thing is absolute nonsense, school shootings are a uniquely American occurrence rather than anything that affects the rest of the west

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Like Dunblane

Clive Mitchell
Clive Mitchell
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Wise

Which happened how long ago?

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
1 year ago
Reply to  Clive Mitchell

27 years if I remember correctly.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Wise

Which happened once, and led to strict gun laws. How many schools have been attacked in America since Britains one and only example decades ago?

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Wise

The fact you have to use an example that happened so long ago rather validates Billy Bob’s comment!

John Oakes
John Oakes
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

What on earth do you mean by “racist chancers” ? Are you questioning human rights to equal treatment , or what?

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
1 year ago
Reply to  John Oakes

Oh John. I hope you didn’t send them too much of your hard earned.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 year ago
Reply to  John Oakes

Oh do look everybody! I’ve hooked myself a wokie! Isn’t he weird!

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  John Oakes

I think he meant to say racist grifters. That’s what I would say.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Yes, thanks, that might have been a better choice of words.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

“There is a deep sickness in this country. It goes beyond our addiction to guns. It’s an anti-social, anti-human disease that has gripped our society and our politics.”
So, it just happened. A disease. A pandemic, even.
Or, suppose it is the consequence of a century of the rule of the educated class, which has made America into a pretty cushy place for educated people on Substack, but not so much for the ordinary middle class and the lower class.
And if that is true, how would we know? Would the educated class ever stumble on such an impossible cause? And if it did, would it actually tell us? Because everyone knows that educated people are the most evolved, advanced, compassionate, wise people the world has ever seen.
If someone is to blame, it could not be educated class. It would have to be that racist-sexist-homophobe gun owner behind the tree.

Last edited 1 year ago by Christopher Chantrill
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

Every country has poor people and the working classes (though granted inequality is much higher in the States), though it’s only Americans that go round shooting up schoolchildren

ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Sadly the US is not unique, nor is poverty necessarily the driving force.
Have we all forgotten Hamilton, the Dunblane killer, or Breivik of Norway? Both as I recall had equipped themselves with licensed firearms, and both were obvious ‘nut’ jobs but nothing could be done.
Is this an “acceptable level of violence” as a former British Home Secretary once said?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  ARNAUD ALMARIC

Largely one offs though, same as the NZ mosque shooter. In America this is a regular occurrence

Phil Rees
Phil Rees
1 year ago
Reply to  ARNAUD ALMARIC

The Dunblane killing was followed by an immediate enquiry into the sale of guns, leading to radical overhaul and making them extremely strict. Nothing like it has occurred since. Effect – reduction in shootings – follows cause – mass shooting and enquiry.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  ARNAUD ALMARIC

The US is unique by virtue of quantity. No other country even comes close, even on a per Capita basis.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

The US is also unique in that until recently most people lived in rural areas where guns were needed. Even in Western CT we have large bears, bobcats, raccoons & foxes (sometimes rabid!), deer etc. Wildlife is great but sometimes dangerous.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

As a longtime Unherd subscriber and fan, I find this article particularly disappointing.
As an article, it’s little more than prologue. The final paragraph is where the article should have begun: what is the origin of “the indigenous American berserk”? Is it a recent phenomenon? Is it the inevitable manifestation of a nation based on individualism and lacking a unifying national ideology? Can anything be done about this phenomenon?
But mostly I’m disappointed that:
A version of this article first appeared on Bari’s Substack.
Hey, Unherd, what happened to you? Back in 2020 you had a distinctive voice, a voice of reason amid the hysteria. Now you’re recycling Bari Weiss articles (hint: she’s doing really well by her own efforts; she doesn’t need you to do her marketing for her) and pecking around the edges of popular culture. Hopefully you recover your own, distinctive, journalistic voice soon.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I agree there is a complete lack of analysis in the article. The shootings I have read about seem to have been perpetrated predominantly by under 25 year old mentally troubled male youths. Is it not time to restrict gun possession to those who have reached a degree of maturity that they are less likely to commit mass murder over real or imagined slights to their self-esteem if the US wants to retain the right to bear arms? The Swiss seem to manage to have a lot of guns in the hands of civilians without frequent mass murder. What restrictions do they impose? I may be wrong in the above two attempts at analysis but I am just commenting. Were I writing an article I hope I would have done some proper research and provided some analysis and suggestions rather than this “feel bad” article.

Last edited 1 year ago by Jeremy Bray
Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

Good point. You can’t rent a car until you are 25, and in some locations you can’t rent a hotel room until you are 25. This would be a compromise that even 2A purists like me could get behind.

Last edited 1 year ago by Terry M
Elizabeth dSJ
Elizabeth dSJ
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

America certainly has a “unifying national ideology.”
Americans are constantly told that shared ancestry — which only antiquated “racists” value — doesn’t matter at all because ideas, not “skin color” bind evolved, civilized people. Anyone can be an “American” by simply naturalizing.
America is also a deeply sick, unraveling society bound only by consumerism.
Must be a coincidence.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

I was in ElHi in the 60s and 70s. I learned to shoot a rifle in summer camp. Most of the boys I grew up with had BB guns, and many later joined our very mainstream high school’s gun club. School shootings were unimaginable. What’s different? Generations of people being fed non-stop nihilism through movies and entertainment, sure, but mostly the breakdown of the nuclear family, the near-nonexistent weekly participation at houses of worship, the fact that there are mass shootings in our cities every weekend that no one seems to care about, and now, glory can be achieved through a new kind of Soma: insidious, destructive, poisonous social media. Then of course, we have the worst people ever imagined in positions of power pumping these horrific incidents for all they’re worth, with a venal, fiendish media slobbering right behind them. What we used to know and accept as Society has been deliberately, calculatedly destroyed. Verne, Huxley, Orwell, Heinlein – so many, really – warned us. And all I read from people like this author is How did this happen. Who’s to blame? Anyone still asking those questions is an active hider from the answers.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

Hmm, the trouble with your theories are that every other country has those same changes, and yet has nothing like the shooting problems that the States has. Secondly, gun deaths overall, which outnumber mass shootings 500-to-1, have generally fallen in recent decades. Thirdly, the number of guns in the US has increased hugely since the 1960s, along with their lethality.
There is a clear, settled science answer to gun violence, and that is reducing guns. That America will not take this pace can only be because the deaths are felt to be an acceptable trade-off for the freedom of owning a death stick.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

As you yourself point out, violence had been on a steady downward slope since about 1990 until 2020. Yet the number of guns has more than tripled since 1990. Hence the correlation is: more guns => less violence. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. But ANTI-correlation certainly equals ANTI-causation, i.e. guns don’t cause violence.

Last edited 1 year ago by Terry M
Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Nope. Americans had more guns per household in 1990 (47%) than they do today (42%. It was 37% in 2019). Legal gun owners are not the problem. Gun violence is perpetrated by a vast majority of young men between the ages of 15 and 25 using stolen or unregistered street weapons smuggled in through our open boarders by drug cartels. And then you have the mentally ill loner everyone ignores until he loses it by unleashing his Ritalin-and-antidepressant-fueled rage on innocents. The most sensible course of action is to honestly examine that demographic and make the painful admissions about its plight, no matter how unwoke the findings.
But do please tell me all about this “settled science” you cite about fewer guns, less violence. The 20th Century has thoughts.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

The figures you cite are % of households owning a gun. The figure I cited was the overall number of guns – read Terry M’s post above – ‘the number of guns has tripled since 1990’.
Legal gun owners are not the problem.
Never said they were.
 using stolen or unregistered street weapons smuggled in through our open boarders by drug cartels
Wow, you really do lap up the wingnut talking points. The net flow of guns is massively USA to Mexico, not vice versa. Guns are very easily obtained in the US, little need to go to the dark market as you well know.
The USA is the world’s largest gun exporter, by far –
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267131/market-share-of-the-leadings-exporters-of-conventional-weapons/
Most guns used in mass shooting are legal –
https://www.statista.com/statistics/476461/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-legality-of-shooters-weapons/
But do please tell me all about this “settled science” you cite about fewer guns, less violence
As the relation between numbers-of-a-thing, and numbers-of-times-a-thing-is used is evidently mysterious to you, here some evidence:
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-gun-policy-global-comparisons
Not particularly surprising (one would hope), the number of guns in a country clearly proportionate to number of killings & crimes with gun. And before you go down the route of ‘you can kill someone with a knife etc’…. guns are more efficient at killing, that is why they exist, and if you need the proof, there are several studies that find homicides and suicides closely relate to ready access to means. Again, something I would have thought self-evident.
Aside from the clear direct relation between numbers of guns and numbers of gun crimes, the evidence is also clear, internationally, that gun violence goes down with effective regulation –
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26905895/
No-one is coming for your guns, the right to gun ownership is not under threat, the 2nd will not be repealed, it is well understood that guns are not ‘bad’ – they are inanimate objects used for good or bad by good or bad people. What I, at least, am saying is that 1) America has a gun problem, 2) polling reliably indicates that Americans would like more regulation, and 3) because of the perversions wrought by the NRA, paranoia, and a narcissistic-entitlement imbalance between rights and obligations, this is not going to happen. I am sure as hell going to call out the warped minds who, whatever they claim, are willing to see thousands die each year to preserve their excitement about easy access to killing machines,

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Very well put and decisive summery, thank you.

