Mass Shootings: Everything Is Just As It Should Be

Donald Trump has recently announced that there is no need for any strengthening of background checks, certainly no need for any further gun regulation, in the United States. In doing so, he was following orders from the NRA, whose advice he admitted was very, very important to him. Therefore, it appears, everything is exactly as it should be. We have exactly the right amount of gun safety, and the mass shootings that we have had and continue to have—I haven’t checked the news yet today—is a small price to pay for the freedom of crazy people to carry guns around and be ready to use them at a moment’s notice. From the Trump-NRA viewpoint, there should be no legal restrictions on firearms, until the moment the first shot is fired, and then the gunman should be neutralized.

I would like to present here a list of the deadliest mass shootings since 1949, according to an article published August 19, 2019, on CNN.

Number killed	Year	Place	Shooter/s
58	2017	Las Vegas	White man
49	2016	Orlando	Arab man
32	2007	Virginia Tech	Asian man
27	2012	Sandy Hook CT	White man
26*	2017	Sutherland Springs TX	White man
23	1991	Killeen TX	White man
22	2019	El Paso	White man
21	1984	San Ysidro CA	White man
18	1966	University of Texas	White man
17	2018	High school in Florida	White youth
14*	2015	San Bernardino CA	Arab couple
13	2009	Binghamton NY	Asian man
13	1999	Columbine CO	White youths
13	1983	Seattle WA	Asian men
13	1982	Wilkes-Barre PA	Black man
13	1949	Camden NJ	White man
12	2019	Virginia Beach	Black man
12	2018	Thousand Oaks CA	White man
12	2013	Washington Navy Yard	Black man
12	2012	Aurora CO	White man
12	1999	Atlanta	White man
11	2018	Pittsburgh synagogue	White man
10	2018	Santa Fe TX	White youth
10	2009	Alabama	White man
491	Total

*includes unborn child

This, apparently, is an acceptable situation. Let us consider these data a little further:

Ethnicity                     Incidents         Deaths

White man                   15                    279

Arabs                           3                      77

Asian man/men           3                      58

White youth/s              3                      40

Black man                   3                      37

Total                            27                    491

From this tabulation, we can see that all ethnicities are capable of mass violence, but it is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of white males.

These incidents have become much much much much more common in recent years. Consider this tabulation:

Year                Incidents         Deaths

1949                1                      13

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966                1                      18

1697

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982                1                      13

1983                1                      13

1984                1                      21

1985

1986                1                      14

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991                1                      23

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999                2                      25

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007                1                      32

2008

2009                3                      37

2010

2011

2012                2                      39

2013                1                      12

2014

2015                1                      14

2016                1                      49

2017                2                      84

2018                4                      50

2019                2                      34

There has been a huge acceleration of mass shootings. This is also, apparently, a situation that is acceptable to Trump and the NRA. And 2019 isn’t even over yet. I am not predicting that this acceleration will continue, but the rate will certainly not decline. Other countries such as France think we are freaking crazy. Their conclusion is understandable.

This essay, with an additional paragraph at the end, also appeared on my science blog.

The End is Near?

The end is near! The end is near! The Republicans are going to get out their guns and start shooting the rest of us! Oh, and the sky is falling, too.

I know what I would have said to this even a couple of days ago: Yeah, right. The Republicans talk tough, about how there should be absolutely no restrictions at all of any kind for any reason on building up huge stockpiles of any kind of weapon. (Except, oddly enough, nuclear weapons. I haven’t quite figured out why they find a nuclear weapon ban acceptable.) They say that people like the Las Vegas shooter should have been utterly free to build up his stash of weapons in his hotel room, weapons that he had altered from semi-automatic to automatic. They even say that kits that allow semi-automatic weapons to be so altered should be freely available for purchase by everyone, even people with a known history of psychiatric problems. Only after the man starts shooting should law enforcement be allowed to take any action.

But the Republicans aren’t really going to do this. They never plan to actually use all those weapons they are hoarding.

Well, that’s what I thought, until I was in Wal-Mart yesterday. The line consisted of people with huge numbers of things to purchase. The late-middle-aged woman ahead of me saw that I had only a few items, and asked me to go ahead of her. I accepted the offer, since it would help me a great deal and make no difference to her. They were, after all, still waiting for a prescription refill. I realized this was an Oklahoma redneck actually living by the Golden Rule rather than just talking about it. For about a minute, I felt good and thought maybe I have misjudged this rural Oklahoma hotbed of fundamentalist gun nuts.

Then, for no reason that I could tell, she started telling me that her husband had just purchased an AK-47 at a pawn shop for over $400, and she said that lots of people were purchasing them because they knew the price was going up, probably to $700, very soon. I wondered what had prompted her to tell me this. I looked at my T-shirt. Was it a flaming liberal T-shirt? No, it was from the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in California. My shirt did not say, “Dump Trump, shoot me right here,” with a target painted on it. And the woman’s voice sounded utterly friendly and sincere.

I knew that here was my opportunity to learn something about the people among whom I am embedded, one of the few people in town who does not worship the NRA. I asked her why her husband purchased the AK-47. She talked about how, in her neighborhood down by the lake, there were drug deals going on all over the place. They have up No Trespassing signs but the drug dealers tear them down. I realize that an argument can be made for them to have a gun, but an AK-47? I did not ask this question, however. I just let her talk. I did not ask her in what way gun restrictions might harm them—surely, they have a good reason to get permission for a gun, to protect themselves. Surely her husband could pass a background check.

Finally, I did ask if he planned to actually shoot people with the AK-47. She said absolutely not—she is the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt an animal, much less a human. She even uses glue to repair turtle shells. She said she didn’t want to go to hell for shooting someone. She said her husband would just shoot the AK-47 into the treetops to scare criminals away.

