Guns / Firearms, Violence

The Next Gun Massacre Is Coming

If past is prologue, death in the form of a gunman will happen again, very soon.

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The next terrorist massacre, or “active shooter” incident as we like to call them in the United States, will be carried out by a white male, or perhaps a Muslim or Christian extremist.  Or not.  The shooter may be unstable, having purchased his guns illegally.  Or he may be someone who purchased his guns legally and then became unstable.  He may target your children’s school, where there are no guns, or someplace where there are plenty.  He may be of any race, religion, or national origin.  He doesn’t care.  He is prepared to die.

Someone with a concealed weapons permit may stop him, or, the permit holder may not intervene.  The permit holder may miss his target, killing more people, or he may save the day.

The active shooter may kill me next, over grades or this blog post.  Or you.  Over nothing.  Or the active shooter might kill multiple persons just for who they are or where they are.  The only certainty we have with an active shooter is that he (or she) will kill, and he doesn’t seem to care about whether he dies in the process.

We won’t have to wait long for the next active shooter.  Given the number of incidents in the United States this year, it could happen today.  If past is prologue, death in the form of a gunman will happen again, very soon.

His actions will cause a backlash, creating more victims.  If he is a Muslim extremist, peaceful Muslims — the vast and overwhelming majority — will cringe as they too begin to fear for their lives.  If he is a Christian extremist targeting a Planned Parenthood, he will cause women to fear for their lives as they seek to take care of their own health.  If he targets a school, parents around the country will hug their children more tightly in the morning, wondering if they will ever see their children alive again.  If he targets a college or university, he will silence speech, and stifle education.  If he targets a gay nightclub in Orlando or a Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, he can instill terror on a whole nation.

In the schools, there will be active shooter drills.  In my youth, we had “duck and cover” drills in case of earthquakes, nuclear bombs, or I supposed as a child, zombie invasions.  Unlike those drills, the useless training of which was never required, active shooter drills are a matter of life and death.  Turn out the lights, students. Get away from the windows.  Hide.  Fear.

Meanwhile, there will be talk.  There will be lots of talk.  There will be talk from the right about how more guns deter crime.  There will be talk on the left about how there is plenty of data that shows the contrary.  There will be talk of other countries with far lower active shooter stats after gun control, and an equal number of speakers discussing how “per capita” we aren’t the worst, although I think we all agree we don’t wish to be the most violent civilized country.  Politicians will offer “thoughts and prayers,” and nothing else.  Nothing but talk.  All that talk will all be repeated next time.

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The only thing that is certain is that there will be another active shooter.  And he will massacre innocent people.

There will be talk about the fact that active shooter incidents have reached epidemic proportions.   We won’t bother to research, think, or analyze our way through that epidemic.  Instead, we’ll search for the easy answers, labeling the person extremist, crazy, or a terrorist, depending on who he is.  But we’ll never know why.

Our discourse about guns has become polarized.   I doubt it is necessary to carry an assault weapon into a Target, although I see the benefit of having some style of gun if one enjoys hunting.  Even reading that last sentence angered two groups.  The middle ground, whether a reasonable position or not, is as dead as the next victims of an active shooter.  We do all of this with a complete absence of information.  We possess a willful ignorance of the subject, because of the intense feelings it generates.  We are outraged, move on, and are outraged again.  A cycle of violence.  We are the abused in a gun culture that refuses anything but absolutes.

As we as a society fetishize guns, we lose our other values and intellectual curiosity.  And lives. We will insist on guns in classrooms, without consideration for whether there are other effects from guns such as limiting speech.  Or, we will call all legal gun owners “gun nuts” hell bent on violence.   The peaceful Muslim and the typical gun owner have something in common here.   Those of us who have been threatened with guns, shot at, or shot, know one other thing we have in common, too.  None of us want to be on the business end of a gun.

At this point, one would expect me to propose some sort of solution.  That’s not going to happen.  We as a culture have a gun fetish.  “There is no solution” because we refuse to look for answers.  The rest of the world has to a much greater degree addressed this problem.  But we won’t do anything but talk.  And die.

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Duck and cover.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here.  He is way funnier on social media, he claims.  Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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