June 17, 2014 7:41 AM

Gun violence: As American as Mom, apple pie, and baseball

Eighteen months and dozens of school shootings after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., public-health experts still lack basic information on the roots of gun violence and how best to prevent it. And if pro-gun members of Congress have their way, it will stay that way.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of our country, but, as sick as it sounds, gun massacres are becoming symbolic of America. We’ve accepted the bloodshed and suffering caused by gun violence, and we continue to elect politicians owned by the NRA and who would fellate CEOs of gun manufacturers if ordered to do so by Wayne LaPierre. With school shootings happening on average once a week, we’ve become accustomed to the drumbeat of carnage and death wrought by angry madmen armed with assault rifles. We tolerate open carry zealots bringing weapons into grocery stores, coffee shops, malls, and other public spaces…because the 2nd Amendment trumps everything, even our right to live free from the fear of gun violence.

America is on the verge of becoming a free-fire zone…and Americans stand resolutely mute as the amount and variety of firepower introduced into public life increases exponentially…because more guns only make us safer, right?

We can’t even hope to gain a better understanding of the problem, because pro-gun members of Congress refuse to allow funding for studies on gun violence. Evidently, the working theory seems to be that if the problem is ignored, it will go away and gun manufacturers will be able to peddle death indiscriminately. Either that, or refusing to fund research is a penny-wise, pound-foolish way of ensuring that nothing can/will be done to stop the carnage.

The aim of such research is the same as research into any other health threat, like car crashes or smoking: to use scientific methods to chart the dimensions of a threat, identify remedies and address the problem collaboratively.

That is a different approach from one that views gun violence through the lens of law enforcement or mental health. And that is one reason the gun lobby and its toadies in Congress oppose it. It is potentially transformative, in the way that norms, behaviors and laws involving drunken driving and smoking have been transformed.

We spend billions of taxpayer dollars on preventing terrorism, curbing smoking, encouraging healthy eating and exercise habits, and controlling all manner of other threats to American well-being. Studying gun violence is verboten, because if we begin to understand the causes and can formulate methods to prevent it, the bottom lines of gun manufacturers will be adversely impacted. It’s not about protecting innocent Americans. It never has been. It’s about protecting the gun industry. If innocents have to die…well, that’s just the cost of freedumb freedom.

Given that some sort of horrific, headline-grabbing school shooting now occurs in the United States at a rate of once a week, it’s hard to argue against the idea that gun violence is as much a national pastime as baseball. And, unlike baseball, the season never ends….

The United States is the only advanced, industrialized country with this problem. In less-developed regions there are countries where gun violence is rampant - places like Somalia and the Central African Republic, but those are anarchic places where no effective governmental authority exists. In America, we have a government that some people believe is too big and overbearing, yet when it comes to guns, we might as well have no government at all.

The problem is that Congress and the gun industry don’t care about innocent American lives. If they were burying their own, it would be a different story, but as long it’s someone else’s loved one being buried, where’s the fire, right?

America now has the dubious honor of being mentioned in the same breath as lawless banana republics like Somalia and the Central African Republic, places where gun violence is rampant. We value the right to possess whatever firepower we deem appropriate over the right of human beings to not have their lives cut short by a madman with an assault rifle. We value the bottom lines of gun manufacturers over the rights of parents to see their children survive to adulthood.

How many more innocent Americans will have to die before we wake up and demand that the time for common sense gun control is now? As much as I hate to think in these terms, perhaps it’s going to take a few Congressmen losing loved ones to a madman with an assault rifle before things begin to change. How else will they understand the pain so many Americans feel? Until they have to bury one of their own, gun violence will remain an abstract concept protected by the sacrosanct, immutable, and inviolable 2nd Amendment.

WE DESERVE BETTER.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on June 17, 2014 7:41 AM.

Sean Hannity: Exactly where he belongs was the previous entry in this blog.

They laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at them because they're all the same. is the next entry in this blog.

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