5/26/22

AMERICA WILL CURE ITS GUN MADNESS;
WE'VE DONE MANY BIG THINGS BEFORE
PLUS: 6 New Ideas to Stop Gun Violence

HALF MAST - A flag lowered at Fort Adams in Newport, following mass shootings in Texas and New York

DESPAIR has overspread the country.
   We mourn the 19 children and two teachers murdered by a teenage gunman in a Texas town most of us have never heard of and can’t spell.
   And we weep because we think nothing can be done to stop the slaughter. Just 10 days earlier, another 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. And there have been so many similar mass gun murders in recent years that most of us have lost track.
   President Joe Biden, hours after the Uvalde, Texas massacre, said this:
   When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?
   When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?
   My answer is that we will get it done.
   I know this because I’ve been around almost 80 years,  enough time to witness how similarly big things get done in the United States, reforms that once seemed unthinkable, unimaginable and undoable.
    We've made big steps, which at the time seemed like magical thinking,  but now are so woven into our lives that we take them for granted.
     I'll also offer some suggestions for solutions, not because I’m as smart as I am old, but because I think it’s important that all of us do what we can, including coming up with answers, knowing we cannot leave this to our leaders.
     Here are two examples of reforms that once seemed out of reach:

Drunk driving
   When I was in high school in western Massachusetts, my classmates and i were enthralled as older students spun wild, wonderful stories about how they got totally, completely and absolutely sloshed, then jumped into their their parents’ cars and rocketed through the twists and turns of the Berkshire hills, proof of their daring,  driving skills and undeserved good fortune that they'd lived to tell the tale.
   Fast forward to today, if someone indulged in homicidal boasting, we might leave the room. Drunk driving has become an undisputed taboo, thanks to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and similar crusaders, who’ve transformed adolescent fairy tales into grownup sins.
   And it's paid off: 41 percent of traffic fatalities involved drunk driving in 1985; by 2020, the number was 30 percent, and in some years, that’s dropped as low as 28 percent. Every year, some 6,000 people make it from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve, but decades earlier, they wouldn’t have been around to sing Auld Lang Syne.

Cigarettes
   My parents smoked like coal-crazed steel mills, and neither made it to 70. In the old days, nobody asked whether it was okay to light up in the kitchen or the living room. My mom died two years after she got lung cancer, my dad soon after from heart failure.  
    Around then,  more than 42 percent of all grownups smoked; a half century later, the percentage was 12.5. One 15-year study showed smoking deaths dropped 35 percent.
   When was the last time somebody asked you for a match?

I MENTION THESE EXAMPLES for a couple of reasons. One is that we shouldn’t lose faith in our country’s ability to change. So don’t go running off to New Zealand or other places that have succeeded in controlling guns after horrendous slaughters. Your votes are needed back here at home.
   And secondly, let’s show a little bit of pride in the USA. Remember, we beat the British, then the Nazis; we fought a Civil War, followed that up with the civil rights movement and followed that up with Black Lives Matter. Some things lurch forward, then backwards. They take time, but they happen.
   American history is full of sin and sorrow. But we are also a nation of progress and aspiration, which means that stopping the terror of guns can and will get done.

 I PROMISED SOLUTIONS. They're homegrown and the work of an amateur. They may be laughable. They might not be practical. You may have better ideas.
   But we can’t just sit around while our children get torn to pieces by weapons so fearsome that it was hard for some Uvalde parents to identify their children's bodies.
   Here are my six ideas:

   IDEA #1 – All Guns Kill.
   In the same way we turned against cigarettes, we need a new view of guns. Any guns. Hunting guns. Target shooting guns. Toy guns. All guns.
   Currently, we politely distinguish between nice guns,  which can bring down a flock of geese, versus mean guns, which can take out the Fourth Grade.
   Let’s not mince words: guns are for killing. Sure, your friends and neighbors are good people, who are undoubtedly good with their good guns.
   You don’t have to like them – the guns, I mean. But you can send their owners a subtle, nonverbal message. When someone says:  “Well, I own a gun,” you can scrunch up your nose, signal slight discomfort, sprinkle a little shame and a dash of disgust.

