One refrain heard from the NRA after every mass shooting incident by a lone deranged gunman is that it is “too soon” to have a political discussion about guns and gun control – that to have that discussion is to “politicize a tragedy.”
Well, it has been a little over four years since Adam Lanza took an assault rifle and 10mm pistol and killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn.
It has been long enough.
Twenty children, most of them 6-year-olds, were gunned down at the school by a madman with an assault rifle and two handguns.
I spent most of that Friday feeling like crying.
I remembered myself in first grade – overjoyed at learning to read; my first math lessons; our teacher, Mrs. Hiyashi, leading us in singing children’s songs; and so on. Like all children of that age, I was very vulnerable emotionally.
Here is what a 6-year-old little girl, covered in the blood of her classmates, all of whom had been killed, said to her mother when she emerged from the school: “Mommy, I’m OK, but all my friends are dead.”
It was true: she was the only survivor in her classroom. Fourteen of her classmates lay dead in the classroom she had just left, along with her teacher and a behavioral therapist.
It is hard to be objective about such a crime, such a violation of the innocence of children.
My first reaction was that moral depravity on this scale is impossible to make sense of, because it is truly senseless.
But, what if it is true that I just don’t want to attempt to make sense of it, because of where such an attempt might lead?
Don’t you and I owe it to those children to at least try?
What do these children’s deaths say to us?
In general my position on guns can be summarized as follows (and I say this as a gun-owning hunter): Enforce the laws that already exist, and also impose new restrictions.
What I am arguing for is far more intrusive and fine-grained gun control than we currently have in the United States. Background checks, yes, but also in general keep (as a general rule) assault rifles and high capacity magazines (for both pistols and rifles) out of the hands of civilians. I would also suggest instituting mandatory mental health screening if you want to own a gun.
License the ownership of guns, and make certain categories of mental illness grounds for mandatory suspension of that license. Put the burden of proof on the prospective gun owner; if you want to own a gun, you need to take mandatory training and provide documentation from certified professionals that you pose no significant risk to yourself or others. Make the license renewable yearly.
There are those who argue that wide ownership of firearms is our best defense against tyranny.
If I accept the premise that the credible threat of force is essential to deterring tyranny on the part of the federal government, then I think it is necessary to point out that the threat of force needs to be way more credible than at present, so that they get the message really clearly.
Really, the best thing would be for states that oppose some federal initiative to set up a parallel institution with its own intelligence apparatus, weapons procurement, and alternate governmental institutions and courts. We could call these states The Confederacy, and then they could fight a bloody and protracted war to decide whether the federal government should be the supreme authority in the land, or whether the individual states should be able to nullify any federal laws they find “tyrannical” or otherwise disagreeable.
Oh, wait: we tried that already.
But, look. Even if America’s gun laws were designed by the most permissive libertarian, the government will still have cluster bombs, B52s, the Air Force, artillery, incendiary bombs, armored divisions and so forth. If the only thing standing between us and tyranny is our guns, then the cause is already lost.
The usual counter-example is various insurgencies that have worn down the resolve of major powers at various points in history, but the response to that is, if the government is truly tyrannical, it will use whatever means necessary to annihilate the opposition. If it comes down to the ability to exert force, a ruthless enough government will always win.
Our best defense against tyranny is making sure we have strong democratic institutions (including an excellent education system) and social justice, not making sure we have enough arms to oppose it.
Martin Luther King used to say that “Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice.”
Let’s return to the question I raised earlier: What do these children’s deaths say to us?
Maybe it is the case that we are immersed in evil, and by failing to speak and act against it, we failed to protect these children. Perhaps we all share in some way in the culpability for this event.
Our civilization is saturated with propaganda blaring that Violence Solves Problems. Movies, television shows, popular novels and video games affirm this principle again and again and again, to the point that this glorification of violence is, in an odd way, invisible. Maybe events like the depraved slaughter of children at Sandy Hook, and the many other massacres that happen regularly in the United States, are trying to tell us to repent of empire, and the attendant violence by which it and all other empires throughout history have survived.
I believe that a line – a fairly direct one – can be drawn from a civilization that glorifies and affirms the use of violence, and a disturbed individual that makes use of that glorification in a way not affirmed by that civilization.
“But how can you blame me for this horrible crime? I didn’t do anything,” you and I might object.
That is precisely the problem. You and I didn’t do anything.

Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand.

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