I’d like to make a confession: I have little hope when it comes to solving the
mass shooting
epidemic. It has plagued our country since the Columbine massacre, which occurred during my junior year in high school. It has shown no sign of abating in the decades since. This is partially because fixing a problem of this magnitude requires fruitful discourse and consensus, of which we have neither. Indeed, our leaders seem interested in little except tribal posturing.
On one hand, liberals would have us believe they can wave a magic wand and “ban guns” in the U.S. entirely. This is the happy-talk of unserious people. The cat is out of the bag when it comes to guns in America. They are everywhere, and we can only track some of them. I have never heard a
gun control
proposal that wouldn’t exclusively benefit career criminals, whose guns are impossible to confiscate.
Nor have I heard a proposal from the Left that would address the most fundamental aspect of mass shootings: the fact that our culture consistently produces maniacs bent on wide-scale and indiscriminate murder. For an ideology obsessed with addressing “root causes,” the liberal fixation on guns in relation to mass shootings is curious. It is well and good to restrict the purchase of high-tech weaponry and implement universal background checks, but gun control won’t stop maniacs from discovering other ways to get the job done. Consider the domestic terrorist who
drove his van through a Christmas parade
last year in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Mass murderers are a determined bunch. The fixation on guns often seems like an excuse to avoid examining the warped condition of the collective American soul.
For their part, conservatives usually bring nothing to the table in the way of ideas. They are roundly mocked by their opponents for offering prayers without solutions; this is not without cause. Authentic prayer inspires fresh insight and action. It is where the faithful encounter the living God, and where He breathes new life into them. Avoidance and inaction are the surest signs that authentic prayer is absent.
Which is frustrating because there are policy solutions for the mass shooting epidemic that conservatives could champion. I’ve recently
made the case
that they would do well to connect the spike in tech-related mood disorders in teens to school shootings. In addition, there is a
plethora of evidence
that links stable family units and regular church attendance — two core conservative values — with mental health and community well-being. Conservatives have cards to play in this game, but they always seem to fold. And voters notice.
At the very least, there exists at least one concrete measure that both sides could undertake independently: all leaders must begin to rebuke attempts to cast a given mass shooting in political terms — especially in the immediate aftermath. The mad dash to leverage the social identity of a given mass murderer for the purpose of scoring political points, which occurs mostly on social media, is the most vile impulse in American life. It demonstrates that we are less concerned about mass shootings themselves than about the fortunes of our own political tribe. It is the surest indication that we lack the capacity to solve this crisis.
The mainstream news media is the sickest culprit in this twisted game. In order to further the priorities of its favored political faction, legacy outlets emphasize certain mass shootings and deemphasize others. The
mass shooting in a supermarket in Buffalo
last year, for instance, drew weeks of coverage because the shooter was a young, white male with racist motives. However, the
mass shooting in a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado
in 2021 (which happened to be across the street from my house at the time) disappeared from the news cycle the moment it was learned the shooter was a Syrian Muslim immigrant.
We all know the routine at this point. If the shooter is a white man, the news media will wax poetic for weeks about the growing threat of white supremacy. If the shooter is anything but a white man, the news media will call for gun control and quickly move on. The
Monterrey shooting
from last week, for example, has already disappeared from the news cycle since we learned the shooter was Asian.
We shouldn’t be able to predict such things with confidence. But we can. The legacy media hasn’t earned its status as the least trusted institution in America for nothing.
Conservatives have their own black eyes in this regard. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the Highland Park shooting last year, notable conservatives on Twitter circulated a picture that
falsely attributed the shooting
to a young person posing in front of the “trans flag.” It was a revolting instance of opportunism.
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Both sides must rebuke this destructive impulse. If not, we will never be able to address the mass shooting epidemic comprehensively. Will it happen? We have precious little cause for hope.
Peter Laffin is a writer in New England. Follow him on Twitter at @
petermlaffin
.