   IDEA #2 – The Annual One-day School Boycott.
   It’s demonstration time. Show politicians that we care, and that we vote, and that we aren’t going to forget, and that we aren’t going to take it any more, and that we won't tolerate the madness.
   A group could declare a day off from school day once a year, every year. This will give us all something to do, an annual Moment of Remembrance, scheduled not the evening after some some crazed 18-year-old with body armor and umpteen rounds of ammo destory 21 lives, but at a time of our choosing.
   Once a year, we will declare our schools unsafe for our children.
   We will honor the dead and the ones that will be dead unless we do nothing.

    IDEA #3 – "Guns" - One-topic Graduation Speeches.
   Every university, every college, every high school that holds a graduation should invite speakers who agree to discuss one thing,  “Stop the Killing.”

    IDEA #4 –  Make ‘Republican’ an Improper Word.
   "Both sides” are not the problem; just one side, the Republican Party.
   The despicable, contemptible, disgusting, seditious, violent and frightening Republican Party is turning more extreme and dangerous every day.
   The lack of progress on outlawing combat weapons, gun registration, background checks, Red Flag laws and all the other stuff is not the result of “dysfunction in Washington,” or the “problem with government,” or the fault of  “the politicians.”
   The proliferation of guns, new laws that make it easier to get and carry a gun, to make firing a gun an everyday thing, is the fault of the Republican Party. 
   Tell your friend, your spouse, you neighbor, your pastor, your lawn guy, the check-out clerk that you love them, but not the Republican Party.
   Republicans don’t care whether the rest of us live or die, certainly not Texas children, who as fetuses were once were protected and venerated fetu, but now, having been born, can be killed simply because they went to school.

     IDEA #5 – You Don't Have to Like Democrats to Vote for One.
    Democrats are insufferable. We all understand that. Democrats, who are perpetual navel-gazers, know this.
   They have bad ideas. They say silly things. They squabble. They get things wrong. They don’t do things on time. They disappoint so often, in so many ways.
   But right now, the country lacks a functioning two-party system. Some day we will have that back. For the time being, we'll have to put up with Democrats, because they are the only folks who are going to do something about guns.

    IDEA #6 – Don't Mope. Vote. 
   Or its clever twin: “Vote. Don’t Mope.”
   If enough people vote, and vote for Democrats, the gun solutions will follow.
  
THE GOAL is to change the conversation, the culture, just the way we've done with cigarettes and drunken drivers. Once the killing of children becomes truly unacceptable, the politics, the laws will follow.
   Joe Biden, in his talk, didn’t propose specific legislation, but called generally for sensible gun reform and noted positive impacts of a now-expired ban on assault weapons that he backed.
   I thought what he really was saying is that reform depends on the rest of us to lay the groundwork for the country's leaders, not the other way around.

    It’s time to turn this pain into action.
   For every parent, for every citizen in this country, we have to make it clear to every elected official in this country: It’s time to act.
   It’s time — for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.
   We can do so much more.  We have to do more.

    The most important threat to children is fatalism, and its evil twin, hopelessness.
    Resignation has become fashionable in the aftermath of the Buffalo, then the Uvalde shootings.   Been there. Said that. Nothing changes. Can't do anything. What's the use.
    All of which is understandable, given the way things are going: the stalled campaign to reverse climate change;  the Supreme Court’s six-robed crusade to squelch abortion and many other freedoms;  the success Republicans are enjoying as they lay their anti-democracy agenda on the rest of us.
     In reality, what prevents democracies like ours from solving our crucial problems is despair, and the way hopelessness and resignation paralyze the processes that have always moved the country forward.
    As Biden said, we can stop gun violence.
   We will, if we work at it and work hard.
    Over time, there will be fewer school shootings and other gun deaths.
   That sounds like a miracle today; in the future, we will take it for granted.