In observing the reactions, articles, blogs, and posts from many individuals and groups in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, I’m again seeing the propagation of the typical polarizing rhetoric that keeps those with differing beliefs from working together toward a common goal. I’ve seen the staunch gun control advocates immediately scream for tighter gun control laws and the gun rights advocates immediately scream that guns aren‘t the problem and that nobody had better try to take their guns away. Instead of having meaningful dialogue, both sides further entrench themselves in their rigid, dogmatic beliefs and we lose an opportunity, again, to possibly make some beneficial changes in our country.
As has been the case with the other recent mass shootings in Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon, I’ve thought that perhaps finally most people or groups could come together and make an honest evaluation, based on hard facts and evidence, of possible changes we could consider as a nation to try to decrease the frequency of the over 10,000 killings we had in our country by firearms in 2011. Is there anybody of sound mental health who would say that this number is acceptable? But instead, as I noted in the first paragraph, too many people are automatically reacting to protect or profess their previously held beliefs, which results in the walls going up on both sides and the prevention of working together on a common goal.
I don’t know what the realistic answer is to drastically reduce the frequency of deaths by firearms in our country. Since the shootings last week, I’ve attempted to do some data gathering and to look at the statistics, and even that is challenging because it appears that the “facts” being presented are sometimes selected from other possible “facts” to support an agenda.
Arguments for addressing weapon related violence that I’ve seen made by groups and individuals in the past few days have included blaming the media for sensationalizing such tragedies, calling for increased support of and access to mental health services, eliminating the availability of assault and semiautomatic weapons, increasing regulations and requirements that must be met before an individual can purchase a gun, and increasing gun ownership as a means for deterring crimes. I’ve also heard people decry what they call a culture of guns and violence in our country and put blame on the entertainment industry that produces violent video games, television shows, and movies.
A call for a meaningful dialogue to consider these and other options for reducing gun violence should be just that, an opportunity to gather hard evidence and to work together to achieve a goal that everybody should support. Other countries are clearly able to achieve this objective. I’ve read that Japan, a country that has some of the tightest gun control laws in the world, had 10 gun related killings in an entire year, and that Switzerland, a country that has similar gun ownership rates to that of the United States, also has extremely small numbers of firearm related killings. Clearly it is possible to achieve a goal of minimal gun related deaths in a civilized country, and it is a ridiculous argument, although I’ve heard it several times since last week‘s shootings, that it is too late to do anything in our country and that the already high gun ownership rate makes efforts to decrease gun violence pointless.
It seems that we have worked together to tackle other significant problems in our country that we’ve deemed excessive or unacceptable. People have pointed out recently that there was enough agreement several decades ago that AIDS had the potential to medically devastate huge numbers of people that the funding and education were provided to develop a treatment and to effect behavioral changes that have worked well enough to keep AIDS out of the news for years. We also continue doggedly to work toward cancer cures and don’t consider ceasing this work with the thought that it is too late or hopeless or that we shouldn’t bother just because many people will continue to die until cures are found.
One significant difference between developing effective changes to address these medical/health crises versus addressing changes that could be made to reduce gun violence is that the health concerns don’t pull the same polarizing beliefs and protestations from the populace, and therefore there isn‘t the resultant avoidance of the issue by politicians who don‘t want to tread anywhere near that hornet‘s nest of differing sentiment. Those vocal individuals and groups whom are closer to the dogmatic polar ends of the continuum in their gun related beliefs have immediately responded to the Sandy Hook and other mass shootings screaming their rigid beliefs and party line propaganda, which simply fans the flames of emotion for anyone on the other side of the continuum. People then dig in behind their walls of belief and fire their views at the other side, where it simply hits that wall and is volleyed back in similar fashion, and the politicians, at least at the national level, get as far out of the way as possible.
Any reasonable individual, no matter where they fall in their beliefs on guns and ways to decrease gun related deaths in this country, should be able to start from the point of agreement that over 10,000 deaths in a year from firearms is too many. Can we agree on that? Can we be open to the possibility that those on both sides of the belief continuum have something to contribute to a discussion about how to reduce those deaths? Can we work toward this goal even if it means that we have to budge a little bit from our points of entrenchment or if some politicians have to risk the ire of some vocal constituents? I don’t know if it’s a realistic goal to completely eliminate mass shootings or reduce the rate of gun related deaths in America to those of other countries, but doubts of the likelihood of success shouldn’t prevent us from having meaningful dialogue to consider ways we could try to make that happen. Now is the time for those discussions.
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