If the definition of insanity is actually doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, the July 4 weekend provided yet another point for the chart of the nation’s mental health. As CNN notes, this national holiday brought with it over 400 shootings and at least 150 fatalities.
Hideous as that number may be, it’s not as if there was something special about this weekend, at least when it comes to gun violence. These people weren’t shot in recreations of the Revolutionary War, and their deaths didn’t come during debates about the meanings of the Declaration of Independence. These three days could have been any three days in which eight people were shot at a car wash because a guy pulled out a gun and started shooting. Or a golf pro was shot after discovering the bodies of two people who had already been shot.
It’s clear that the way America is celebrating a “return to normal” is by returning to the highly abnormal system in which people settle every score, demonstrate their fear, and exercise every whim, through Americans shooting Americans. Already 2021 has racked up a record number of gun violence deaths and summer is just getting started. And the only gun laws getting passed are those that make this march of death ever easier.
Last month, Missouri joined the ranks of states that have passed preemptive legislation claiming that, even if the federal government passes new gun laws, they don’t have to listen. During the signing ceremony, Republican Gov. Mike Parson showed what a complete fantasy land he, and too many others, are living in.
"You've had the vice president of the United States get up in an open forum—when she was running for president, if you remember this—and any particular weapon she decided she didn't like, she was going to come to your house, onto your front door, and take it away," said Parson. "Well not in Missouri she's not." If you don’t remember this, don’t feel bad, because nothing even close to this ever happened. What did happen was that Harris, as a presidential candidate, insisted that she would use executive action if legislators refused to enact “reasonable gun safety laws,” That’s it.
But this fantasy is spreading across the nation, with state after state banning local law enforcement from obeying federal gun laws. Such laws are clearly unconstitutional. They’re also pointless, since there seems to be no sign of new federal legislation of any sort, as Republicans continue to promise a filibuster of even the mildest reform.
Instead, states like Texas, Tennessee, and Iowa are using the record gun violence as an excuse to … make sure there are more guns.
The Second Amendment is a failure. If it was intended to provide Americans with some level of personal protection, it has failed. If it was intended to provide a national stability, it has failed. If it was intended to prevent crime, it has absolutely failed. It has failed, is failing, will fail, is a failure. And any reasonable people would admit this and work diligently to revise the model of firearm availability in the United States, seeking a way to walk back from a system that is bringing unbelievable levels of violence and death.
There is no point on which the widespread presence of firearms had made life in America in any sense better than in other democratic nations that do not allow their states to be overrun with a plague of gun violence. For those who insist that the only solution is still more weapons—I am sorry you are afraid, and sorry that we let things get to this point. But it’s time to make things better, not worse. And the only way to make things better is by having fewer guns.
Guns don’t create freedom. They promote gun violence, and absolutely nothing else.
The proliferation of both guns and pro-violence laws like the one just passed in Missouri, or the innumerable “stand your ground” laws that authorize people to shoot others simply because they are afraid, aren’t just unreasonable, they are inexcusable. And it’s past time to stop acting as if they make any sense.
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