Commentary: If you think it's wonderful that kids keep getting massacred in schools, raise your hand.
Didn't raise it, did you? That means we've just agreed there's a problem.
We haven't agreed on what to do.
It's not purely a gun problem. Some mix of pain, insecurity, lovelessness, hopelessness, anger, feeling left out, and too much TV (or video games) leaves a dangerous minority of our young people itching to shoot up a school and be famous for a day. (Other than Charles Alan Whitman, who shot up a college decades ago, I can't remember the name of a single idiot who's done that.)
But it ain't purely a people problem, either. The ready availability of guns helps make shootings, accidental or otherwise, the third leading cause of death among children. Ready availability of modern weapons of war contributes to school shootings. The NRA (like purveyors of stuff that pollutes our environment, induces cancer, or causes obesity or drug-dependency) muscles up with money and misinformation to avoid meaningful regulation or responsibility.
Some say it's a mental illness problem – or that it's because we took prayer out of the schools, or don't spank kids any more. Improving mental health and kids’ values would help. But assume putting religion in schools would work. (Whose religion? All of them? And which hasn't involved violence?) If it somehow discouraged young folks from massacring fellow students, you'd affect the problem in 10 or 15 years, when 19.year-olds would have experienced religion in schools since kindergarten. What do we do in the meantime?
Watching the anger at Monday's City Council meeting, I wished again that more people who know a lot about guns would help craft steps that could decrease deaths without unduly burdening responsible citizens. Although gun enthusiasts were angry, they seemed less angry and threatening than a similar group two years ago. When Mayor Miyagashima noticed that, and started asking if they thought background checks were a good step, instead of laughing or shouting they quietly said, “Yes. Sure.” I sensed that though they're still loyal to the NRA line, the continued bloodiness of schools is softening more folks' resistance to attempting a few sensible steps.
The NRA has its fans worked up that they'll lose their guns. Ain't gonna happen. Even if, politically, you could ban guns, it wouldn't work. It's too late. And the Second Amendment ain't going anywhere. In fact, the NRA's course – absolute opposition to anything that might decrease the bleeding but impair profits – is the only way imaginable that we'd eliminate the Second Amendment. A vast majority want gun-control. Only more and more shootings, with more and more NRA indifference and bluster, could conceivably make that vast majority so sick of guns it might try to amend the Constitution.
It's a complex problem. Slogans and simple fixes won't work. Both sides say we should do what some other countries do; but we've a unique mix of ethnic diversity, open spaces and huge cities, and gun-related traditions. And constitutions protecting gun ownership.
The City Council is right to express concern. Those who brought guns to the council meeting shot themselves in the foot: they merely reminded others how easily a demented fool with a gun could kill scores of people. If I were a counselor, intimidation tactics would encourage me to vote against the would-be intimidators.
How about both sides bending a little to seek reasonable steps?