Still, A Uniquely American Problem

 

Still, A Uniquely American Problem

With the Same-Old/Same-Old Conservative Pablum: “Our Thoughts and Prayers…”

“I really don’t want to go back. I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying.”

A 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School after the September 4th shooting.

In the mid-1970s, facing a serious reduction in military contracts as the Vietnam War ended, US gunmakers convinced the National Rifle Association (then, just a credible not-for-profit entity dedicated to gun safety) to create a for-profit sister entity of the same name to mainstream firearms of every description to civilians and to ensure that any government efforts at even reasonable gun control would be crushed as un-American and unconstitutional. The NRA was well-paid and wildly successful. In 2008, for the first time in Supreme Court history, an ultra-rightwing Justice of that Court, Antonin Scalia, wrote the majority opinion in Heller vs District of Columbia, that completely altered the reality of gun ownership in America.

Until that decision, no one really believed that controlling firearms within reasonable limits could ever be unconstitutional. In fact, from 1994 through 2004, there was a federal assault weapons ban (it expired under a sunset clause) that was never seriously challenged. Yet Scalia ruled that gun ownership, with almost no restrictions, was a fundamental right for all adult Americans, protected under the 2nd Amendment. Among the worst Supreme Court decisions in history.

Almost ignoring the language (“well regulated militia”) in that amendment that addressed why it was in the 1789 Bill of Rights in the first place – to allow citizen soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War to keep their firearms in peacetime as well – Scalia elevated a disfavored approach to interpreting the Constitution (“originalism”) that required the Court to explore the historical context when the provision was enacted to ascertain its scope and meaning.

Misciting British law and practice in 1789 (which actually and most certainly did not in fact support his position), Scalia used the era of flintlocks and muskets to find Americans were free to own and keep firearms with virtually no restrictions. So, the modern regulations of semiautomatic assault rifles and pistols were treated as it they were single shot, front-muzzle-loading muskets. You’ve seen the litany of rulings by lower conservative courts, upheld by the Trump reconfigured Supreme Court, strike down statutes and ordinances imposing even the most reasonable limits on guns of all kinds. Oh, and judges have become historical researchers in constitutional matters. A few, very minimal, laws have slipped by… with no real impact on firearm deaths.

But then there’re the findings by the US Surgeon General that the rising tide of shootings in general had risen to a severe medical epidemic and that gun homicides are now the leading killer of children and teens. You may have seen people, live or in photos, shopping in grocery stores with a gun over their shoulder or, as shown above, strapped to their belt. Simply put, Scalia was wrong; judges who followed his logic loosed a flood of guns on the public with few if any limits.

So, on September 4th, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School (in Winder, Barrow County Georgia, about 50 miles north of Atlanta) with an "AR-platform-style weapon" seems to have shot two math teachers and two students, injuring 9 others (some critically). He will be tried as an adult, and his father has also been charged with murder. According to CNN.com on September 4th: “The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.”

According to Students Demand Action, part of Everytown for Gun Safety (cited by the September 4th Newsweek), “gun violence on school grounds rose by 31% last year and that many school shooters obtain their firearm from their home or a relative's house.” “More than 20 schools across the nation have been impacted by gun violence since the start of 2024. The school shooting at Apalachee High School was the 23rd time this year this year a school shooting has resulted in injuries or deaths, according to data compiled by Education Week, a news organization that covers K-12 education.” CNN.com, September 5th.

Speaking before a crowd on September 4th, candidate Kamala Harris reminded a campaign crowd, “It doesn’t have to be that way!” Really? Most Americans remain aghast. Nevertheless, “The Republican Party's platform for 2024 makes very little mention of firearms or gun control, with only a brief mention of the right to bear arms when talking about fundamental freedoms…That contrasts with its last platform, from 2016 and reused in 2020, which dedicated an entire section to the Second Amendment.” Newsweek. Is gun control on the ballot in November? Will the courts reject any resulting gun control legislation anyway? How does a political party, that claims to be pro-family and supports a “right to life,” uniformly support the number one killer of children?

We still have active shooter drills in most elementary and high schools, and many classrooms across the land have “Stop the Bleeding” medical kits in easily accessible places. To gun-lovers, it’s always about tracking the mentally ill who are always the perpetrators, so we just have to identify them and ????. Since the 1970s in California and the 1980s nationally, under the aegis of Governor, then President, Ronald Reagan, most public mental hospitals were closed. You can see the results even today as homeless encampments have a disproportionate number of mentally ill residents, and our prisons and jails reflect half of their average inmate population with mental illness, and more than half of those with serious mental illness.

“Arm teachers,” rightwingers say, but most teachers do not want to be armed. More metal detectors, panic buttons and on-campus cops. Yet the inane mantra of the NRA – “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” – continues to be their refrain despite the insanity of those words. Why does the bad guy have that gun in the first place? What if he (and yeah, mostly males) was a good guy having a bad day, or simply misperceived a threat, or was in transition to be a bad guy? And how many guns were stolen, borrowed, or bought through a straw man or just off the street? Indeed, with more guns in civilian hands than people (including over 30 million AR-15s or their ilk) in the United States, you might think that there should be enough good guys to kill off all those bad guy shooters anyway. If one state has even modest gun laws, a quick trip across the border should fix that… and background checks are still anything but universal.

Clearly, gun ownership is, for a rather large conservative segment of America, more important than protecting their children. So, I suggest this little exercise for gun owners, remembering that even if you are careful with firearms there are so many who really are not (and getting a gun is sooooo easy… and more than half of gun owners don’t even use gunlocks or safe storage). Write down the names of children and teens, family members who are students on some campus somewhere, and mark whom you would say are expendable so that Americans can keep high-capacity, rapid fire firearms as a matter of right. After all, for every school shooting, those kids are there for the shooter to target. They might not be your family… this time… but they are definitely members of someone’s family.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are the only nation on Earth, not at war, where this violence is simply a way of life (or death).