Marc Rougier
Marc Rougier
1 year ago

Do the young men in question have single mothers and absent fathers in common? I suspect they do.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Marc Rougier

I believe this kid’s mother was/is a drug addict. I was struck, after photos of him were revealed, the resemblance he bears to serial killer Richard Ramirez.

Granville Stout
Granville Stout
1 year ago

The country has been experiencing the largest crime surge in decades. Armed robberies are up. Shoplifting is up. Road deaths are up. Car break-ins are so common in some cities that people leave notes on their windows to the thieves that nothing is inside

And yet many want to defund the police.

 In the nation’s capital, more people under the age of 50 were gunned down than died from Covid.
Which actually brings to mind the insanity of government wanting to vaccinate people who were in little danger of dying from covid, yet had been convinced by the same government that they were. So when people see insane government, little surprise a few also act in an insane manner.

Antony Hirst
Antony Hirst
1 year ago

I don’t know why you are downvoted. I think this just shows how people are willing to throw themselves into the lap of dystopian cossetting.
The whole vaccine story is so utterly bizarre, but I am not sure one can pin the crime wave on that. I suspect, that when Governments overturn everything we believe in, then why believe in anything, especially when you are at the bottom of the pile?
Then we are telling kids they are going to die from climate change, nuclear war, viruses…what’s to live for? Coupled with the rising cost of everything, life must seem so utterly pointless to millions now, whereas before it did not.

Michael Coleman
Michael Coleman
1 year ago

After watching the mostly peaceful riots of 2020 and surge of urban violence since then, I feel confident that no meaningful gun control will pass this year.
Gun control advocates need to face up to legitimate concerns about both crime and authoritarian governments that lead many us to feel we need to own guns, before any meaningful laws can pass; the second concern is possibly insurmountable.
Nothing symbolizes the problem more than the McCloskeys – violent protestors threatened their home (like many others in 2020) and the authorities stood back and let it happen and latter arrested and tried the McClosKeys instead of those who destroyed property and threatened them.

Jason Highley
Jason Highley
1 year ago

I, for one, am not worried about what gun control debates and laws amount to, because it is all doomed to fail. The presence of guns is FAR from being the source of the problem. The violence is a manifestation of how sick we are as a people and human society.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
1 year ago
Reply to  Jason Highley

Jason, is the U.S. uniquely ‘sick’? Or is it unique in allowing sick people such easy access to powerful weapons?

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago

As someone who has lived in three continents, I can honestly say that the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are a lot more palpable in the US. The country is very divided. When talking to strangers you almost always automatically know their political leanings after a few sentences. As long as Americans believe that the other ‘side’ is evil, they will not give up their guns without a fight.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

“Can I have a pint please barman?”

“How old are you son?”

“I’m 18 years old!”

“Then no you can’t, but have this machine gun instead!”

Elizabeth dSJ
Elizabeth dSJ
1 year ago

Mass shootings were virtually nonexistent, despite American gun culture, until liberal social policy came into full force in the 1960’s, just as crime in general exploded — a pattern repeated again in the surge in homicides after BLM activism.
I can’t stomach a smug Israeli champion of mass immigration who dares blame the “indigenous American berserk.” If society is broken then the champions of multiculturalism and “liberation” can take a good hard look in the mirror

Last edited 1 year ago by Elizabeth dSJ
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Elizabeth dSJ

Let’s not ignore the very large elephant in the room. The 1960’s were also the time when God was relegated to the cultural back seat in order for the people to have “freedom”. God was then thrown into the trunk. Now God doesn’t even get to ride in the car.
When humans have no moral compass other than their own device, bad things tend to happen. Looks like the Bible was right all along. As it always does during these continuous cycles of history.

Philip LeBoit
Philip LeBoit
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Footnote: The 30 years war. God was there, and not in the cultural back seat! Which side was he on?

Kerry
Kerry
1 year ago
Reply to  Philip LeBoit

The innocents, as always.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
1 year ago
Reply to  Elizabeth dSJ

Bari Weiss is a Jewish American who has worked in Israel. She was born in Pittsburgh. I’ve seen no reference to her being Israeli. Or is that just code in order to smuggle in an antisemitic trope – ‘champion of mass immigration’.

Last edited 1 year ago by Judy Englander
harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Elizabeth dSJ

I have trouble stomaching Jew hate. And where can you find evidence of bari Weiss being a champion of mass immigration, other than in an overheated bigoted imagination?

Jim Davis
Jim Davis
1 year ago

For perspective, the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history occurred on on May 18, 1927, at the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan. That was 95 years ago. In total, 45 people were killed, among them 38 children. The perpetrator, Andrew Kehoe, did not use guns; he used dynamite and a post WWI explosive named pyrotol. He also killed his wife and himself. There have been many other school shootings over the past 50 years with high death counts. The story is not new, but due to the internet we all know about it immediately, and the frequency is increasing. Most of the time there were signals or indicators that a person might be planning something like this. But even when reported; the parents, teachers or authorities excused it, or let it go, until it was too late. In 2018, suicide was the second-leading cause of death among 10- to 24 year-olds. We have a generation of young people who have come to believe that killing themselves, or killing others and going out with a bang is a logical solution to their angst. How did that happen?

Last edited 1 year ago by Jim Davis
Esteban Marin
Esteban Marin
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Davis

cause? not the weapons. You notice, since the Internet appears, it is where these young people find patients just like them who advise them to kill others for bullying or revenge. It is the internet and social networks where the suicide asylum is, from the emails of 2004. Reasons? Make his insane message heard and take him seriously, make him become a martyr thanks to the internet.

Saul D
Saul D
1 year ago

Unfortunately it’s part of the culture. In America guns are a solution – supposedly they fix problems. And guns are also entertainment. Take a look at movies and TV – shooting people solves problems so there is lots and lots of shooting, and mostly only the bad guys get hurt. So if you have a problem, get a gun. A gun makes you the hero. The same message plays constantly. Bad things happening (even outside the US)? Send in the guns. No nudity allowed, but shooting at people, that’s fine.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

‘And the victims of the new crime wave fit no single profile.’ Most of them do, as do most of the perpetrators. The victims are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic youths and men between about 15 and 35 years old. There are plenty of crime stats confirming this. As for ‘community responsibility’, in the communities where these murders occur, community and parental responsibility have been absent for 3 generations.

Hank Brad
Hank Brad
1 year ago

The profiles of America’s mass shooters don’t fit into a straightforward political box. 

But the profiles of writers who bemoan those horrible ‘mass shooters’ are all blind (conspicuously aided by our self-blinded mass ‘news’ media) to a far greater gun problem.
The so-called ‘mass shooters’ slay a few dozen people a year, their exhibitionism lavishly rewarded by mass media coverage. But other shooters slay thousands every year in Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Baltimore, LA, while the media and its eager readers shrug at the peer-to-peer pistolizing which also reaps a significant harvest of innocent grannies, babies and the whole gamut of ‘unintended’ victims between.
So, bemoaning writers, instead of the simple knee-jerk reaction against standard sporting rifles, what’s your brilliant solution to the Wars of the Inner Cities?

David McDowell
David McDowell
1 year ago

What is Unherd about this? These opinions, worthy as they are, merely represent mainstream liberal opinion on the consequences of widespread forearms ownership. You could read very similar views on the pages of the NYT.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  David McDowell

The site expresses a range of views, some will be similar to those pushed by the majority, others will push against. I wouldn’t want the site to only publish contrarian articles just for the sake of being different

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

…Mmm…Unherd?…and thorough-going contrarians, like stopped clocks, are right twice day.

