Again
Three are dead, five injured in a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus in East Lansing last night. The shooter, a forty-three year old man, took his own life when confronted by the police.
The world is sending its “thoughts and prayers”. “We are all Spartans today”, one commentator said, a phrase of solidarity with the mourning campus. Members of the minority Democrats in the state legislature say “…we cannot let hate win”. But thoughts, prayers, love; hasn’t put a dent in the number of mass shootings in our “shining city on the hill”, the United States. It’s the fifth anniversary of the Parkland shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School today, where seventeen were massacred. There have been protests, marches, dramatic speeches and many, many horrifying acts of violence in the past five years. Little has changed.
There have been sixty-seven mass shootings in this new year. In total, 5214 are already dead from guns in 2023, today, on February 14th (Gun Violence Archive).
Recognition
When confronted with mass shootings in the past (the Oxford High School shootings), the leader of Michigan’s Senate Republicans said: “ If we get obsessed with eliminating all risks, we will then develop and evolve into a country we won’t recognize, because we’ll also have no freedoms.”
We have already “developed and evolved” into a country I don’t recognize, a country where gun violence is accepted and normal. There is little hope for change. It’s no good talking about how to “fix” this: we cannot. And rather than propose solutions that will not be agreed to, we need to look at why our nation is so emasculated that we are forced to accept these deaths as inevitable, as acceptable losses.
How did we get here?
Freedom’s Limits
In 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the most famous dictum on limitations on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. In his majority opinion in Schenck v United States (245 US 47) Holmes stated: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Our freedoms, guaranteed in the Constitution, have never, ever, been “unlimited”. The bedrock of the American experiment, the “five freedoms” of the First Amendment (speech, press, religion, assembly, petition), are not absolute. As Justice Holmes said, there always is a limit to their exercise. And there always will be those who claim the protection of those freedoms whose actions are beyond the law.
Some limitation on freedom only makes common sense. Absolute freedom means absolute chaos. The old saying: “You’re right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose,” describes the balance all of our actions require to get along in society. Every citizen of right mind “gets that”.
Unlimited Freedom
But somehow when it comes to the Second Amendment, we have lost our minds. “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The wording is clear, the first section, “…well-regulated militia” modifying the second “…keep and bear arms”. “Well regulated” was the Founding Fathers control on the public, much as “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” controlled the First Amendment right.
But in our “modern” world we have detached the second amendment’s clauses. The current radical view upheld in the Courts is that “well-regulated militia” means every citizen of the United States, from the upstanding to the mentally ill. It no longer modifies anything. Our current Supreme Court has moved to saying that it’s “OK” to yell fire in this crowded theater, whether there’s a fire or not.
We now say that everyone can have a gun. And not just a gun, but a semi-automatic rifle with rapid-fire capability. And that gun can have as large an ammunition magazine as possible, in case a person needs to fire dozens of rounds at a time.
Here in Ohio citizens can carry sidearms without regulation, like the “wild-wild West” of the movies. Friends go to their young children’s birthday parties with loaded pistols strapped to their hip. And maybe in our current world they are right.
Fear Itself
Because, unlike almost any other modern nation in the world, the United States is a nation of fear. We are told to be afraid; of urban areas, of sex offenders stealing children at the library, of the “stranger”, particularly the stranger of color, in the dark. Our fear is “ginned up” by some news media and social media because fear increases “views”, and views mean profits. And our fear is also stoked as a political motivation – “elect ME, and I will protect you from your fears!” And their offer of protection is simple: you can have your own gun.
This is our America. This is the Nation I do not recognize. Because America always was a Nation that solved problems, that built highways and airports and ran wires across the breadth of the country. America always moved forward into the future, we have never cowered from the problems of the present. Except now: we must “be small” to avoid being a target, and of course, “be prepared”. And in this America – that means have a gun.
And until we are willing to face that fear – we will never change. We will cower behind our guns.
