'21-6: Let's Cut the Crap on Gun Regulations
After a brief respite from mass shootings in America, thanks to the global pandemic, we are seeing a startling and unwelcome “return to normal.” On Tuesday, March 16, 2021, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long shot and killed 8 people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors, with a 9mm handgun. On Monday, March 22, 2021, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shot and killed ten people at a Boulder, Colorado grocery store, with an AR-15 rifle.
As we all know, the Second Amendment stands as a seemingly unassailable wall, and any penetration of practical discussion about gun control is denied. I think that Constitutional arguments against any amount of gun control are weak. For one thing, we place reasonable limits on Constitutional rights all the time. Moreover, we can change the Constitution and have many times. If we aren’t able to fix our laws, which have allowed and resulted in mass deaths and fear, then how great is America after all?
I know this is fantasy thinking, but I wish we could step out of the shadow of the Constitution when talking about gun control. If there was no Second Amendment, would people still oppose any and all gun regulation, and what would that argument look like? How great would it be if the argument was re-framed and those opposing gun regulations had to defend our mass shooting culture as something we shouldn’t attempt to fix, like we would if it were any other safety hazard?
Part of the dynamic with this discussion is that for gun rights advocates, gun culture is not simply a Constitutional right or a method of self defense, as they may try to argue. Rather, it is a culture and an aesthetic. People don’t take wedding photos with their guns and Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-Colo.) doesn’t display her assault weapons during her video calls because they are that excited about self-defense and safety. No one does photo shoots with their smoke detectors or Ring video doorbells. I assume that gun culture and aesthetic is based on fun and enjoyment, looking cool, bonding with other people, and having a hobby and past-time. This is not all that different than people who are into muscle cars, Harry Potter, or snowboarding. (For the record, you can also find people doing themed weddings with muscle cars, Harry Potter, or snowboarding).
I like to follow a mantra I learned from my husband which is “don’t yuk someone else’s yum.” It’s ok for people to enjoy different things than each other, and for the most part is is incredibly rude to make fun of another person’s interests. Not everyone wants to embody a goth aesthetic or to be really into rodeo and horses, but it shouldn’t bother you if someone else does. When we fight for gun control, many people see it as an attack on their identity, culture, and aesthetic, and no one likes their identity being attacked.
However. There is a big limitation to the “don’t yuk someone else’s yum” mantra in that it’s fine for you to have your enjoyment so long as it doesn’t hurt other people. That is obviously a big difference between gun culture and Harry Potter fandom, for instance. We can’t ignore that our gun culture has fetishized guns and made weapons of mass murder all too available to people who are willing to use those guns to cause mass murder.
Can we find a solution to allow people to retain their identities, cultures, and aesthetics while also minimizing risks of mass murders? I think so. Treating mass shooting culture as a necessary and unavoidable evil is as callous as it is uncreative.
Again, putting the Second Amendment aside for a moment, is this really the way anyone wants to live? Is this the America we want? Where you can’t go to a:
Bar
Home
Office
Airport
Temple
Church
College
Mosque
Concert
Hospital
Nightclub
Newsroom
Pre-school
Synagogue
Playground
Yoga studio
High school
Military base
Street corner
Garlic festival
Movie theater
Political event
Grocery Store
Middle school
Massage parlor
Elementary school1
without fearing that you may be a victim of a mass shooting?
We regulate to prevent safety hazards all the time, as well we should. From food and drug safety, to vehicle and transportation safety, to consumer product safety, to workplace safety, the examples are endless.
The point is, we don’t tolerate anyone being able to hurt other people in this country. We either outlaw it, or regulate it to minimize the harm.
I don’t want to tolerate mass shootings anymore. If not for the Second Amendment and, quite frankly, the NRA, this would not even be a question. This is not how we want to live. We do not want to be afraid going about our daily lives—afraid that someone else can recklessly hurt you. Just as we don’t want to worry about whether someone has poisoned our Tylenol, we also don’t want to fear getting shot by a man wielding an AR-15 at a grocery store. This is ridiculous. We have more mass shootings than any other country in the world, by a long shot. And we’re supposed to just accept it because some men over two hundred years ago wrote a sentence about militias being able to have arms, which they wrote as they were coming out of a revolutionary war fought with muskets, bayonets, and cannons.
We don’t have to accept that. We are more creative than that and we can solve our problems. Even if conservatives are right, and the Second Amendment, as written, is unassailable (which I strongly disagree with), we can still change that. We don’t allow slavery, we have granted women the right to vote, and we sure as hell can impose reasonable gun restrictions.
It’s time we cut the crap and acknowledge that by doing nothing to make the country safe from mass shootings, we are responsible for perpetuating this horror show.
For an absolutely fantastic discussion of the history of the gun control argument and how conservatives have not always been so rigidly opposed to gun control, hop over to Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter on this topic. You won’t regret it.
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