Sam McGowan
Sam McGowan
1 year ago

Every time something happens, the pundits use it as an excuse to rant. Look, the FBI determined years ago that there’s a common denominator in school shooters – they were the subject of bullying while in school. This is true of the young man who killed the kids at Uvalde, a town I am familiar with having been there numerous times. He had a speech impediment and had been bullied all his life. The kid who killed his classmates at Parkland was being bullied or picked on. The Sandy Hook shooter was bullied because he had Asbergers and was different. The two boys in Colorado years ago were picked on because they were different. A few years ago a student took a shotgun – not an “assault rifle” – and .38 pistol to school and killed several of his classmates at a school not far from me here in Texas. The media and law enforcement “experts” including the then police chief in Houston (who was later fired and has since been fired by another city) danced around it but haltingly revealed that one of the girls who died had publically insulted the shooter in class a few days before he killed her and several others. That young man has never been brought to trial due to psychiatric issues – he doesn’t recall the shooting.
Young men and occasionally a young woman who were bullied have been going berserk and killing people since the dawn of time. Yes, semi-automatic sporting rifles (there are no so-called assault rifles available for purchase in the US and only those with Federal permits may own them) can become a powerful weapon but so can a simple sedan or pickup truck in the hands of a berzerk person – or a person with a powerful motive.
At this point the world doesn’t know if the young man in Uvalde left any kind of note outlining his reasoning – yes, he made a couple of Facebook posts after he went on his rampage. It obviously wasn’t racial because he, along with all his victims, were Hispanic. Uvalde is in west South Texas which is populated largely by people whose ancestors came to Texas from Mexico. Whether he picked that school for a reason is not known either. All we really know is that he had been bullied from a young age. The media hasn’t said but it’s possible he was bullied right up until the day he decided to take matters into his own hands. He had worked at the local Wendy’s and was probably well known in the town. The parents of some of those kids who died may have bullied him – heck, even some of the kids may have seen him around town and shouted insults at him! Kids do things like that. We like to think of children as little angels which is sort of true up through about second grade but they become hellions around fourth grade, forming cliques and picking on people who don’t fit in. It happened when I was growing up and it’s been happening all along. None of the picked-on kids I knew went on rampages but one, in particular, came to a terrible end.
Yes, this shooting and all shootings are terrible tragedies but the real problem is not access to guns, it’s that adults allow children to bully and are bullies themselves. If you want to prevent tragedies such as this, then hold the parents and teachers of those who bully responsible. Their children may be creating monsters.

Tim Keene
Tim Keene
1 year ago

The seven cities cited by Bari Weiss as having record homicide rates all appear to be Democrat cities. Is this just a consequence of cities being where homicides take place and also where the Democrats are in power? Anyway, it is clear that it is a national problem and not just one of the pro gun areas.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Tim Keene

Clearly the Dems were more sympathetic to ‘defund the police’ and cities where this was entertained seriously have experience the worst increases in crime.
However, city centers where most homicides occur also are inhabited by people who are poor, have high percentge out-of-wedlock births, higher unemployment, failing schools (run by the teachers’ unions), drug culture, and single mothers. Even if someone wants to lift themselves up out of the mess they have many hurdles, including the anti-education, anti-personal responsibility, anti-work ethic culture around them to overcome.
The ones who rise up are heroes. Those who ‘enforce’ the sick culture are a major part of the problem.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

Most first world countries have run down inner cities of poor people and broken families, yet only America has the level of gun violence it does

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

America has a ‘war on drugs’ and extensive drug gangs. Those are the primary source of gun battles. Our MSM also keeps telling minorities they are being ‘hunted by police’, adding fuel to the fire of violence.

Walter Herbst
Walter Herbst
1 year ago

Billy Bob, I truly wonder if you understand who the NRA are. You were suggesting that we should be liable clarifies for me that you have no idea.
I am NRA. I am 85 years old, I am an esteemed professor, I am a PhD, I am a father a husband and a grandfather. I am one of 330 million Americans and recognize a very small minority are seriously ill. Suggesting that I and or any of my fellow NRA members should take responsibility for those that desperately need mental health is absurd

Hank Brad
Hank Brad
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Herbst

I am NRA, though a mere 82 years old. My mother taught me to shoot, and I’ve never beaten her at rifle shooting, though the Army pinned an Expert badge on me. My high school had a rifle team – and no mass shootings whatever.
Those who howl against NRA are barking up the wrong tree. It’s not the shootin’ iron that wastes humanity, it’s the attitude of the shootist. Both the barbarian tribalism of the pistoleros, and the knowing thirst of the exhibitionist for a blaze of publicity, create a lot of bodies – and NRA is stoutly against both.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Hank Brad

Take the automatic weapons away and the attitude of the shootist becomes largely irrelevant, as they simply wouldn’t be able to inflict the same amount of damage

Hank Brad
Hank Brad
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Take the automatic weapons away
In a locked classroom with steel doors? A bolt-action varmint rifle would have been no different – no one could enter, no one could leave.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Herbst

It’s the NRA being the public face of those who routinely argue against any form of gun control such as licensing, therefore why not make them out their money (literally) where their mouth is and make their members guard the nations schools?
If their members want a heavily armed society free of any gun controls, against the wishes of a majority of the overall population, why not give them the responsibility to ensure those rights aren’t abused?

Tim C
Tim C
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Well they might have, you know, other jobs?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Tim C

Then they can pay for private security. My overarching point was that the NRA believe that an armed society is peaceful, and the way to prevent school shootings is to have armed “good guys” on the premises. Therefore maybe they could put their hand in their pocket and pay for it, to either prove or disprove their theory

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I don’t think you understand why folks support the NRA. If you think a country would be more peaceful if they just traded their liberty to the tender mercies of a government who promises security — I can only say, look around. Oh, and bless you, my child, you’re too innocent to live.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
1 year ago
Reply to  E. L. Herndon

Then why is this such an American problem?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  E. L. Herndon

Look around to where? Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe? Almost all prohibit and licence firearms, and all are much safer than the US

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Yes when the Aussies were being beaten by the police for breaking quarantine I’m sure many were regretting giving them up. Trudeau froze bank accounts of his own citizens. Safe is a relative term.

Edward Peitler
Edward Peitler
1 year ago

I refuse to listen to any punditry about gun violence in the USA until EVERY depiction of guns and violence is scrubbed from EVERY movie, TV program and video game that Hollywood and our Tech Masters produce.

It’s easy to be shocked and outraged by gun violence but difficult to enact the greatest promoter of gun violence – media extolling violence of all sorts. The shocked and outraged are phonies.

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago
Reply to  Edward Peitler

Casting my mind back several decades gun fights were shown in a lot more detail. Most modern mainstream films typically show people jerking a little and falling over, with no blood. Even hospital dramas/documentaries rarely show blood. Perhaps people are unaware of reality?

Deborah Bromley
Deborah Bromley
1 year ago
Reply to  Edward Peitler

Exactly. What would be humorous, if it wasn’t so tragic, is that in movies, the hero only attempts to solve the problem by shooting it. Aliens? Shoot ’em. Meteorite? Blast it. Dinosaur escaped? Get the big guns out. Existential threat to humanity? Where are my weapons? All of it accompanied by incessant shouting. In action movies nobody ever does the thing that humans can do well. Think and reason and work things out.
But one point not mentioned so far, the role of drugs in mass shootings. With the enthusiastic legalisation of cannabis spreading like a rampaging lunatic across the US, surely mass violence will grow. If you’re intending to slaughter your fellow human beings, having your mind scrambled by drugs is a prerequisite. Both to fuel psychopathy in the first place and to numb the perpetrator in the act.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago

Sure, it’s laughing, dopey, sleepy stoners who are killing people! Haha!
Better access to marijuana would more likely calm down the lunatics.

Jeffrey Butcher
Jeffrey Butcher
1 year ago
Reply to  Edward Peitler

So you would ban movies with gun violence in them? That’s a lot of good films down the pan!