I am assuming her husband (who was standing behind her, his mind a thousand miles away) was not crazy. But if he started shooting his AK-47, what would stop him from shooting just a little bit lower and maybe killing someone who was actually not a criminal? Can we be one hundred percent sure that her husband would never slip, for just a moment, into fury? He doesn’t have to be crazy; he just has to be imperfect, make a single mistake, which is something that all humans do—especially according to religious people like her who believe the mankind is sinful.

Unless, of course, she believes her husband is as perfect as God, which is blasphemy.

Moreover, whoever the person was whom her husband planned to shoot at, but not shoot, might be crazy, and have his own AK-47, and come after them. If I say you should have a background check before getting an AK-47, I do not mean that you are crazy, but that this should be a standard procedure to make sure that only people like you can make such an acquisition. The crazy intruder might shoot them, their children, and the grandchildren the woman was so profusely praising.

The chip reader beeped, so I removed my card and left, without drawing any conclusions from the conversation. The woman said she was stockpiling food since the Big Battle was about to begin. Strangely enough, it was all frozen food, which would decay if electricity was lost during the Big Battle. I let her continue hauling frozen dinners onto the conveyor belt.

You can see why I am now wondering if the Republicans are about ready to start shooting. Here is one couple who would not start The War themselves but who are waiting eagerly for the first sign that they believe will tell them it is time to start shooting.

This is also why I am an agnostic. In America, being a Christian means that you worship the NRA and the Republican Party, and probably Donald Trump also. In America, being a Christian has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. This is why I want utterly nothing to do with American Christianity. Maybe, if I move to France, I will start going to church again. In France, Jesus does not carry an AK-47 around.

Yes, Wayne, Absolutes Do Exist, But This is Not One of Them

According to a January 23 news release, National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre told a Weatherby Foundation awards ceremony that the Second Amendment gives Americans the unfettered right to own firearms. “Absolutes do exist, words do have specific meaning in language and in law,” he said. “No government gave them to us and no government can take them away.”

It is not clear from the news release what LaPierre was referring to when he said no government gave “them” to us. Did he mean that government did not give us the right to own firearms? If so, LaPierre is utterly and frighteningly wrong.

Absolutes do exist. The speed of light. The charge of the electron. In fact, a whole list of physical constants. But the right to own firearms is not an absolute. The federal government has, in fact, given us this right in the Second Amendment. But the Constitution provided a mechanism for amending the Constitution. Therefore the Constitution, and the Second Amendment thereto, are not absolutes.

Furthermore, there is no absolutely clear definition in the Second Amendment of what these “arms” are supposed to be. It is illegal to own nuclear weapons or missiles. Are these arms? It is illegal to use, and in most cases to own, machine guns. Even the NRA has not dared to call for the legalization of private ownership of machine guns and nuclear weapons. The right to bear arms is therefore limited, not absolute, even if you were to interpret the Second Amendment as an absolute commandment from God.

One could interpret arms, within the Second Amendment context, as whatever is necessary to maintain a militia. But we don’t have militias anymore. There are groups of people who think that the government is restricting their rights, for example, to polygamy. Does the Second Amendment give them the right to have arms to resist the federal government from enforcing laws against polygamy? Could not Warren Jeffs claim that the Second Amendment gives his followers the right to armed resistance? Would this be an example of a militia? And, if so, his followers could most certainly use machine guns and cannons and nuclear weapons to defend their compounds, since the Second Amendment does not prohibit them from doing so. I am sure this is not LaPierre’s interpretation. But he has told us that it is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of absolute truth.

LaPierre, and many NRA extremists (a term LaPierre rejects), are using absolutist terminology that is usually associated with religion. Conservative religious leaders consider all of their beliefs to be absolute, and that God has given them the right to enforce their religious beliefs on others. The NRA is promoting a new religion: the absolute right to bear arms, as absolute as God Himself. The absolute right to bear arms is not found in the Bible, by the way. Jesus said, “Put away your sword, Peter; for those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” But the NRA is promoting a new religion in place of Christianity. And, like many other religions, the NRA religion sways people to adhere to its claims with visceral emotion rather than with facts. I am not saying that gun-rights advocates have no facts; I am just saying that whatever facts they may have are irrelevant when LaPierre talks about “absolutes.”

The recurring habit of conservatives to call all of their beliefs “absolutes” and to give them cosmic religious authority is one of the reasons that I consider traditional religion to be dangerous.

The talk of “absolutes” has made reasonable dialogue impossible. From the NRA viewpoint, there are only two choices: unrestricted ownership of weapons vs. total helplessness. The NRA has not permitted any discussion of intermediate possibilities. For example, what about stun guns? Could those be used as an intermediate form of school protection? I know that stun guns have a very limited range. But at least they provide some protection without actually killing people. At close range, a teacher’s stun gun could incapacitate a school shooter and allow his gun to be confiscated and for him to be subdued. What would be the strengths and weaknesses of a school stun gun policy? I would be interested in hearing this. But there can be no such discussion so long as the NRA divides the issue into helplessness vs. a full armor of assault weapons. I might want to hear a discussion of some intermediate possibilities regarding gun ownership and restriction; but I do not believe I shall ever hear such a discussion.

This is exactly the same approach used by creationists. They claim that if you do not accept a young Earth then you are an atheist. The NRA says you either accept unrestricted availability of weapons or else total defenselessness. Nothing in between. They have insisted on absolutes: an absolute dividing line between darkness and light, as between sun and shadow on the Moon. But this is Earth, with twilights and dawns.