My heart is broken for the citizens of Uvalde, not only because they have to suffer through this unspeakable tragedy, but because for the rest of their lives they'll have to hear about all the future school shootings in this country knowing both the depths of that pain and that we never learned from theirs.
I get it. At this point, banning all guns from the US is virtually impossible. It's not even foreseeable how you would start a project like that. But while some problems are impossible to solve, we can’t let the fear of the impossible cloud the hope in what is possible. There are still plenty of common sense gun control measures to take that, while none of them are a silver bullet, certainly would add more friction into the process of obtaining a gun, and sometimes a bit of friction is all it takes to keep a snowball from rolling further downhill. We just need the courage to take those measures. "Courage" is even too strong of a word. We just need the collective responsibility to care for our country and take those measures.
There's this thesis that banning guns will really only ban guns for law-abiding citizens, and this opens the door for gun-bearing criminals to exploit the rest of society even more. This is theoretically true. But Australia and the UK both implemented handgun bans within the last 30 years, and this didn't happen. Why would we ever optimize public policy to protect against a theoretical when we have direct case studies proving the contrary?
There's also this thesis that citizens need guns so they can defend themselves against a tyrannical government if this were to ever be necessary (no, Joe Biden doesn't qualify as "tyrannical"). This is theoretically true. But this scenario hasn't happened. And that's not to say there isn't a world where it would. But once again, why would we optimize for preparedness in a theoretical war against our government when we're actively fighting a definite war against our fellow radicalized Americans?
There's also this thesis that we can have guns because the Second Amendment grants us that right. And this is true. We all have a right to bear arms, but if there's anything we've learned from the last 150 years of being Black in America or the last two weeks of being pregnant in America, it's that rights can be taken away from us faster than you can say "Jim Crow." And it might be time to surrender this right. In other words, we all have the right to bear arms, but do we all have the decency to?
We need answers, and I hope this topic sits right next to inflation and Russia in the priority list for the upcoming midterms.
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