B Davis
B Davis
1 year ago

What we witnessed in Texas was horrific, a tragedy we can only dimly comprehend.
But it is critical that, beyond the terror, beyond the anger and frustration we try to understand exactly what it is we’re seeing, and more, what it is we’re trying to solve or prevent in the subsequent whirlwind of political voguing and impassioned speeches performed now upon the graves of the innocent.
“We have to act!” We all feel that same urgency. But act to do what? when? how? and at what cost?
We say we want to prevent mass shootings. A noble goal. But even if we could somehow eliminate that particular ‘beast’ (an event in which 4 or more people are killed) that change would only reduce the murder count by a bare .3%. We’d still find (at least back in 2021) 22K bodies piled by the side of the national ‘road’, killed in non-mass-shootings (‘ordinary’ murder).
Or we say we want to prevent the killing of innocent children in schools. No one could possibly disagree with that. But we need to recognize that of the estimated 1644 total incidents over the last 30 years in which a gun was discharged on campus …only about 145 (5/year) involve “active shooters” (incidents of continuous violence…the kind of thing we just witnessed in Uvalde). The rest were so-called ‘common’ homicides, acts of vengeance, anger, fear, greed. We’d also need to understand that of the 574 individuals killed in those school shootings over the last 30 years, 43% of those murders have been committed by fellow students (who have access) …and 67% of the incidents occurred OUTSIDE the ‘fortified’ (?) school building. ‘Prevention’, when seen through such lenses, becomes infinitely more complex than metal detectors and hardened entryways.
And as wonderful as it would be to somehow prevent those 574 deaths, again, that still leaves us with 552K other killings across those 30 years that had nothing to do with either school shootings or mass murder.
So to weaponry…and the question of how we keep guns, any gun, out of the hands of the 20K who have used them to kill people in any given year. And then we recognize that there are an estimated 400M guns in the United States…only 20,000 of which are used annually to commit murder. That means that in any given year 99.995% of all those guns are NOT being criminally used. So we talk about more background checks and red flag laws, and magazine limits etc…..which will accomplish what?
Will they catch and prevent the ‘Adam Lanza’s’ and ‘Salvador Ramos’s’ of the world? Maybe. There is a possibility. There is also a possibility that if they couldn’t get one gun out of the 400M, they’d find another. And if you put a homicidal sociopath in a classroom full of victims for an hour while the police wait outside for SWAT….even a small magazine and a handgun will be enough for a mini-Holocaust.
But the real question is — the seemingly impossible question: how do we stop making monsters? How do we stop whatever it is we are doing, as a society & culture, to turn young men into amoral beasts who would walk into a room and annihilate innocent, young children? How does such an evil act become a ‘solution’ in their twisted minds for anything, ever?
How can we find 145 ‘active shooting’ incidents in schools over the last 30 years….when 50-60-70 years ago….when generations ago these horrific things simply did not happen?
More importantly, as we consider the 22K dead in the here & now, NOT murdered in mass shootings or in school classrooms, but killed ‘simply’ as a common act of inhuman brutality (half of which committed by 4% of the population)…how do we stop that? How do we short-circuit the urge to end another’s life simply because….what?….they’re inconvenient? How do we convince the next 18 yr. old thug that human beings are not simply means to an end, whatever that end might be?
And even then we must also remember that as terrible as that body count is, as horrible as the U.S. murder rate of 6.3/100K….it is still just 59th on the list. South Africa’s rate is 33.5/100K….Mexico 28.4….Puerto Rico 18.5. Where is our heart that such carnage is commonplace?

leculdesac suburbia
leculdesac suburbia
1 year ago

One pragmatic, bipartisan step forward would get states that agree to create a trial gun training, graded licensing, and insurance program (similar to what we have to own and drive a car!) mandatory for any 18, 19, or 20 year old (18-21) who wants to purchase a gun. It’s a start.
The gun manufacturers could be subtly nudged into funding this, and the NRA could try to redeem its reputation, by promoting the idea of responsible gun ownership and even making competitions and such (as engendered by training and various “award” levels) popular among young adults who wish to legally own a gun. The idea would be that at least we’d begin a generation of American legal gun-owning adults who were a lot better trained–which in an age of more crime isn’t necessarily a bad thing–and try to popularize the image of police-level trained gun ownership. It’d at least stop teenagers from legally purchasing guns. It’d get Americans used to the idea of treating the gun industry a little more like cars, FFS.
I know this does nothing to get illegal guns out of the hands of gang members, but it could put more barriers up for the lone-wolf incel-type teens who’ve been raised by violent video games, porn, and negligent parents.

Phil Farthing
Phil Farthing
1 year ago

Do you drive? Have you looked at the number of automobile deaths per year? No way I want people to treat guns like they do when they’re behind the wheel.
Also, the entire insurance industry is a broken system. The cost for gun owners would be on par with the cost of medical insurance, which in the USA is itself a crime, where all us healthy people are robbed to pay for the minority of sick people who can’t be bothered to take care of themselves.
But as for training. That’s not a bad idea. How about we train people who are not pro-gun to not freak out when the see somebody carrying? Perhaps we can train cops to not treat law abiding citizens who carry like criminals? Maybe we can train the citizenry at large to understand that “defending” yourself with a gun is not a crime and that there’s no such thing as an assault rifle either? Good luck with that.
It’s not just the people with guns that could use some training and fwiw, most people who own a firearm go to a shooting range regularly and are well versed in gun safety. In fact, to carry a concealed weapon in public, you have to go to a class, pass a test for knowledge of the law and safety practices, and pay for it out of your own pocket. The people who do that are not part of the problem. They’re part of the solution.

Last edited 1 year ago by Phil Farthing
Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz
1 year ago

Ms. Weiss is clearly angry and frustrated and she wants answers. She is not alone. As a Canadian I can state that the gun violence issue is big here as well mostly because our criminal element that is responsible for most of the gun crime has easy access to the largest supply of weapons on the planet right next door. Predictably, whenever we have a mass shooting or the gangs have a busy weekend our politicians call for a hand-gun ban, knowing that hand-guns are already very difficult to obtain legally.
There are many variations of the quote “This that would trade Liberty for Security will end up with neither”. This is actually true and we can see examples in most Western countries where the population has failed to heed it. The one holdout is actually the US where freedom and liberty are still highly valued. It is one of the reasons many migrants plug the USA into their GPS. Other countries might be safer but no country is freer.
Horrendous and heartbreaking crimes like the Texas shooting appear to make increased gun control a “no brainer” but law-abiding gunowners don’t trust those that propose trading a little liberty for safety. They see it as Step One in the move to surrender more liberties. Anti-gun activists haven’t helped.
IMO, Gun violence is partly the manifestation of the real problem which has been decades in the making: the failure of American leaders to respect all Americans. Widespread dissatisfaction with partisan gridlock in Washington lead directly to the election of the eminently unqualified Trump (very similar to the dissatisfaction that created Brexit) The message was clear. “We’re not happy” but Washington’s response? “The voters screwed up, but we’ll fix that”.
I just finished Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile” about Churchill and the dark days of the Blitz. The admiration for Churchill from friends and foes wasn’t that he knew exactly what to do and made all the right calls, but that he was honest (generally) when addressing parliament and that he could readily acknowledge that Britain was in a tough spot and that there had been failures but then dispel the gloom with a message of confidence that Britons and Britain would persevere and win.
What leader these days inspires such confidence? Where was the “all for one” attitude during the pandemic? IMO, the shaming, divisiveness and callous disenfranchisement of the “wrong” groups and individuals has done much to escalate the anger and resentment that leads directly to the levels of violence we’re seeing. The failure of politicians and the media institutions that should be holding them to account needs to be addressed before gun control.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Lantz

A confused and confusing post, IMO.
Other countries might be safer but no country is freer.
There are several indices of freedom, reporting for over decades, with emphases on various freedoms – in none is the US placed top, most not even in the top 10.
Horrendous and heartbreaking crimes like the Texas shooting appear to make increased gun control a “no brainer” but law-abiding gunowners don’t trust those that propose trading a little liberty for safety.
US mass shootings are just one thing that suggest increased gun control is a no brainer, alongside just about every study on the matter, every other countries’ experiences, common sense, and the constitution (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). Gunowners’ feelings of trust is hardly a measure of what is right. Moreover, you are wrong, most gunowners do want more regulation.
Anti-gun activists haven’t helped.
Err, are you saying anti-gun activists should not express themselves because their anti-gun activism is not helping to reduce guns – because gun owners are so fundamentalist, and paranoid that they interpret any anti-gun expression as the great unravelling of their rights and will double-down and buy more guns? Talk about shooting the messenger….
The failure of politicians and the media institutions that should be holding them to account needs to be addressed before gun control.
If you want to reduce chicken numbers, reducing chickens or egg numbers will prove helpful.

Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

IMO, American gun-owners are very nervous about their 2nd amendment rights. It is a right unique to the US. Since it would be impossible to get rid of all guns (the US has more guns than people) how far should regulations go? Illinois has stricter gun laws than Texas yet 32 people were shot in Chicago last weekend.
It’s the mass shootings that spur the calls to action because of the scale of grief in a single incident and the victims are often innocent targets but planned events like these are mostly carried out with legally purchased weapons by people with no criminal records. IMO the issue has more to do with what drives a person so low that they think a mass shooting is their only option for whatever they’re seeking. How can we arrange it so THAT person doesn’t get a gun? I just don’t think gun control can fix that. As Gov. Abbot said,18 yr olds have been able to buy guns for 60 years so something besides access to guns has changed.
It will require a major feat of leadership to arrange serious dialogue about this issue and so far I haven’t seen anyone up to the task.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Lantz

I’ve lived in numerous countries with very strict gun laws, and I’d argue I had much more security in those unarmed societies than the average American going about their daily lives

Phil Farthing
Phil Farthing
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

