Ethan July 27, 2012 News

The Price

(Ethan Gates)– Last weekend my parents and I were talking about the shooting that had just taken place in Aurora. We’ve all had the same conversation recently, possibly multiple times. Expressions of disgust and regret. A rehashing of the few known facts and some of the frenzied speculation. And a hopeless query into what should be done to prevent such senseless violence. We have the list memorized. Everyone does. Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech, Columbine… they rolled off our tongues without a thought.

Then I actually bothered to put some thought into it, and realized to my own horror how many I had forgotten to even put on that list. Red Lake, Minnesota, 2005. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (the Amish schoolhouse shooting), 2006. Newark, 2007. Northern Illinois University, 2008. Chardon, Ohio, 2011. Etc., etc., etc.

That last one took place maybe half an hour from my Cleveland suburb. Three high school students were shot half an hour away from my house and within a year I completely forgot about it.

That’s how regular these tragedies are. Like clockwork, once a year, we turn on our televisions and see a breathless news anchor earnestly counting the dead and wounded. Distraught witnesses and family members are interviewed. The same, eerie footage of the outside of the school or shopping mall or movie theater or wherever is played over and over and over again. The shooter is identified and we find some disconcerting student ID or driver’s license photo. We insist to ourselves that we could’ve spotted such insanity right away, when we know that dammit, all driver’s license photos just look like that. That night there will be a candlelight vigil. In a few days the president will visit the town. And after a few months, just when we’ve almost forgotten, the shooter will be sentenced. And we’ll tuck it away in our minds. It’s over. It never needs to bother us again.

Until next year. Until the next mass shooting. Until someone else’s world is shattered. Because apparently this is not going to stop until every damn person in this country has witnessed, participated in or been a victim of such unfathomable violence.

Somewhere along the line, we accepted this. Was it after Columbine? Was it before? I don’t know, but I do know that soon, Aurora will mean nothing. It will have changed nothing. We will debate prevention for a couple weeks, and maybe there will be some increased security at large movie theaters. It won’t matter. No one will try that again anyway. It’s old hat. The next shooter will find a new way to get their name on the TV. And make no mistake, there will be another shooter. Because that’s the price we’ve paid. The cost we’ve accepted.

The price for what? I don’t really know. For the right to own assault rifles and Glocks? Is it really so little? Or do we require tragedy, some shock to the system, just to keep going? To remind ourselves of how fragile and precious our life is? Do we really require the sacrifice of others for that?

I don’t really have the time or the inclination to lay down my feelings about gun control here. I didn’t want to write a post about that. I just wanted to remind everyone, on the one-week anniversary of Aurora, that it happened. And that you will forget it. And that you have accepted that.

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philocompo on July 28, 2012 at 8:50 am
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Do you seriously think that gun control would have prevented the Aurora shooting in any way? The guy had been stockpiling bombs in his apartment. Bombs, not just guns. He had no prior criminal record, AFAIK. I don’t think difficulty in accessing guns would have stopped him from carrying this out. And additionally, there was a clear no guns policy in the Cinemark theater (which is why the audience was unarmed). Apparently that wasn’t enough to stop him either.
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MysteryDoor2 on July 28, 2012 at 10:52 am
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Do I think gun control would eradicate gun violence or mass shootings like this? No, probably not. Disturbed people would most likely find a way to carry out their horrific plans one way or another. But to me, gun control proves that at least you’re TRYING. Maybe it would just make it more difficult for these shooters to access their guns, and that’s it. But partly it’s about the message you send. And the message we’re currently sending is “Go ahead, buy these tools of killing freely and easily. Do with them what you will. We don’t care.”
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  philocompo on July 28, 2012 at 1:26 pm
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  I understand your concern with making an effort to stop these kinds of tragedies from happening. But pushing for stricter gun control isn’t just ineffective (as you have admitted), it is actually harmful, because the people who will be most likely affected are law-abiding citizens who purchase guns for their own protection. We will still have armed robberies, drive-by shootings, and mass shootings like this, but the difference is that criminals will know for sure that their would-be victims are unarmed and defenseless. The police are there, but they’re not omniscient – in many situations, such as these, they can only arrive just in time to clean up the mess, not prevent it.
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MysteryDoor2 on July 28, 2012 at 2:21 pm
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I’m sorry, but I DON’T admit that stricter gun control would be “ineffective.” My point was only that it would not completely eliminate tragedies – last year’s attack in Norway proved that these things do just happen. But could it limit them? Absolutely, particularly if you do what I would and cut off sales of automatic and semi-automatic weapons completely. Other countries have shown that the equation is simple: reduce the guns available and you reduce gun violence, no matter how many “unarmed and defenseless would-be victims” you’ve supposedly created.
Let’s say we relaxed gun policies even further, as you are suggesting, so that people could carry concealed weapons into that movie theater legally. Do you seriously think that someone would’ve had the presence of mind and ability to fire back and stop Holmes considering a) the tear gas, b) the bullet-proof vest Holmes was wearing, and c) the disorienting effects of mass panic? What if that person accidentally shot other innocents? I don’t understand how introducing more guns into this situation prevents violence.
Let’s even take other similar shootings into account. How many of them ended with the shooters ultimately either killing themselves or being shot by police? The argument of an armed populace as a deterrent surmises that these disturbed people are thinking logically about their own fate.
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  philocompo on July 28, 2012 at 2:49 pm
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  “Do you seriously think that someone would’ve had the presence of mind and ability to fire back and stop Holmes…”
  There is no way I can give you a guarantee that someone would have stopped him if they had a gun on them as well. But take your thought experiment of an armed society to its logical conclusion. Say a sizable number of people in the audience – say 10-20 people – were conceal carrying. Do you think they would all just scramble and try to run away like sitting ducks? I don’t think so. Someone would try to shoot back. And Holmes was not wearing a real ballistic vest – he was wearing a tactical vest (here), which meant he actually would go down if someone were to shoot him. And even if he were wearing a ballistic vest, that doesn’t mean bullets just bounce off you like rubber bands.
  
