No words are adequate to express the heart-wrenching sadness and outrage that I — and probably you — feel in response to yesterday’s shooting deaths of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year, occurring just 10 days after 10 people were shot and killed in a supermarket in Buffalo.
What are we coming to? Why the hell do we have to live like this?
The CDC recently reported that gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teens. Guns have already killed more than 630 American children this year. Although House Democrats passed enhanced background check and red flag bills, these went nowhere because Republican senators won’t touch them and Democratic senators are two votes short of reforming the filibuster. States like California, Illinois, and New York have strong gun laws, but those are undermined by neighboring states with loose gun laws.
Some say there’s simply nothing we can do. We have to live with this horror. The National Rifle Association is too powerful. Too many guns are out there now. Even if laws could be enacted, there are too many ways to circumvent them. The current rightwing Supreme Court wouldn’t uphold gun restrictions, anyway. And so on.
The reality is that all forms of gun violence — including random violence, police violence, suicides, and mass shootings — are escalating. We cannot continue to live this way.
To those who say we have no option, I say that other nations — even ones that share our sense rugged individualism and Wild West swagger, such as Australia — have dramatically reduced gun violence. Why should Americans be condemned to this mayhem?
So today’s Office Hours question: What the hell do we do to stop this slaughter?
Please share your thoughts, below. I’ll share mine as well.
**
Thank you for your typically thoughtful comments. A tragedy like this is so disheartening that it’s hard to summon words. I found myself particularly drawn to Molly’s proposal that we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion - with a mandatory 48-hr waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do. And GrAnnie’s suggestion that states in favor of controlling guns use the approach Texas governor Greg Abbott has used for abortions — allowing any private citizen to sue anyone who helps a someone buy a abortion, including gun sellers, even if they're in another state.
But to do anything about gun violence, we need the votes.
The data on gun violence in America is truly staggering. More Americans have died from guns just since 1975 (more than 1.5 million -- including suicides, murders and accidents) than in all the wars in United States history, dating back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million). In a typical year, more children from infancy through 4 years old are fatally shot in the United States (about 80) than police officers (about 50 or fewer). The United States has more guns (around 400 million) than people (330 million). We have 4 percent of the world’s population but about 40 percent of the world’s total of firearms in civilian hands.
How do we get the votes? We can wring our hands at Republicans (and Manchin and Sinema) and do everything we can do vote them out. But Joe Biden has the power right now to use executive orders to (1) crack down on “ghost guns,” which avoid regulation and serial numbers because they are sold unfinished or as kits, (2) gather better gun data, and (3) publicize where weapons used in crimes come from.
Beyond this, I’m impressed by the remarkable degree of agreement among Americans on certain sensible steps — such as background checks before someone can buy a gun, that mentally ill people should not be allowed to buy or own guns, and so on (see below for latest Pew polling).
The reason these steps haven’t been enacted is the National Rifle Association and ancillary gun lobbies. We must take them on.
The other thing I want to emphasize is that when gun enthusiasts say (as they often do) that cars kill about as many people as guns yet we don’t ban them, the reality is we do regulate the design of automobiles and we limit access to them. Which is exactly what we should be doing with guns. Ever since Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in deaths from automobiles (the death rate per 100 million miles driven is now less than one-seventh of what it was when I was born in 1946).
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Robert Reich to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