American here. The irony to your statement is that “average Americans going about their daily lives” have little worry about their safety. I sure don’t nor does anyone I know or have known my entire life. Never comes ups.
Unless of course, if one happens to live in one of those areas with “very strict gun laws”, which perhaps not so ironically, also happen to have the highest crime rates and most gun related homicides. But I don’t live there, because, well, why the hell would I?
The difference in other countries isn’t the strict laws. That is merely correlation at best, and a perceptual bias at worst. And most other countries are either small monocultures, are very sparsely populated, or their governments leave a lot to be desired.
Few have widespread and rampant criminal cultures that exist in the USA as well. There just isn’t any other country that is comparable to the USA in terms of population, land mass, cultural diversity, bloody history, or degree of personal freedom.
As far as laws, remember, laws are meant to punish criminals, not stop them. Cops are there to enforce the law, not protect people. No matter the disposition of the officer, no matter slogan on the side of the vehicles that may sate otherwise, as Uvalde clearly showed. Cops and laws come into play after laws are broken, not before.
You might also notice that these tragic incidents only happen in places where the people have no means to defend themselves.
If access to guns were really the problem, then we should be seeing 100x more death than we do, but we don’t. The number of guns and the relative ease of access should prove that out, but it doesn’t.
The anti-gun agenda is the exact same sort of fascism as the zero-case covid agenda. We’ve seen full well how these safe and unarmed societies have been treated during the pandemic. Their governments were tyrannical and the treatment of the citizenry and respect for their rights was abysmal. More lives were destroyed than saved …and the virus ran its course anyway, just like the real experts said it would.
To paraphrase Jefferson, the tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That’s the USA. We are not Europe or Australia or Russia or China and looking at those countries, we have good reason not to put our faith in government to either protect or care for us. The millions of people who risk their lives every year and give up everything they own to come to the USA to live would go to those other countries if they were better. They’re not.
The fact is, liberals would prefer to keep pushing their anti-gun rhetoric than to just do some very simple things to keep kids safe. They’re sensibilities are far more important to them than saving lives. They shamefully stand on the graves of kids and have the gall to point fingers at law abiding citizens. They refuse to acknowledge how many people’s lives are saved every day simply because they were armed and able to defend themselves.
Tell you what. When all the criminals are locked up, when all the mentally unstable people are getting the care and attention they need, when cops have given up their own guns, when wealthy elites and our beloved representatives no longer feel it necessary to hire armed guards, when the only guns are in the hands of law abiding citizens, then we can talk about the number and availability of guns in the USA. But by then, there’s not going to be a lot to talk about will there?

Last edited 1 year ago by Phil Farthing
Bill Masen
Bill Masen
1 year ago

Nerd v Jock
Boss V Worker
Male V Female
Young V Old
Rich V Poor V Middle class
North V South
Republican V Democrat
Capitalist V Socialist
Religious V Atheist
Straight V LGBTX etc
Team Player V Loner
Black V White V Hispanic V Asian
Federalist V Localist
Pro 2A V Anti 2A

Most societies the differences and disagreements are settled by debate, discussion and education.
In America they are settled with gunfire. 227 mass shootings so far this year, 27 in Schools. And they STILL dont see anything wrong.

Walter Herbst
Walter Herbst
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Masen

Apparently you understand more than the rest of us as to some massive disagreement that this shooter had. You should either please enlighten the rest of us and or recognize the severity of mental illness

Bill Masen
Bill Masen
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Herbst

Mental illness, a good example of being mentally ill is a society that allows 18 year olds to buy AR15s on their 18th birthday, but stops they from buying booze til 21.
Letting Americans have guns is like letting babies play with razorblades, with the same end result.

Last edited 1 year ago by Bill Masen
Phil Farthing
Phil Farthing
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Masen

Letting Americans have guns is like letting babies play with razorblades, with the same end result.”
Could you possibly be more condescending? Doubt it.

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Masen

Do you live here? Because you don’t seem to know much about us.

Jairus OMalley
Jairus OMalley
1 year ago

I have liked some of Bari’s other articles… This one is nothing more than a witless, thoughtless and asinine hot-take pile of drivel that diminishes the horror and cruelty of what occurred.
Your sister told the kids in her class they were doing a good job in an active shooter drill when they were brandishing clearly absurd things instead of practicing hiding? WHAT THE HELL. She should be fired if this is even a real story. I’m sort of incredulous since my kids (currently in elementary school) have never participated in a drill like this. Then you’re going to act like this is a real thing and ask if the Uvalde kids had time to arm themselves with obviously absurd things like a jar of peanut butter? C’mon. That’s just amazingly heartless and insulting.
The various statistics used throughout the article are all questionable. There’s no nuance or breakdown to any of them. ‘212th mass shooting of the year’ – Does this only include lunatic rampages or does this also include gang-related shootouts? That makes an enormous difference in any actual discussion of gun control. ’27th school shooting’ – Are these all mass shootings or does this include one on one shootings? ‘In the nation’s capital more people under the age of 50 were gunned down than died from COVID.’ – Are we talking about before or after the vaccine became widely available? If you’re talking about after the vaccine became widely available this is basically irrelevant. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
She points out that crime has been rising rapidly since 2020 and then completely ignores the blaringly obvious correlation between ‘defund the police’ and the crime surge. I would like to add that the simple fact that the defund the police movement was a real thing makes it significantly more difficult to pass any sort of common-sense gun control reform in the near future. This is the sort of bone-headed political stuff the NRA and other gun lobby types use to raise massive amounts of funding that is used to block responsible gun control. ‘You don’t need guns, just call the police. Oh yeah, lets defund the police.’
I have to say that I agree whole-heartedly with the second to last paragraph. The social rot, nihilism and hatred of each other is destroying the fabric of this country and contributing to events like these. The rest of the article is just crap though.

Phil Farthing
Phil Farthing
1 year ago
Reply to  Jairus OMalley

That social rot is clearly coming from the Left. Don’t see Conservatives tearing down statues or burning buildings or banning on about how the USA is an awful racist pile of garbage that should have never existed.

William Fulton
William Fulton
1 year ago

Isolated, lonely disturbed teenage males. Excessive screen time on video games / with other isolated disturbed teenage males who have self selected into a group of evil, disturbed kids who glorify violence and obsess with death and revenge.
This phenomena coincides with the rise of the internet, and perhaps with Covid isolation, but the latter is too soon to confirm.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

Let’s face it, if guns were leading cause of death amongst a nations children anywhere else on earth that countries governments would restrict their sale and use.
Americans however value a line written on a document over two centuries ago after a revolutionary war more than they do the lives of their own children so it’s up to them.
They will continue to buy their machine guns, their kids will continue to be brutally slaughtered and the rest of the world will continue to look down on them in disgust.

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You clearly have an axe to grind, but please stick to facts. I believe suicide is the leading cause of death among minor Americans, far outstripping “Covid” and gun violence, and of the gun violence a great deal of that is minor on minor. Perhaps if the shooter-du-jour had not had an addicted mother, he wouldn’t have gone so bad. Perhaps if the border were controlled, and immigration law strictly enforced, the government wouldn’t be enabling the narco oligarchy in other countries that profit off American social breakdown…why not be equally concerned about those rules, those lives?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  E. L. Herndon

If suicide by gunshot is indeed the leading cause of death amongst minors, then wouldn’t making it harder for youngsters to get their hands on the weapons be a good thing? As has been mentioned, when you UK switched its gas supply suicides dropped as it became harder to do the deed than simply sticking your head in the oven, I’d wager the same result would be evident in the States if they had similar gun laws to many other first world countries.
You’re also correct that being born to a drug addict would be a factor, however unfortunately many people are brought up by les than suitable parents the world over, and in no other country but America do they on a mass killing spree. Again, you’ll always have damaged individuals, so having easy access to powerful weapons is a recipe for disaster. More should undoubtedly be done to help these people, though Americans seem to be much more anti that type of thing than most other countries (the free healthcare debate being a typical example), but there will always be some who slip through the cracks

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I did not say “by gunshot”. And there is no “free” anything. Anywhere.

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
1 year ago

Up until the 1970s, many American high schools had shooting clubs, some of them met and practiced on campus. When I was in high school in the 80s (albeit in a rural school district) it was not illegal or even strange for a student to have a shotgun in his trunk. During deer season, some kids would go straight to the woods after school. There were exactly zero firearm incidents in my hometown growing up. Every kid from my generation who has ever hunted or target shot can tell you about the long lecture that preceded him ever touching a gun. And the hours of practice, the repetition of the rules of respect and safety that preceded ever being trusted to handle one unsupervised. That’s the way it used to be. Things have changed. Horribly. In response, we have no choice but to change our relationship with guns and the laws that regulate access to them.

Barack Obama Tweeted this in response to the Texas massacre:
Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies. It’s long past time for action, any kind of action.

So, if I’m following his logic, the fault for the shooting in Uvalde lies with a giant straw man (The Gun Lobby) and all those non-Democrats. Right. Those are the words of a man quite assuredly NOT in desperate pursuit of a solution. Rather, they are the words of a demagogue who would exploit the suffering of others for modest political gain. Again. Seems to me we are nearly as numb to the craven politicization of mass shootings – and the policy stalemate that represents – as we are to the carnage.

