I’ve written before that racial hatred and the love
of guns seem to fester together as part of a noxious stew in the hearts and
minds of some Americans. But recently I’ve become aware of another correlation,
one between domestic violence and mass killings. According to an NPR report of
November 7, 2017, “perpetrators of domestic violence…accounted for 54 percent
of mass shootings between 2009 and 2014.” The data for this statistic comes
from the FBI and media reports as analyzed by Everytown for Gun Safety.
I’m not sure how we can put this information to
practical use, except possibly by keeping guns out of the hands of domestic
abusers. This means, for one thing, current regulations have to be enforced. The
same NPR report cited above points out that “the Texas gunman, Devin Patrick
Kelley [who shot up a church congregation], was court-martialed for assaulting
his wife and their young child in 2012, although this information apparently
was not included in the formal government database that tracks such things.”
The domestic abuse-mass murderer correlation makes
me weep for my fellow males. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not hostile to men in
general. As I’ve said before, I am not anti-male and, in fact, many of my best
friends are men. But there is in our society a certain way of being male that can
spell Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with V and that stands for
Violence. A key feature of this troubling version of masculinity is its
glorification of the male capacity to whup ass or otherwise wreak havoc. I feel
sure that this concept of maleness underlies the actions of domestic abusers
who wind up killing so many.
I have a suggestion to offer with regard to
dangerous males, and I will broach it here even though I realize it is utterly
impractical: What if males were to be made ineligible to own guns? Wives,
mothers, daughters and female friends could own them, but the men would have to
check them out for temporary use - only with the women’s permission.
Okay, this is an impossible dream, but I would
like to point out that if it had been in place over the past 20 years, many
hundreds of people whose lives have been lost in mass shootings would be alive
today.
On a slightly more practical level, why not amend
the Constitution to nullify the individual’s right to bear arms? For decades
the Supreme Court used to rule that this “right” was restricted - as the
framers intended - to those participating in “well regulated militias.” But, when
conservatives gained control of the Supreme Court, they overturned these customary
rulings and expanded this right to all Americans, militias be damned.
Now please note that most democratic countries don’t
insist on the right of citizens to weaponize themselves, and yet these countries
all continue to be securely democratic. We Americans could do the same. And think
about how out of date the Second Amendment is. After all, a militia in the eighteenth
century had the capacity to effectively resist federal forces, but this is
clearly not the case today. I don’t believe anyone with a lick of sense thinks
that the citizens of Lubbock, Texas, (for example) could fend off an incoming
division of U.S. Marines by relying on their household arsenals – no matter how
many AR-15s those arsenals contained.
In other words, the original purpose of the Second
Amendment was to protect citizens from an overweening federal government, but
this Amendment is useless for such a purpose today. What protects us from
having a division of Marines overrun our home towns are the values instilled in
those Marines and their commanding officers – basically, their devotion to
American democracy. We can thank their high school civics teachers, among
others, for those values.
I don’t believe it’s necessary to deprive every American
hunter or responsible gun owner of his or her guns. But I do think it would be a
step in the right direction if we could get gun owners to admit that democracy
does not depend on or even benefit from private gun ownership.
In the meantime, what practical goals can we hope to
reach today? Well, taking my cue from the remarkable young students who flooded
the streets of American cities yesterday, I would say we should hope for:
1. A ban on assault weapons
2. A ban on high capacity magazines
3. Universal background checks for all gun purchasers
And about those students, Wow. Hats off to them. Who would have thought, before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy, that hundreds of thousands of young people could mobilize and organize in such a dramatic and at the same time touching way? I am so impressed. May the Force be with them as they shake Congress to its NRA-funded roots.
2. A ban on high capacity magazines
3. Universal background checks for all gun purchasers
And about those students, Wow. Hats off to them. Who would have thought, before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy, that hundreds of thousands of young people could mobilize and organize in such a dramatic and at the same time touching way? I am so impressed. May the Force be with them as they shake Congress to its NRA-funded roots.
In case you missed them, here are a few pictures of
these young heroines and heroes.
Marching in Washington, DC.
From Evelyn Hockstein, The Guardian
11-Year-Old Naomi Wadler, Washington, DC
By Andrew Harnik, AP
Photo by Joshua L. Jones, Athens Banner-Herald via AP
Once these young activists have achieved their goals,
maybe we can start rethinking the Second Amendment.
