Fear Itself

Together

As President Biden often says:  “We are the United States of America and there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.”  But clearly there is one thing we cannot get together to accomplish.  We cannot, will not, have not; gotten together to protect our children from gun violence.  Gun violence is the number one cause of death for US children (1-19) today (Kaiser).  

It’s not like there’s an argument “for” allowing children to die from guns.  But we are completely unable to muster the will to even attempt to solve the problem that allows (and I do mean intentionally allows) clearly mentally unstable people to blast their way through school doors and murder nine year-olds and adults.   Our leaders send “heart-felt thoughts and prayers” after the fact.  We lower our national flag to half-staff.  We talk about fortifying the schoolhouse doors, or providing more armed guards to  patrol the parking lots and halls.  But we never get to the core of the issue.  No other nation in the world has mass shootings like the United States.  In fact, no other nation in the world would tolerate it.  But we, the People of the United States, do.

Foundation of Fear

Underlying the very foundation of the United States is a tradition of fear.  Franklin Roosevelt described it in his first inaugural speech:  “…(N)ameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  While Roosevelt was describing the economic impacts of the Great Depression, America has acted in fear from the very founding of our Nation.  

The Constitution is based in fear.  Americans were afraid of a chief executive, and carefully circumscribed the powers of the President to keep him or her from being too dictatorial.  The Founders were desperately afraid of a standing Army that would take control.  So they only allowed the Congress to fund it for two years at a time.  Every general officer was specifically approved by the legislature (Article 1, Section 8).

The small states were afraid of the democratic power of the large population states.  So the legislative powers were divided into a popularly elected House and a selected Senate where all states, large and small, were equal.  And all of the states were afraid of the powers they were ceding to the central government.  One way they “balanced” that fear, was to call for the establishment of state “armies”, called militias (Article 1, Section 8).

The states of enslavement were desperately afraid that their immoral economic system might be restricted.  So they empowered slavery. They authored  the three-fifths compromise (Article I, Section 2), a specific ordinance demanding the return of runaway slaves (Article IV, Section 2), and a ban on restricting importation of slaves for twenty-two years (Article 1, Section 9).

Fear Enshrined

And since that wasn’t enough to satisfy some, the Bill of Rights were quickly added to the document.  Those Amendments protected the rights of people against the government.  The right to practice their religion, free speech, free press, assemble and ask the government for changes were defined in the First Amendment.  Rights in the judicial process were protected in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments.  Protection against the standing Army was listed in the Third Amendment.  And a right to have weapons was established in the Second Amendment.

Reasonable Fear

At the edge of the new United States was a frontier fraught with dangers.  The new nation was imposing its authority on traditional Native American lands.  Not surprisingly, the resident tribes struck back against those incursions.  The settlers were fearful.  They could only look to themselves and their neighbors for protection, even the state capitals were too far away for immediate aid.  So every man had a rifle, a means to defend himself and his family against attack.  And most were organized into a militia, to respond to attack as rapidly as possible.

The Southern portion of the new nation was based on an enslavement economy.  As the number of enslaved people grew, the slaveholders need for weapons to maintain control grew as well.  When slaves ran away, armed patrols were sent out to return them for punishment.  And when the enslaved rose up in revolt, the Southern militias were called out to put them down.  Historians identify as many as 313 such revolts starting in 1739, even before the American Revolution (PBS).  It shouldn’t be a surprise that Southern men were better prepared for War in 1861; they’d been practicing for generations.  They were afraid of retribution from the people they enslaved.

The fear of an over-arching government is as American as the Constitution.  So holding onto weapons and organizing against the government is as traditional as the Whiskey Rebellion or the shots fired at Fort Sumter, the Black Panther movement of the 1960’s or the Branch-Davidians of the 1990’s.  America is “all about” guns:  guns and fear.  And that is what makes us different from most other nations in the world.

Fear Today

That tradition of “fear” continues today.  the slave owners of the 1800’s knew one way to assuage that fear is to hold onto guns.  Our politics today are built on fear.  We are afraid of “the cities, full of crime”.  But murder per-capita is actually lower in the biggest cities.  Birmingham, Dayton, Baton Rouge and Memphis are in the top ten of murders.  Chicago is twenty-eighth, New York City and Los Angeles don’t even make the top sixty (neither does Columbus, Ohio, CBS).

We are afraid of “them”.  Politicians build their careers on “us versus them”.  We see it in the culture politics of the far-right: “they” are coming to, “…change your children, steal your religion, and take your jobs”.  And America’s traditional protection against things we fear:  guns.

Of course “they” are coming for those guns as well.

We face a national crisis of murdered children.  And we bring the baggage of a history of fear; fear assuaged by guns.  The problem is this:  if more guns could fix this problem, we’d be the safest country in the world already.  America is awash in guns, with 1.2 guns per person, almost twice as many as any other nation in the world.  But we aren’t safe; instead we are afraid.  Afraid to send our children to school, to go to the city, to shop at the grocery.  And what makes us afraid: those same guns.

And that’s America’s dilemma.

Mass Shootings

Guns and Sadness	10/3/17
A Teacher with a Gun	2/23/18
Don’t Change the Subject	3/25/18
Again	4/15/18
Staying Small	5/3/19
Saving Lives Is Not Politics	8/4/19
The Pain Becomes too Great	8/5/19
Who’s Your Daddy	8/21/19
A Good Guy With a Gun	9/1/19
Rights and Guns	5/17/20
Pittsburgh	6/17/20
Our Choice	12/1/21
Toxic Mix	5/16/22
Apple Pie	5/25/22
Prairie Dogs	6/9/22
The Will to Do It	7/6/22
Hanging Together	8/12/22
Swatted	9/23/22
They Aren’t Pro-Life	9/23/22
Motive, Means, Opportunity	1/25/23
Accepted Losses	2/14/23
German Rights	3/28/23
Fear Itself	3/30/23