Last edited 1 year ago by Sisyphus Jones
Dustshoe Richinrut
Dustshoe Richinrut
1 year ago

“They watched beheadings”, “not so long ago.”

And they, people, have watched beheadings of late, on tiny screens, alone or among one or two sidekicks. No groans of horror will have sounded to their little ears from the back of some medieval crowd.
I recall listening to a radio programme two or three years ago when, at the start of the hour, a lady, by phone, was reminiscing about rushing home to watch The Muppet Show with her father when she was a child. Near the end of the hour, a different interview was with a psychologist who related of reports, if I heard my ears correctly, of an incident or two, or three, in which the very young at school, gathering round someone’s mobile phone at the back of the class, watched beheading videos (when they were in the news seven or so years ago).
Any lingering endearing memories of my own of having watched The Muppet Show forty years ago, needless to say, instantly evaporated: as anything nice does when one must today confront the grim countenances galore of today’s film stars and TV show actors staring down at you from billboards and bus shelter adverts. There’s not a smile in the house these days! Roll up, roll up! See the latest … instalment! It’s as if the West carries so many sins that the hero actors, and members of the … entertainments industry more generally, are carrying the weight of the nation for everybody and we should all be thankful. But really grim is the latest chic. How suitable it feels in the new normal! And shame on you all if any of you don’t also look guilty!
Oh people get sustenance by flocking to their own kind of folk, to laugh and joke. “I haven’t seen that one yet.” “I binge-watched it over the weekend.” How does this doom and gloom, when it drips down through the layers of society, affect the very ordinary and the supposedly very mediocre? In this screen-obsessed age? When the video games industry is possibly way bigger than either the film or music industry? When the imagery of violence is everywhere these days? When even the big, wallowing-in-it corporations simply don’t do cheer? Just take a look at the billboards. They are nauseatingly miserable.

If the imagery of grim and violence that I talk of is a load of baloney and irrelevant to America going “berserk” and “numb”, well then it’s plainly ridiculous that teenage American boys/men can buy guns like ice cream.

The headline and the sub header are paradoxical. How can America be both frenzied (berserk) and withdrawn (numb) at the same time?

Edward
Edward
1 year ago

@Dustshoe. “men can buy guns like ice cream”. I recall passing a small shop in Sonoma, CA, a few years ago, that had a sign outside proclaiming just that: it sold ammo and ice cream.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

Even worse than the current miserablist trend is the false smile. As a Brit, growing up watching both home-made (UK) tv and US-made tv, it struck me how impossibly perfect the people appearing in the US programmes were trying to be: perfect teeth, perfect make-up, perfect dialogue – NO!!! False, False, False!
What this leads to in terms of cultural dissonance between that mindset and those unable to live up to those (not) ideals is anyone’s guess, but in my opinion its a kind of metaphor for what is wrong with the US – basing life on blatant falsehood as an ideal.
That’s not to say the UK doesn’t have its own idiosyncratic falsehoods (not least the class system), but if you add the easy access to retribution over those who you feel have slighted you (whether rightly or wrongly), you have the perfect storm. Now, didn’t someone make a film about that?!

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago

I agree with the comments that find the article disappointing. It is just another symptom of the view that it’s “about how people grow accustomed to horrific things”. We’ve had our 15 minutes of horror, now we can ‘move on’.
I have read many times about how awful mass shootings are. I have read few serious articles about how to reduce the number – either they are not widely published or they don’t assuage the kneejerk response. Even those few concentrate on a few actions without explaining how we get there from here.
The gun ownership problems in the USA will not be solved until enough people want them to be resolved. The USA is starting from a poor place and it will take years, decades probably, to reverse the problems.
Better to start with a few baby steps now than try for a comprehensive solution which will never make a start.

John Teasley
John Teasley
1 year ago

“But the most devastating rise has been in murders. Since the FBI started tracking the data, 2020 marked the highest single-year increase in homicides. In 2021, it went up again.”
When you install a man with a mental disorder as the head of Health and Human Services, expect a spike in people with mental disorder acting them out. That guy is probably the most dangerous man in America. 

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  John Teasley

Let’s go Brandon!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

After Sandy Hook I lost hope that America would ever solve most anything ever again. If murdering a classroom of seven year olds doesn’t bring the adults together for a solution, nothing will. Every problem in the USA is merely an opportunity to maintain or gain power. There is no humanity anymore. Maybe it is time to talk reparations. Gun manufacturers should be forced to pay reparations to victims of gun crime in America. Won’t be much money left to make guns anymore but at least you didn’t have to get to the actual root of the problem.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Make the NRA responsible for security for every state school in the land, and personally liable for any events that happen there.

Jim Davis
Jim Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Under the U.S. Constitution, one of the responsibilities of government is protection of citizens from threats foreign and domestic; but there is no liability for failure to do so. While the NRA and any number of private security firms would provide better protection and response that what just happened in Uvalde, Texas, there would be no incentive to do so if liability was attached. We know exactly how many people were killed in the Uvalde attack. But we do not know how many would have been saved had law enforcement, onsite two minutes after the shooter entered the school, had not waited over an hour to breach the classroom door. There have been no school shootings in Israel since 1974. In Israel, licensed commercial security firms, reporting to police, guard the schools. Contrary to popular reports teachers are not armed. Police and other security forces check schools regularly.

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
1 year ago

The Second Amendment states that the purpose of gun ownership by the citizenry is the creation of an orderly militia. Perhaps understandable in a vast frontier country with hostile indigenous tribes and widespread banditry. However, gun enthusiasts seem to believe they need guns to protect themselves from their own federal government, which they see as a permanent existential threat. The language is usually “why shouldn’t I have a gun to defend myself?” This seems to imagine the USA as a Wild West world of gun slinging shootouts. None of this bears any relationship with the terminology of the Second Amendment. The rest of the world cannot understand how intelligent civilised Americans can think that arming the entire population with lethal weapons is a good idea.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

It really is dealing with an alternative reality. It’s like speaking a foreign language to Americans when you tell them access to guns is a problem. The problem is much more complex than this, but there is no peeling the Weston out of their hands regardless. America needs to remake itself but will only be able to once every single person steps out of their tribal echo chamber and realizes how they are all propping up a very broken system. It’s not the Right, it’s not the Left it is the entire system that only rewards power and that is it.

John Oakes
John Oakes
1 year ago

Please God, save my sanity. I have just heard it again , on television, this deeply evil mantra which the American nation has swallowed whole from the National Rifle Association -“Guns don’t kill people.” If a whole nation truly is so stupid that it refuses to see the verbal trick which is being played here on simple -and , it would seem , -not-so-simple minds as well, then they will continue to see their children shot down before them. The slogan should be declared illegal, because so many idiots obviously believe it.

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Reply to  John Oakes

Well, automobiles rarely kill people, unless there is a driver involved. The tool is not responsible for the use to which it’s put. What did Cain use, a rock? Human nature will always find a way.

ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago
Reply to  E. L. Herndon

Wasn’t it a spoon in ‘ Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.’?

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

The process underlying this dysfunction is the same one underlying other American dysfunctions – narcissism. I do whatever I want to do – no shame, do what thou wilt

Philip Israel Witriol
Philip Israel Witriol
1 year ago

You write why a white 18-year-old carried out the Buffalo massacre. Do you also know why the Chinese man, or the young black man, or the Hispanic man carried out their massacres?

Valerie Taplin
Valerie Taplin
1 year ago

There seems to be so much more anger and brooding resentment today than 50 or so years ago. So many people “on the edge”, exploding into violent rage, often for trivial reasons. Why? What could be the causes? I don’t think anyone really knows, but a few things spring to mind – Constant screen based input reminding one of what one hasn’t got – whether it’s consumables, loving relationships, hope, respect, stability…the possibilities are endless. Dissatisfaction with what is, and frustration that no better future lies ahead. Disappointment with a life that apparently has no meaning or value. All so sad. What can be done about it?

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

I’m glad guns ain’t available in the U.K. I’m sure I would have resorted to one in a fit of berserk rage at some point in my life.
Instead I’ve had to use verbals when in a spat, with much better outcomes.

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Stewart
Thomas Hutcheson
Thomas Hutcheson
1 year ago

Yes, but raising the age for purchasing a firearm to 21, universal background checks and a ban on high capacity weapons ought not be too big an inconvenience to most prospective and actual gun owners to save a few lives of innocent people. Of course the same logic applies to getting vaccinated but we have allowed partisan politics to get in the was of common sense.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago

We shall debate about guns endlessly because it covers over the people who are responsible. The rise of relative morality since the 60’s, the increases in drug use both street and scripts all add up to people who lack empathy. The past is full of guns yet mass shootings were rare. Ask yourself what has changed?

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

I could have found this piece in The Grauniad or any other mainstream rag. It’s hardly worth subscribing for.