  It’s true that the tear gas would have made everything more difficult in this case – but as I recall, most mass shooters have not been as well prepared as James Holmes, with tear gas and body armor and cover of darkness. So while it may have been ineffective in this case, it may have prevented more deaths in other scenarios.
  
  What if that person accidentally shot other innocents?
  First, I have rarely (never, actually) seen a report of a person defending themselves using a firearm accidentally killing an innocent bystander. And secondly, even if an innocent or two had been shot, if that led to an overall lesser number of victims (e.g. 5 victims from mass shooter, 2 additional innocent deaths vs 12 victims from mass shooter without any retaliation) – wouldn’t that still be better? You have to prove that introducing more firearms in the equation would mean an overall increase in the number of deaths. I don’t think that’s the case – many criminals would be surprised and choose to run if their would-be victims were to suddenly pull out a weapon and shoot back. Case in point: a recent case of an old man drawing his gun and shooting at armed robbers in an internet cafe. There were NO innocent bystander injuries.
  
  Prohibiting gun ownership would be like prohibiting drugs and prohibiting alcohol. It doesn’t change much – it just makes it worse.
  
  Other countries have shown that the equation is simple: reduce the guns available and you reduce gun violence, no matter how many “unarmed and defenseless would-be victims” you’ve supposedly created.
  As for this, I haven’t done extensive research on it (and you don’t cite any sources here either), but I have an example where that is definitely not the case: Australia.
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  philocompo on July 28, 2012 at 3:06 pm
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  An additional thing to think about is why do we rarely here any reports of murders and mass shootings done at gun ranges? Following your logic (i.e. more guns=more violence), we would have reruns of Shoot out at the OK Corral weekly perhaps, at America’s gun ranges and shooting clubs. Yet we don’t. Mass shootings never occur at police stations either. And the Fort Hood shooting, where it occurred at a military base – the soldiers were unarmed and defenseless. Several have occurred at schools and universities – where it is almost a certainty that nobody is armed.
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philocompo on July 28, 2012 at 2:58 pm
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Ah, that last link about Australia didn’t work. Here it is.
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MysteryDoor2 on July 28, 2012 at 5:16 pm
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I’ll concede that Holmes was particularly well prepared and that my point about his vest was not well thought-through. And as a side note I’d just like to say thanks for already making this a reasonable debate of ideas rather than buzz words.

Your response about there not being shootings at gun ranges or clubs is misconstruing my point, though. I’m talking about society at large. As for evidence about other countries, I believe the majority of evidence points towards “fewer guns=less gun violence.”
Here’s an (admittedly a bit outdated) study of the correlation between gun ownership and homicide/suicide rates:

Click to access cmaj00266-0071.pdf

Here’s an article about Japan’s strict gun laws and how they experience essentially zero gun violence in that country:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/

A relevant PolitiFact article that uses UCLA and WHO studies that support the correlation:
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2012/jan/27/jim-moran/rep-jim-moran-says-us-gun-homicide-rate-20-times-h/

And this article has a few encouraging statistics that suggest gun control doesn’t even have to be all that restrictive on total gun ownership: more than a quarter of homes in Canada in Switzerland own guns, yet bans on assault weapons OR more thorough licensing and registration can lead to less gun violence.
http://voices.yahoo.com/international-gun-laws-show-firearm-availability-is-310337.html

If nothing else, why does it have to be so convenient to purchase a gun? Shouldn’t it be difficult to purchase a device which is specifically designed for killing, whether the intent is to use it for criminal purposes or self-defense?

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