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And Again

Last night, yet again, America saw a terrible gun tragedy. This keeps happening, and we keep doing nothing. A few shootings ago (and isn't it terrible that this happens often enough to make that a valid unit of measure), John Scalzi wrote something in his blog that covered most of what I want to say, and he said it better than I can.

However, there's another side to this and to so many other social and political issues that's been bothering me a lot lately: We're talking about the wrong things.

So, here's my prediction on how the next few days of the news cycle will go:

  1. Lots of tentative finger pointing. "I'll bet that the shooter was a member of a race/religion/political party that I don't like!"
  2. As details unfold, a whole lot of "I told you so" from whoever was right in that random guessing game.
  3. Some knee-jerk reactions about "what we need to do". OBVIOUSLY, we need to either stop selling guns or buy more of them and arm toddlers or something. OBVIOUSLY, we need mental health checks, or maybe we need to keep THOSE people from buying guns, whoever "those people" are -- the verdict's not in yet. (And, if the shooter was a white conservative, then he OBVIOUSLY wasn't one of "those people" -- he was a loner who the neighbors say was a nice guy.) Whatever the argument, it'll be based on dogma, not facts.
  4. NOBODY will be interested in facts, unless they support our agendas. Liberals will throw out statistics about gun deaths, and conservatives will throw out statistics about home invasions and random quotes about Freedom™ from dead white guys.
  5. Occasionally, a reporter will try to slip in a brief mention of the people who are still dying in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, but that'll be pre-empted by Trump's latest misspelled tweet or a celebrity "wardrobe malfunction" or something equally pressing.
  6. After two or three days, one of the conservative wingnut websites (my money's on Alex Jones) will start spouting a nonsensical theory about how this was a secret government operation (or maybe it's Antifa or the UN now -- I've lost track) to make gun nuts look bad. People will laugh it off, but it'll get republished a few times, using slightly more moderate language each time, until your racist old aunt or uncle shares it on Facebook from some conservative news site like patrioteaglenews.ru that nobody's heard of before. There will be a badly drawn meme about the article that will be all over the alt-right websites.
  7. Liberals will start a petition and hold a bunch of candlelight vigils that will be viewed by nobody but other liberals. They will also post a bunch of angry, vaguely accusing tweets. Those liberals will feel great about themselves and how much they care, and they will change absolutely nothing.
  8. After about a week, the really tasteless stuff will appear. Jokes that were never in good taste. Political cartoons with a disliked politician shooting into a crowd. That kind of thing.
  9. Nothing will change. No opinions will be swayed. People will be annoyed because the funerals for these people interrupt their afternoon game shows.

Yes, I'm being cynical and I'm complaining. So, what do I think we should do?
  1. Let's agree that what happened was terrible.
  2. Let's agree that we CAN do something about this. Let's agree that thoughts and prayers are not enough.
  3. Let's agree that this doesn't represent a class of people, whoever they might be. This was one (or, possibly, a few) dangerous crazy people. We don't need a crackdown on anyone or anything.
  4. Let's agree that we need more data. Let's start putting some serious effort into ferreting out the causes of gun violence. You'd think that the "Guns don't kill people" crowd would welcome this (since it's a reasoned alternative to "ban the guns" which, statistically, works pretty fucking well), but they'd rather not talk about the problem AT ALL. This seems really shortsighted to me.
  5. Let's agree that extremists on either side of the debate are not to be trusted. Cardinal Richelieu supposedly said, "Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him." Extremists will twist anything to support their arguments. If they get desperate, they will even try to appear reasonable. Ignore the NRA. Ignore anyone who wants to ban all guns. Look for people who are uncertain.
  6. Let's agree that a good solution, whatever it is, will be measurable. Let's keep track of how well any legislation that's passed actually does what it claims to do, and let's hold those in office accountable if the legislation doesn't measure up.
  7. Let's treat the killer, whoever he or she was, with no respect whatsoever. Let his name be stricken from the rolls of any good thing that he's ever done. Let him die alone in jail and be buried in an unmarked grave.
  8. Let's treat the victims, whoever they were, with as much respect as we can manage. Let's not talk about the shooter on the news at all. Let's share profiles of the victims and all that they did and might have done. Let's make the news about them.


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