Mike Chiropolos
Mike Chiropolos
1 year ago

Look to the so-called “wild west”. Cattle towns like Abilene, Deadwood and Dodge City were notoriously dangerous in the 1870s. Street shootings endangered innocent bystanders as well as the combatants.
As families, women and children moved in, citizens hired law officers who enforced gun control measures in town. Outsiders checked their weapons with the law while they were in town; locals looked to the law from protection. It worked then and it will work today.
We solve this by applying tried and true approaches across society. Speed limits and other road safety laws make us safer. When we realize that, we buy in. Same goes.

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago

Unfortunately, in the current USA, the law is not going to protect you in time: from “mostly peaceful” rioters of the Summer of Floyd, to the home break-ins, the subway assaults etc. Those who break big laws intentionally are not going to be deterred by bureaucratic laws around gun ownership. As far as the presence of guns in society, the horse is out of the barn. And of course, humankind was nonviolent before the inventions of firearms…

M. Jamieson
M. Jamieson
1 year ago

Weiss is probably right that for Americans, there has been a frog in the pot effect with regards to violence in society. Whether that is from crime or these kinds of mass shooting scenarios, people are no longer shocked in the same way. It’s very different than, say, the description Thomas Sewell gives of walking his dog as a child in Harlem, or people sleeping out on hot nights on fire escapes or in the park, where children typically walked themselves blocks to school, and certainly didn’t have cops protecting the schools.
Part of the problem now is that when a suicidal, usually young, male feels that he has been wronged in some way by society and wants to make a statement, the course of action that pops into his head is to get a gun and go out in a blaze of glory. Whether the victims are school kids, members of a church congregation, the family of his ex, or whatever serves as a stand-in for the cause of his social isolation and feelings of meaningless.
It’s become a cultural trope, largely due to its politicization and media coverage over the last decades. I’m afraid that even with the implementation of more strict gun laes, even well thought out ones, that would not change. A mass shooting with a hunting rifle or shotgun might be a little less deadly and it might be a bit more effort to get hold of for a few, but that won’t make the idea go away not that it’s been established.

Last edited 1 year ago by M. Jamieson
Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago

The veer toward secular values in place of the Judeo-Christian ones to satisfy the atheists and agnostics and “free thinkers” among us has played a huge role in the accumulating rot.

Phil Rees
Phil Rees
1 year ago

Replying to Billy Bob, Fine in theory, but what will you do when you find the number qualifying for those ‘heavy punishments’ in 5 number millions? I suspect they will.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Phil Rees

Then many Americans would find themselves having to pay heavy fines, and the police would have taken million of lethal firearms off the streets

Peter Mateja
Peter Mateja
1 year ago

This message board is full of the same things that all other message boards on this issue contain… lots of finger pointing by folks on either side of the debate, but simply no rational ideas for solving the problem.
Progressives call for more gun regulation, either in the form of making it harder to acquire a gun or restricting what types of guns can be bought. They also call for more mental health support. But, they ignore the problems pointed out by conservatives wrt illegal weapons. They also ignore the elephant in the room, which is that for background checks and mental health screenings to be really effective, we’d have to essentially have a loss of privacy that most progressives would likely balk at.
Conservatives blame the MSM for amplifying shootings. But, what came first, the chicken or the egg. And, last I checked, conservative media has also covered these shootings. They also blame a loss of faith in God, as if somehow there was a mythical time in the past in which God fearing Americans didn’t engage in violence. This also ignores the even higher rates of secularism in other countries in which generally, these types of shootings do not occur with any regularity.
My take is that ultimately, there are two reasons for this problem:
1) Americans have told themselves a story about personal arms ownership for hundreds of years… it is mythical, and there’s no way that this story will go away.
2) There are simply too many guns, both legal and illegal, in this country. The more guns there are strewn about the population, the more shootings we will have. Also, see #1 about the mythology and power of guns.
We may need to be resolved to the sad fact that there is no solution here… this will simply become more common. Arming more “good guys” might help to prevent or at least reduce the body county of some incidents, but it will also lead to more accidental shootings, and in aggregate, having more guns will lead to more and more deaths. The media will continue to cover these things because, well, as long as there’s an audience, they will provide the product that people want. Somehow ramming God down the throats of our rapidly secularizing society has zero chance of working, unless you’re talking about invoking Christian nationalism, at which point this country will cease to be a free nation.

Lori Wagner
Lori Wagner
1 year ago

Don’t blame it on the mentally ill, it’s guns!

Colin Elliott
Colin Elliott
1 year ago
Reply to  Lori Wagner

Surely it is mentally ill PLUS guns, or criminals PLUS guns, or domestic quarrels PLUS guns.

John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago

This is what happens when our “leaders” in government villanize their political opponents constantly in the pursuit of political power. They do not seek to understand. They seek to polarize and manipulate the population for personal gain. They all — Dems and Republicans alike — need to be swept out of government and replaced by candidates who wish to govern by and for the People regardless of Party affiliation.

P Branagan
P Branagan
1 year ago

Excellent but depressing article.

Esteban Marin
Esteban Marin
1 year ago

Yes, you notice, since the Internet appears, it is where these young people find patients just like them who advise them to kill others for bullying or revenge. It is the internet and social networks where the suicide asylum is, from the emails of 2004. Reasons? Make his insane message heard and take him seriously, make him become a martyr thanks to the internet.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

No mention of the BLM riots encouraged by the Democrats as part of their campaign to defeat Trump in the 2020 Presidential election? No mention of the cuts to police funding by Democratic politicians? No mention that the Democrats’ reaction to unfavourable opinion polls for the senile man they installed as President is to to call all of their political opponents ‘terrorists’? Gun sales are rising in the US because law abiding Americans are facing a greater threat to their lives, while the political class either withdraws protection or encourages the violence.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 year ago

I’ll share a representative anecdote that the Left doesn’t want to understand about our current violent events.

I live near Oakland and one Saturday during lockdown I visited an Outdoor Sporting Goods store that’s maybe an hour away from the city.

Upon entering the store I immediately noticed an amazingly long line to purchase guns. Curiosity got the best of me and I stopped to chat with the folks queuing up for these guns.

What I found was hardcore Democrats and progressives in all their leanings and perspectives.

What drew them to guns at this time? They saw the utter breakdown of their progressive ideals during the Riots of 2020 when violence was excused (and even lauded) by wealthy progressive elites in academia, Hollywood and media as a necessity to address what these people termed “social injustice.” Most of the Democrats and progressives at the store drove in from Oakland.

They relayed to me that the notion of obeying the law no matter who you are or where you come from was gone from Oakland and the surrounding areas. Gone was any respect for our system of government and societal norms. In its place was this notion of a government and society that is “systemically racist” – irredeemable so. And violence is justified against such a system.

The Democrats buying those legal guns realized that progressivism had abandoned society to the “wild west” of tribalist tendencies toward power and violence. Exactly what gangs, thugs and disturbed people thrive on.

Lesson learned. When a prevalent culture teaches such utter disrespect for our society and government, some people internalize the call for and excusal of violence…and everyone else will seek to protect themselves from those people.

Tony Sandy
Tony Sandy
1 year ago

I live in the UK and a few weeks ago a kid threw a brick through a neighbours window after an altercation. Now if this had been America and he had access to a gun, the outcome might have been more serious. The argument that guns protect people is nonsense promoted by the NRA and believed by the naive and the intellectually challenged.
If you are on the way to the shops or pursuing some other peaceful act, what gun is going to protect you from a drive by shooting? The thing is that you don’t know its coming (passive receiver, not active transmitter of violence: think also of rape in this regard).
With regards to Tom Lewis’s point. Misfits is right. Suicide bombers in the UK had their profiles done and most were depressed and suicidal even before being recruited for this kind of task.
The disconnected – the disenfranchised, the ignored, the shunned in society and family life will rebel. The film Trading Places had a scene where Eddie Murphy was given Dan Ackroyd’s life, including job, girlfriend, accommodation and possessions by two conniving brothers. He started off breaking things because they belonged to someone else but when he cottoned on that they were really his to do with as he wanted, he instead cherished and preserved them.
So do you feel accepted or rejected by society or family? Is this spurring you into violent reaction or an apathetic glee, where you don’t care whether you live or die, or even see others as having the right to live and grow up, which you are now forfeiting yourself by a suicidal and murderous outburst against others?
You are either long suffering or short tempered. If the first, you slowly build up evidence of the truth and put it into practice. If the second, you quickly demolish other people’s hard work and confidence. Seneca (mentioning stoicism again) said all cruelty comes from weakness.
These perpetrators of violence then are weak not strong and violence as power is an illusion, where self control is not. To quote Frabk Herbert, author Dune ‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over and through me and when it is gone passed, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’
On top of this is of course the cruelty driven by pecking order, which is pushed down the line from society onto the parents and then through their frustration, onto their children (family dynamics).
Look also at the trans movement when it comes to identity as well. I don’t think it is just young males that have lost their way (a point made before by others in the sixties if I remember correctly) but teenagers as a whole. As a spiritual being we have no sexual identity and in childhood this is so apparent and then along comes sexual development and puberty. At that point we have our bodies shouting at us – you are this / they are that. Old age returns us to the point where sexual identity stops meaning as much to us. As the old joke goes, no wonder I’m confused – my mother was a woman and my father a man.

