Yet another mass shooting. This time at the American Mecca of recreation: Las Vegas.
After each of our increasingly routine (!) mass shootings, there's this predictable exchange: American liberals advocate gun control laws, while conservatives say we shouldn't do that. I have to say that at a practical level, I'm with the liberals on this one. No matter what some dangling participle in the Constitution seems to imply, one of the primary goals of forming any human society is increased safety from unpredictable interpersonal violence. No law can stop people from getting angry and lashing out, but those people will do a lot less damage if they don't have access to military-grade weaponry, for instance. We began controlling access to automatic weaponry for a reason (St Valentine's Day Massacre, anyone?). And the vast majority of Americans supported that control in the 1930s.
That being said, it cannot be the case that access to firearms is the root cause of nihilistic violence in American society. It is a symptom -- an incredibly urgent one that must be treated immediately, but still a symptom.
The deeper problem is the profound alienation and callousness that American social formation produces. That is to say, even God raptured all our guns from the American landscape tah-day, leaving us behind to fend for ourselves, American society would still be producing the kind of person who wants to randomly murder as many strangers as practically possible. Actually, it's even worse than that. It's not just producing the kind of person who fleetingly thinks that -- presumably the thought has crossed the mind of many people who have been on a crowded subway car or in a long line -- but someone who stays with that bitterness and rage in a way that allows them to carry out practical plans for making it happen. After all, to have that many firearms in a motel room, you'd have to make more than one trip to the car. If that person didn't have guns, he (or she) would be less dangerous, but on another level he would still be deeply frightening. Because even absent the guns, they'd still want to kill. And people who want to kill that badly typically find ways to do it. Like plowing down pedestrians in a busy city street or attacking those walking down the sidewalk with a large knife.
And I would even suggest that it's the very same alienation and callousness that makes gun control -- literally the most commonsensical measure possible -- into such a hopeless cause. In other words, our empty, futile ritual of mourning follows so reliably after mass shootings because both stem from the same deep pathologies in American society. We're offering our thoughts and prayers today because, absent any desire to genuinely repair the social fabric, we're really glad it isn't us (we know all too well that it could be) and we're really, genuinely sorry that it's them. (But better them than us. This is what I'm driving at. The American problem is the idolatry of individualism. Which is why I can't be an American liberal or an American conservative.)
Unless and until we Americans stare down the "monster" of this alienation and callousness, we'll continue to find those of us who shoot others.
After each of our increasingly routine (!) mass shootings, there's this predictable exchange: American liberals advocate gun control laws, while conservatives say we shouldn't do that. I have to say that at a practical level, I'm with the liberals on this one. No matter what some dangling participle in the Constitution seems to imply, one of the primary goals of forming any human society is increased safety from unpredictable interpersonal violence. No law can stop people from getting angry and lashing out, but those people will do a lot less damage if they don't have access to military-grade weaponry, for instance. We began controlling access to automatic weaponry for a reason (St Valentine's Day Massacre, anyone?). And the vast majority of Americans supported that control in the 1930s.
That being said, it cannot be the case that access to firearms is the root cause of nihilistic violence in American society. It is a symptom -- an incredibly urgent one that must be treated immediately, but still a symptom.
The deeper problem is the profound alienation and callousness that American social formation produces. That is to say, even God raptured all our guns from the American landscape tah-day, leaving us behind to fend for ourselves, American society would still be producing the kind of person who wants to randomly murder as many strangers as practically possible. Actually, it's even worse than that. It's not just producing the kind of person who fleetingly thinks that -- presumably the thought has crossed the mind of many people who have been on a crowded subway car or in a long line -- but someone who stays with that bitterness and rage in a way that allows them to carry out practical plans for making it happen. After all, to have that many firearms in a motel room, you'd have to make more than one trip to the car. If that person didn't have guns, he (or she) would be less dangerous, but on another level he would still be deeply frightening. Because even absent the guns, they'd still want to kill. And people who want to kill that badly typically find ways to do it. Like plowing down pedestrians in a busy city street or attacking those walking down the sidewalk with a large knife.
And I would even suggest that it's the very same alienation and callousness that makes gun control -- literally the most commonsensical measure possible -- into such a hopeless cause. In other words, our empty, futile ritual of mourning follows so reliably after mass shootings because both stem from the same deep pathologies in American society. We're offering our thoughts and prayers today because, absent any desire to genuinely repair the social fabric, we're really glad it isn't us (we know all too well that it could be) and we're really, genuinely sorry that it's them. (But better them than us. This is what I'm driving at. The American problem is the idolatry of individualism. Which is why I can't be an American liberal or an American conservative.)
Unless and until we Americans stare down the "monster" of this alienation and callousness, we'll continue to find those of us who shoot others.