Every year, roughly 13,000 Americans are killed by guns. Let that sink in. More Americans have died from gunshot wounds in the last 50 years than in all the wars in American history. In addition, roughly 26,000 people are injured by guns each year.
Living in a war zone. Gun proponents would have us believe that the answer to all this gun violence is more guns. Arm teachers in every classroom. Send children to school with guns of their own. Take everyone out to the shooting range so we all know how to kill someone. Use more police officers to patrol school corridors. Put signs up everywhere saying we’re all armed.
Call for ingenious problem-solvers: Who wants to live in a country where people are so afraid of one another they live with a gun at their side at all times? Of all the dystopian story ideas, that one takes the cake. We need people who can figure out how to replace the fierce sense of needing a gun with an even stronger need to get rid of it.
I want to say that another way. We need people who can persuade those who think they need a gun to protect themselves from other people (especially people of color), that this is actually a lazy and ineffective approach to their fears. It hasn’t worked. Holding on to the fear isn’t working. Get rid of the fear and you’ll get rid of the guns.
It’s the same process by which we decide we can no longer care for Granny at home – she’s starting too many fires, requiring nighttime restraints, endangering the children and siphoning off time and energy required for taking care of ourselves. Do we want to go on living with the fright of not knowing what she’ll do next, or can we conceive of a way to make it better for everyone concerned?
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Parents tell their teenagers to carefully note where all the exits are in movie theaters and concert halls whenever they go to such a venue. Churches and schools are practicing lock downs. Devices that keep shooters out – steel screens that come down to immobilize the door to a school classroom or a church sanctuary, door locks that operate remotely at the sound of an alarm, bullet-proof chambers for scared little children to climb into until the threat is over – epitomize the new age of assuming that, wherever we gather, our safety is at risk.
Living in a war zone. If the consequences of living in a country rife with extreme proponents of gun rights has not yet terrorized your neighborhood, it sure feels like it is coming soon to a neighborhood near you. That’s what wars do: They spread like prairie fire. Parkland, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Sandy Hook, Connecticut; Orlando, Florida; Columbine, Colorado; Aurora, Colorado; Virginia Polytechnic, Blacksburg, Virginia; Omaha, Nebraska; Sutherland Springs, Texas; St. Cloud, Minnesota. . .
A gun is effectively an instrument of terror. Certain ideas about the second amendment spring from the minds of those who think having a gun is their birthright: carrying guns openly, for example, into crowded rallies or sports events or state fairs or legislative buildings. Those activities, however, terrorize people. Terrorism is no different whether it originates with a person trying to make a statement about his rights, or a foreign religious fanatic, or a home grown political group that airs provocative TV ads, or a lone individual who has a significant mental illness.
Call for peace zones. Maybe we should start with gun-free territories, the way we started with slave-free states to demonstrate equality as a way of life and smoke-free zones to demonstrate healthier living. The list of peace zones could begin with each place that has already had a mass shooting. Wherever such a thing occurs, and within a certain radius of its occurrence, and also within the neighborhoods of all the friends and relatives who are affected by that shooting, no guns will be allowed in perpetuity.
Terrorized victims of such incidents are then granted lifetime immunity from having to worry such a thing could happen to them again. If nearby towns want to be included immediately in an existing peace zone, without waiting to have their own mass shooting, they could vote to join, steadily extending the peace zone over time.
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A group of medical professionals in Chicago recently began to give workshops to bystanders – children and adults – on how to treat gunshot wounds. This is necessary and important because over 4,000 people in Chicago were shot last year, often in front of others.
Living in a war zone. If you find yourself numb to the stories of gun violence on the news every night, numb to the number of mass shootings, numb to the pro and con gun debates, that may be because those events have become fixtures of life in America. Life as we knew it 50 years ago is gone. In its place is an alert and cautious life well known by those who live in a war zone.
Call for post-war peacemakers. The cause of peace needs serious, sustained money and leadership. Grassroots efforts abound, yet this is a national situation. In a country that has been at war with itself for so long, we need politicians – local, state and national – who can energize and mobilize a post-war effort. Leaders: give us your most discerning ideas and budgets that redirect our perspective and our economic focus to the cause of peaceful living.
That “failed democracy” term some pundits have begun to apply to our country is both shameful and a call to action. What is failing is the white male political establishment’s adherence to the dictates of wealthy backers like the NRA. We need leaders who know how to raise us all up into a higher level of discourse about our rights and our responsibilities to one another.
Special shout out to The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Post-war leaders are emerging , many already working hard for peace. Their numbers are growing. Listen to these voices and you will hear a new generation of leaders with a clear focus on inclusivity, cross-cultural respect and commitment to living as equals.