Nancy Reyes
Nancy Reyes
1 year ago

Righteous people don’t need laws.

Mexico has strict gun laws. It’s nearly impossible to get a gun legally. Yet Mexico’s murder rate is about 6 times that of the US.

Our murder rate is rising. It appears that our disintegrating culture may need less freedom and more laws. Our right to bear arms is for self defense and a check on government oppression. But innocent people are dying at the hands of murderers whose guns make it easy to kill. A society that needs oppressive laws to protect its people, is a society in decline.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

The situation is so weird that only comedy can capture it –

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668

Albireo Double
Albireo Double
1 year ago

The US is stuck with its politicians refusing to take on the gun lobby. The UK has a similar problem with its politicians refusing to take on the NHS.
The NHS wrongly kills more people though.

Michael Jagger
Michael Jagger
1 year ago

Thank the NeoAmerican Communists for degrading our society and its institutions.
You can’t believe what’s taught in school, or anything from the FBI to our traditional news media.

Louise Weale
Louise Weale
1 year ago

I listened with interest to an interview on R4 Today programme where an American, I didn’t catch his name, argued that the majority of Americans agree with reforming gun laws but that the Senate has to vote for it. As I understand it, the majority of Americans live in a relatively small number of states. He said that he didn’t see enough people in the Senate who would be prepared to vote for a review of gun laws and in many states, anyone who did would be recalled and replaced by someone who wouldn’t, so they don’t. I believe that some of the weapons sold to amateurs in the US would allow that person to take on a small city, I assume if you protect schools from this, the shooters will go to Churches and shopping malls and cinemas, any where that people congregate together.
The only thing I can think of that would change this position is climate change, with many American moving into the states less affected by climate change and mixing up the political situation – I think we have seen this in Texas.
I can only hope the people affected by this horror can can get help to lead their best lives but I am sure they will have been so hurt and traumatised that their lives will never be what they could have been.

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago

Greed is good. Marriage is bad. Single motherhood is the most noble family type. All males are rapists. Drugs are the best parent. ‘Me and him’ not ‘he and I.’ A.I. Simulated murder in every household. Did you see that movie? Look at my new car. Envy. Consumption of everything. Including each other. My skin tone is more important than my character. Get yours today. Cheap labour. Fake it till ya make it. And on and on it goes. The West and America in particular has seen and heard thousands of these little weavel like increments upon humility, humanity and what constitutes a meaningful life. Divide and conquere. By design or the natural result of all pitted against all? Does it really matter? Until the remaining good and decent people stop these incursions into our lives there will be no change for the better. Children are dying because we adults won’t protect them. Sad but true.

Robert Bly, The Sibling Society gives a great take on this very problem.

Of course there needs greater restrictions on gun purchasing. Mad people should not have guns and the number of mad people is growing for reasons above.

Last edited 1 year ago by Karl Juhnke
Maureen Finucane
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago

Ban them. Other countries have done so.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago

I sense some of our perhaps more Right wing / libertarian culture warriors are getting a bit desperate on this issue. I see below even the Press being blamed for reporting these rather too frequent massacres of schoolchildren! If the ‘free’ press did not do that we would have to wonder what their purpose was!
The 2nd Amendment seems to have an obvious context of social peace as well as opposing tyrannical government, not necessarily meaning a guns free for all, and of course the speed and rapidity of fire of modern weapons could not have been anticipated.
‘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’.
“Well-regulated militia”!

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Phil Farthing
Phil Farthing
1 year ago

Here’s my take. If we hand our kids over to somebody else, they should have to prove they can protect those kids. They should know and accept the responsibility.
When they don’t, they should be held accountable for it. It’s their watch. They can’t, or they refuse, kick ’em to the curb and get somebody who can. It’s really that simple.
We’ve gone off our rockers allowing people to shirk their basic duties to the kids in their charge. Instead, when they fail, we keep propping them back up, and proceed to engage in a whole lot of smoke and mirrors misdirection so nobody notices.
The only place these mass shootings happen is where people can’t defend themselves. That should tell us a lot. Hiding under a desk and encouraging kids to throw random objects is f’n ridiculous on its face!
This is the USA. We have guns. We have crazies. Shit happens. The world isn’t safe. Figure it out!!!
Every kid and every teacher in every public school across the country should be taught firearm safety and marksmanship. Any teacher willing to train and carry should be encouraged to do so. Security drills need to be about protecting kids, getting them to safety, taking out the bad guy, and not protecting your own ass.
You can’t do it? Step aside. We can find somebody who can. I guarantee it. I also bet that all this grooming crap would disappear overnight too because those people won’t do the job required. Two birds. One stone. Problem solved.
tl;dr : pull your head out of your high minded liberal rear end and get f’n real!

Jim Quirk
Jim Quirk
1 year ago

I get the emotional reaction, but what if the school had been secure, what if the security guard had done his job, what if the shooter had been tracked after dropping out of school, i.e. social worker checking on him?? Certainly military style weapons should be regulated as they are within the military now. Crazy people and emotionally unstable people will always find a weapon to kill others.

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
1 year ago

The Cuckoo’s Nest, Revisited
What to do about gun violence given the problems of false positives and false negatives in designing mechanisms to get both guns and mentally ill people off of the streets?
https://dvwilliamson.substack.com/p/the-cuckoos-nest-revisited

Last edited 1 year ago by Chauncey Gardiner
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

I suggest y’all tune into Russell Brand on YouTube for the definitive statement on this issue.. personally, I believe it is karma: you reap what you sow: you cannot hope to exterminate the indigenous population, make huge fortunes out of slavery, set up the KKK and hope it never comes back to haunt you. It’s payback time: time for the US to sink beneath the waves wrought by the turbulence of its own greed. Time to reap the whirlwind after you sowed the grapes of wrath.. (Steinbeck and Bible)..

Andy Cutler
Andy Cutler
1 year ago

The government could confiscate all the guns and these incidents would still happen because the cause is mental illness. Mental illness fomented by the government itself and their media assistants.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Andy Cutler

If those mentally ill didn’t have the weapons in the first place how would these incidents occur?

Last edited 1 year ago by Billy Bob
Duane Sharp
Duane Sharp
1 year ago

Addressing the sad state of affairs in the U.S., from on-going multiple school shootings to the anarchist attack on the White House on Jan 6, 2021, author Stephen Marche, “The Next Civil War,” has framed the current political issues and social unrest perfectly. He has also predicted an ominous scenario for the country going forward…a must-read!!!

Michael Coleman
Michael Coleman
1 year ago
Reply to  Duane Sharp

It only took me 5 minutes listening to the audible.com sample to know the book is based on a false premise of growing right wing and white supremacy extremism. Marche falsely claims that increasing right wing extremism is the growing problem that will cause the war. This can be disproved by checking the leftist ADL site which, at a minimum, overcounts acts by rights/whites and undercounts blacks/leftists. The 2021 death count by white supremacists is claimed to be only 13!! The ADL claims only 2 deaths caused by black extremists in 2021, which is absurdly low by an order of magnitude; Robert Brooks jr. killed 6 whites by himself in a 2021 Christmas parade! So Marche has it completely backward: a civil war may be coming, but if there is one of will be a clash over leftist/black crime and violence and the public not accepting any longer.

Peter Mateja
Peter Mateja
1 year ago

Why not both? White Christian nationalists have a growing dark side that has taken root politically throughout rural / red parts of the country, often with open calls for outright civil war (backed by God of course). Their constituents also tend to include armed militia members. There’s certainly the firepower and the will there to make the US into a powder keg. On the left, the problem is also there, but it’s less centrally organized… between BLM, antifa, deep green resistance, and others, you have almost no common ground or organizational structure. You also generally see less support for guns / weapons, despite an overarching taste for rioting and violence.
As a level headed centrist, both of these options are freaking awful. The far left is filled with angry adult children who just want to smash the system and bring about chaos, because they have this delusion that once the system is smashed, that remaining humans will become enlightened to their cause, leading to some post modern green utopian society. But, despite these problems, I suspect that more problems will come from the far right, the side that embraces guns, has better organization, holds more political offices / power, includes lots of adherents who are military, ex-military and/or law enforcement (see guns and training) and believes that it has a vengeful sky god on its side.

Robin Palmer
Robin Palmer
1 year ago

Yeah … it’s called capitalism.