The latest terrorist act of violence committed in our society (I’m pretty sure it is a “terrorizing” act to begin shooting in a crowded, dark theatre), will bring the usual detailed analysis of “how could someone have done this?” The “how” usually involves trying to figure out why a person would commit an act of violence like this. The answer, not invariably but often, includes personal trauma and social isolation… but someday, it will be apparent that someone does this “just for fun.” Maybe it is this time. Early reports indicate that the shooter entered the theatre during a shooting scene in the movie, in a flak jacket and gas mask, proceeded to release two canisters of gas, and then commenced firing into the crowd. One theatre-goer reported that he thought it was all just a part of the show. A commenter at the New York Times notes that, “Reading some comments on a youtube cellphone video, some people seem to say that the shooter created a thread on a website called “9gag” where he said he was going to do this and people commented on his thread encouraging him or betting he would not…”
But the real answer to the “how” question is: he did it with a gun. No other weapon could have made possible this mass violence, short of various poisonous gases (which, I’m happy to say, we control very rigorously). “He did it with a gun” also applies to George Zimmerman, a completely untrained and evidently disturbed civilian who apparently fancied himself a police officer in his aggresive neighborhood watch activities. The same is true of the vicious attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The same is true of the campus shootings, the high school shootings – they all did it with a gun. At one point in American history, after the near-assassination of Ronald Reagan, we were moving toward a kind of sanity about guns. But that day unfortunately seems long past. The obvious response to these tragedies – strict gun control – will likely not be taken seriously. As this Washington Post piece indicates, many seem absolutely committed to unrestricted gun availability. Instead, states will continue to make it more and more possible to obtain and carry any kind of weapon in any kind of location, under the mantra of “protection.”
I think, from a secular point of view, this is stunningly disruptive. Salman Rushdie posted on his twitter feed: “The ‘right to bear arms’ is the bane of America.” @MikeBloomberg tweeted on gun control: “Maybe it’s time the 2 people running for POTUS stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it.” But from a Christian point of view – one ostensibly held by most opponents of gun control – it is inexplicable. We can and should have vigorous discussions as Christians about just violence in policing and war. But about personally carrying around a gun so we can kill people who threaten us? When it has these side effects? On what possible theological grounds can this be justified? It is surely part of what we mean by the common good to provide official security forces that “serve and protect,” and that the odds of being threatened by a random gunman are incredibly low, particularly if one takes reasonable precautions. We do not live in the Wild West. Furthermore, the shift in attitude on guns over time is stunning: in 1990, 78% of Americans favored stricter gun laws, and even around 1999-2000, the number favoring stricter laws hovered in the two-thirds range. Today, only 44% of Americans favor stricter laws. The graph (in the above WaPo article) tellingly depicts a significant swing in the years 2001-2002, when the post-9/11 “culture of fear” started sinking in more deeply. But this change, I think, is also a sign of people’s attitudes toward violence and in general toward social order.
The US bishops are on record on this:
In Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration, the bishops reiterated their support for legislative efforts that seek to protect society from the violence associated with easy access to deadly weapons. “As bishops, we support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer (especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children and anyone other than the owner), and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns.”
People use guns to kill people in this way. People are the problem, but so are the tools they use. “Sensible” gun control measures should include at the least strict monitoring of gun sales and ownership, which is the first deterrent against people thinking of carrying out “plans” as this gunman did. “Sensible” control also should mean revoking concealed-carry laws, and allowing institutions to ban guns on their premises. If someone wants to keep a registered firearm at the their bedside to protect their family, I might quarrel with that choice, but these other steps would not prevent this.
Unfortunately, the strongest advocates of gun control are big-city mayors and police forces, who know all too well that people die in gun violence like this every single day. It is a sad commentary that it takes the “suburbanization” of this violence to get people’s attention – I hope it does.
I’m with you on this one, David. Thanks for posting.
For those following this news story and discussion, Kevin Ahern posted something similar: http://dailytheology.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/confronting-our-culture-of-violence/; and I recommend Mennonite Richard Kauffman’s editorial over at Christian Century: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-07/can-we-talk-about-guns#.UAqvreYO6Qw.facebook.
The Swiss had 34 gun murders total in 2006 ( one US almost large city has that in a year) and there is 420,000 assault weapons in their homes because they have no army but merely a militia. They have one of the highest rates of gun ownership and do not have our tragedies for the same reason that Serbian prisons allow eating utensils including knives in a prisoner’s cell…such countries are mainly one ethnic group and thus the country feels like family. The US doesn’t have that cohesion. The isolating tendencies in the US is the deeper problem.
You could take all the guns out of US homes and a person like Holmes would make a bomb like McVeigh did out of fertilizer etc. and do a worse job than he did with his four guns. Ironically, if a papal Swiss guard soldier had been in that theater with their issued H&K MP7 small machine gun
( used in the tv show “Person of Interest” sometimes) which carries an armor piercing round, the criminal shooter would have been killed quickly. Apparently the Vatican is better prepared in their crowd events than we are in our theaters….to quickly end the worst shooter possible ie the one with body armor.
Bill, for the majority of people it is far easier to purchase a high-capacity assault weapon, to conceal it, and to effectively use it, than it is to construct and deploy and equally effective bomb. Think through this yourself. Do you know how to obtain the kind of fertilizer that McVeigh used (or anything that would be similarly effective)? These days, even if you worked in agriculture, and regularly had fully legitimate reasons to buy large quantities of commercial fertilizers of all kinds, you likely would not be able to obtain the type of fertilizer in question. If, however, you were able to obtain the fertilizer, would you have the means of detonating it? Would you know how to construct a detonator and to obtain the materials necessary for its construction without tipping off the authorities? After constructing the bomb, how would know that it would not be a dud? How would you place it so as to ensure the destruction of lives?
Wouldn’t it be a heck of a lot easier just to head to your local gun shop and purchase on credit an AR-15 or a glock and a couple of high-capacity magazines?
Outlawing guns is not the right thing to do. The problem stems from something deeper, its like when people were great sword fighters. The mentality has to be squashed. People who play and watch violent video games / movies are being brainwashed to believe violence is fun. Violent video games should be outlawed. People will use whatever means to kill insofar they have the inner desire and thoughts to kill for fun. If we use logic like that (to outlaw guns because a gun killed someone) then alcohol, cars, and even doctors should be outlawed because they all kill people too. Alcohol is not bad intrinsically, but it is bad in the hands of an alcoholic. Cars are not intrinsically bad, but they are bad in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to drive or who is careless or drunk. Doctors are not intrinsically bad, but when they murder a fetus, or assist someone’s suicide they are bad. We cannot just squash the tool, the mentality has to be changed.