Address the shootings to restore our national self-respect
What shall we say to the families of Matthew Steffy-Ross and Jaiden Brown, two 17-year-old kids who died in a Pittsburgh mass shooting Easter weekend?
That we are helpless and their deaths will not be answered by civic action or public policy in any form?
The American gun violence epidemic takes three forms: Mass shootings.
These happen on a regular monthly, if not weekly, basis. They have come, again, to Pittsburgh. There were eight more wounded by gunshots at the mass shooting Easter weekend. And five more were injured when they jumpedfrom windows to escape.
There were three mass shootings in America on that particular weekend.
Mass shootings are so frequent that we sometimes forget some of the worst ones. I, for example, had forgotten about the one in Oxford, Mich., where four children and a teacher were killed. That was in November 2021. Remember? The parents and the school authorities were oblivious and failed to see what was before their eyes. They also failed to protect.
I’d put it out of my mind, I am ashamed to say. Why, I wonder? Because it was not as catastrophic as Newtown, where 26 were killed, 20 of them children? Or Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 were slaughtered? Or Charleston (9)? Or Columbine (12)? Or the Tree of Life Synagogue,also in Pittsburgh (11)?
How about a congressman getting shot in the head when she holds a town meeting?
The mind cannot take, and keep, it all in.
But all of the victims deserve to be remembered.
And they deserve some sort of resolution and practical action. City shootings.
These are mostly city kids killing other city kids with guns they own but barely comprehend.
These happen almost every day. In almost every city.
And then there are the seemingly innumerable gun accidents and suicides.
These also happen every day.
Everywhere.
Gun violence was up 24% in 2021 from the previous year.
And you can’t blame COVID19. Gun violence has not increased by that much in any other Western nation.
No other “civilized” nation has this problem — the problem of a gun violence epidemic.
Just before the Easter weekend, in Brooklyn, N.Y., where two of my children live and work and take the subway, a man got on an early morning commuter, set off two smoke grenades and started shooting. He fired 33 shots. Ten people were wounded; five critically. None died.
The response? Uber rates went up.
Are we really content to live this way?
Sen. Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, who is the conscience of the U.S. Senate on the matter of gun violence, says that the evidence that background checks work is incontrovertible.
He claims that gun violence increased in states with background checksby only 1% last year.
In states without them, gun crimes rose by 8%.
Most Americans favor background
checks.
And responsible Republicans, like Sen. Pat Toomey, favor them for commercial sales, which is mostgun sales.
To buy a car you have to register it.
Todrive it you need a license. It’sthe same with a boat.
It’s the same to be a pharmacist or to be a professional in pest control:You register and you train.
Why in the world would we not pass universal background checksinto law?
The same goes for smart guns — guns made so that they can be locked like a phone and not used bya child or an intruder.
We know how to make smart guns.
We know for sure that they wouldsave the lives of children.
Haven’t enough kids died from gunsin America?
Our failure to face the gun crisis will make vast swaths of our cities uninhabitable. “They are only killing each other,” said one politician, stunningly and appallingly. They are teenagers, for God’s sake. And the violence that is taking them will not be ultimately-contained.
Our failure to face gun violence raises profound questions about
agency and efficacy in this democracy. It means that we have lost a degree of faith in our ability to govern ourselves. Indeed, it indicates that we have lost faith in reasonand action.
If we can live with this, we have lost a piece of our collective free will,mind, and soul.
What kind of society has lost the will to protect itself?
We took on polio, TB, breast cancerand AIDS.
Wetook on unsafe cars.
But we have psyched ourselves outon guns.
When we failed to act after Newtown, it was a moment of major moral failure for the country, akin to the Dred Scott decision, or interning-Japanese Americans, or allowingthe rise of Joe McCarthy.
And every time when there is an outrageous gun crime and we shrug and look away, we repeat the failure. We diminish ourselves, and our country, a little more.
It is time to restore our faith in reason and action. It is time to restore our national self-respect.