The human tragedies that unfolded in El Paso and Dayton reflect how our society has become unhinged, loosened from all bounds of human decency and community standards. Rational discourse was the first victim. The heartbreaking loss of life was an almost inevitable result.
Despite the presence of guns in private ownership throughout America’s history, mass shootings are a 21st century phenomenon. Tevi Troy, writing in National Affairs, notes:
“ … mass shootings are a late-20th-century American phenomenon, with a persistent and frightening increase in regularity in the early 21st century…The first mass shooting in the collective American memory was the University of Texas at Austin shooting in August 1966.”
Troy reports that was the only mass shooting in the Johnson Administration. Three occurred under Reagan, four under G.H.W. Bush, eight under Clinton, eight under G.W. Bush, and 24 under Obama. Six have now occurred during the Trump presidency.
What has changed in America? Democrats blame access to weapons that can fire rapidly. Republicans blame untreated mental illness. The problem is, statistics don’t bear either out.
Alex Yablon, writing in The Trace, reports that “According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there are roughly 638,000 machine guns in circulation in the United States, a number that includes both assault rifles like the M16 and more novel products, like the Uzi submachine gun.” With that many automatic weapons in circulation, one would expect a far higher number of mass shootings if the weapon was the cause.
What about mental illness? A study in the Annals of Epidemiology reported in Science Direct found that “Media accounts of mass shootings by disturbed individuals galvanize public attention and reinforce popular belief that mental illness often results in violence. Epidemiologic studies show that the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent…” In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, “…mental health stakeholders encountered a painful dilemma. The goal of keeping guns out of the hands of seriously mentally ill individuals was emerging as perhaps the only piece of common ground between gun rights and gun control proponents; a post-Newtown public opinion poll found that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum favored ‘increasing government spending to improve mental health screening and treatment as a strategy to prevent gun violence.’ But mental health experts and consumer advocates strongly rejected what they saw as the scapegoating of people with mental illnesses—the vast majority of whom, epidemiologic data shows, will never act violently toward others—as if people with mental health disorders were somehow responsible for gun violence in general.”
Obviously, keeping weapons in general out of the hands of those with violent mental disorders is a good idea, but it is not the total answer, not by a long shot. Neither is abolishing the Second Amendment. It is absurd to believe that an individual willing to commit murder, assault, rape or robbery will be deterred by statutes prohibiting gun ownership, although some may argue that in the case of automatic weapons, it may reduce somewhat the number of victims in any one particular incident, assuming the perpetrator, lacking access to a repeating weapon, doesn’t use an even more dangerous instrument such as a home made bomb.
The answers to what caused the mass shooting phenomenon to increase are ones that will make many uncomfortable. By the 1990’s, two events occurred.
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Hillary Clinton, during her presidential bid, answered a question about whom she considered the “enemy” by saying, not poverty, racism, terrorism, but “Republicans.”
The normal cultural and moral restraints that would have had some influence preventing acting out on no longer held much sway, because they were no longer taught.
Paul Barnwell, writing in The Atlantic,
“…my students seemed to crave more meaningful discussions and instruction relating to character, morality, and ethics, it struck me how invisible these issues have become in many schools. By omission, are U.S. schools teaching their students that character, morality, and ethics aren’t important in becoming productive, successful citizens?… Talking with my students about ethics and gauging their response served as a wakeup call for me to consider my own role as an educator and just how low character development, ethics, and helping students develop a moral identity have fallen with regard to debate over what schools should teach. The founders of this country, Jessica Lahey wrote in The Atlantic, would ‘likely be horrified by the loss of this goal, as they all cite character education as the way to create an educated and virtuous citizenry.’ ”
Schools have eliminated teaching the virtues of both a uniting form of patriotism, and any discussion of the Judeo-Christian ethic that is the foundation of American society. Our media substantially overlooks, and even mocks, any concept of traditional morality. On top of that, the concept of value judgement, that there is, indeed, such a thing as right and wrong, has vanished from mainstream discussion.
Perhaps, in a nation of 327 million citizens, it is inevitable that some truly evil or insane individuals will be present and act out. The lack of any grounding in appropriate ethics makes that inevitable.
Illustration: Pixabay