Stricter Gun Control is for Everyone Else
By Albert B. Kelly
In the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about the gun violence that occurred at a house party last week in Fairfield Township that left 3 dead and 11 wounded. The devastation will be multiplied and spread well beyond the 14 families whose loved ones were either killed or injured. There will be renewed calls for tighter gun laws and the usual effort to distinguish between responsible law-abiding gun owners and everyone else.
It’s the “everyone else” I’m focused on. There is some merit to the discussion about responsible law-abiding gun owners and everyone else because everyone else might be anyone from the guy in the shadows who hands over a grimy wad of cash for a stolen piece to the grandmother who leaves a loaded gun in the nightstand next to her bed. But even that discussion misses the point if it only focuses on how someone got a gun or where they got it or how they secure it.
For all I know, a half of “everyone else” are responsible law-abiding gun owners up until the moment they’re not. I’m not talking about those with obvious mental illness or criminal intent because it would be too easy to try and dismiss the 200-plus mass shootings since the start of 2021 as resulting from mental illness or criminal delinquency. Although blaming mental illness or delinquency is tempting, especially if you have a hard time imagining yourself shooting another person, but we don’t get off the hook that easily.
Maybe it’s the pandemic or the hatred in our politics or racial and ethnic fear reaching its tipping point or some combination of these but there is madness in the air. The word “zeitgeist” comes to mind meaning the defining spirit or mood of the times and the defining mood or spirit of these times seems filled with fear and violence and a callousness that cries out for more gun control and more restraint, not less.
In the 8 days following the tragedy in Fairfield Township which occurred on May 22nd, there have been several shootings around the country with double digit body counts. That same evening in North Charlestown, South Carolina 1 person was killed and 14 injured at what was described as an unauthorized concert. Also that night in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Monarch Nightclub, two patrons got into an argument and started throwing shots killing 2 and injuring 8. One of those killed was one of the gunmen.
The next day (May 23rd) in Youngstown, Ohio at the Torch Club Bar & Grille, 3 people were killed by gunfire and 8 injured at around 2:30am and 3 days later in San Jose California, an employee of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority showed up at a control center at 6:30am and killed 9 co-workers before killing himself. And four days after that on May 30th, three people jumped out of an SUV at the El Mula Banquet Hall in Hialeah, Florida and opened fire killing 2 and injuring 24 people.
There’s no single definition of a mass shooting, but using the metric of multiple victims there have been 21 such incidences in 15 states with 31 dead since the gunfire erupted in Fairfield Township. It is not known how many of the shooters were previously among the ranks of responsible law-abiding gun owners nor do we know how many of the shooters in the 200-plus mass shootings so far in 2021 previously fit that bill.
My guess is that some were up until that moment when they weren’t. Stricter gun laws are no guarantee of anything, but I’m not looking for guarantees, I’ll settle for anything that builds in restraint and accountability whether a national data base, background checks, waiting periods, restrictions on carrying a weapon, or “red flag” laws and we haven’t even touched on banning assault weapons.
It’s been a quarter century since any meaningful legislation has come from Congress, but that’s what’s needed now. Stricter gun control isn’t intended for the responsible law-abiding gun owners who remain responsible and law-abiding as they’re not the ones doing the shooting. It’s for everyone else; those who get caught up in moments of rage at some slight whether real or imagined, those swept up in the “zeitgeist” carried along by resentment, fear, despair or hatred whether it plays out in their homes, at work, or at a party on an early summer night.