America Ten Years After Columbine

The American debate about gun regulation begins and ends with a tacit agreement that the occasional massacre is the price we pay for freedom. No wonder teddy bears and candles are the only national gun policy we have. -- Dahlia Litwick, Slate

It’s always been a mystery to me. The way so many of my fellow Americans feel about guns. It’s as if a country that is normally sane and thoughtful suddenly loses its mind and adopts a position so extreme that to question it at all is considered anti-American.

I don’t own a gun. My brother had an old .22 (I think) pea shooter when he was a kid. I’m not sure he ever fired it. I sure don’t remember him doing so. And I don’t normally hang out with people who own guns. Or at least who don’t do so ostentatiously. My best friend’s roommate in Georgia once told me she had a pistol, but I never saw it.

When I moved here from Canada in 1991, I knew what that meant. It meant more religion in politics (there is almost none in Canada) and that you couldn’t talk about gun control. And it’s not that I hate guns. Humans have been hunting forever. And Americans have been hunting with guns since the first settlers landed in Jamestown.

No, it’s not guns themselves; it’s the people who use them. I suppose that’s what the NRA means when it says that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. It’s true. But what the NRA never adds is that guns, especially assault weapons and the like, make it a lot easier to kill a lot of people all at once over a very quick period of time.

After all, do we really believe that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold could have stabbed 13 students and teachers to death, or that Seung-Hui Cho could have walked the corridors of Virginia Tech and stabbed 32 people to death in 10 to 12 minutes? Of course not. And any one who is being honest with themselves will agree. (A 1998 study on penetrating cardiac injuries found that the mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart, for instance.)

Guns don’t kill people, but they make it a lot easier to kill people. A lot of people.

I suppose that’s what Dahlia Litwick means when she says that the occasional (I would say regular) mass murder is the price we pay for freedom. The NRA certainly thinks it’s a fair trade. No question the same is true for Republicans. And Democrats are more than happy (or too scared to do otherwise) to trade votes for dead children in a school library. Or murdered immigrants at a community center. Or slain policemen in Oakland and in Pittsburgh.

What I find the most amusing about the real hardcore gun rights people -- you know, the ones who protest when any politician tries to enact laws that will make it easier for police to track guns used by criminals, or that stem the flow of Americans guns to murderous drug gangs in Mexico, or that allow officials in New York to stop guns shops in Virginia from selling weapons that kill cops in the Big Apple, or that stop the sale of ammunition like hollow point bullets -- is their argument that we can’t have ANY kind of gun control because we always have to be ready in case the government tries to make us all slaves. We all need to be able to purchase an Uzi, you know, just in case a black helicopter lands in our backyard and tries to take us to the gulags that Glenn Beck likes to hallucinate about on Fox. And there is no middle ground, no reasonable compromise.

Look, I don’t want to take hunters’ guns from them. And I do believe that people have a right to defend themselves and their property. But try as I might, I still struggle to see why it’s an infringement of anyone’s right to go through a background check at a gun show. After all, we go through all kinds of security checks at airports these days and there are far fewer people killed by terrorism in American each year than die by hand guns for instance. Or in those ‘occasional massacres.’

Or why people object to measures that would help law enforcement do a better job - normally something the right falls over itself to accomplish. Only on this issue do those on the right sound like they belong to the Weather Underground, where everybody has to be afraid of ‘the man.”

But I also recognize that this is a losing battle. Certainly at this moment. The NRA has effectively neutralized most voices, certainly in the Congress and even in the White House. That’s just realpolitiks. As I said, even asking to talk about the issue brings out mass mailings and e-mail bombs that raise “they’re going to take out guns away” hysteria to a level that the NRA can easily raise millions dollars in a couple of hours. Just counterproductive.

So as we sit here 10 years after Columbine (and just a few of the better known ‘occasional massacres’ that have happened since that day) and all we can basically say is, well, too bad. Real shame, eh. Pity that it happened. Why, we ought to do something about that.

Like next to nothing. Or just nothing at all. Nothing.

 

This is a list of some of the mass shootings in the US since Columbine. I included the one from 1984, because I still think it’s one of the country’s worst.

--July 18, 1984, James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald’s restaurant in Southern California, killing 22 people and wounding 19 others.

-- Atlanta,Georgia, July 1999. A stockmarket day trader goes on a day-long shooting rampage, killing 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life.

-- Fort Worth,Texas, September 1999. A gunman opens fire at a prayer service, killing six people before committing suicide.

-- Dec. 26, 2000. Michael McDermott kills seven co-workers at an Internet consulting company in Wakefield,Massachusetts.

-- Washington, October 2002. A series of sniper-style shootings, some carried out from the boot of a car, claims 10 lives, mostly in the Washington area. Many of the attacks were carried out with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

-- Chicago, August 2003. A worker who was laid off shoots and kills six of his former co-workers with a semi-automatic pistol. The shooter had a lengthy arrest record, including for weapons offenses.

-- Birchwood,Wisconsin, November 2004. A hunter opens fire with an SKS assault rifle, killing six other hunters and wounding two after an argument.

-- Brookfield, Wisconsin, March 2005. A man fires 22 rounds during a church service, killing seven people.

-- Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, October 2006. A truck driver armed with two rifles, a semi-automatic handgun and 600 rounds of ammunition kills five schoolgirls execution-style in an Amish schoolhouse, and seriously wounds six others before shooting himself.

-- Blacksburg,Virginia, April 2007. A student shoots 47 people at Virginia Tech, killing 32 before he commits suicide, in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States.

-- Omaha,Nebraska, December 2007. Nine people are killed and five others injured after a 20-year-old shooter armed with a military-style assault rifle attacks shoppers in a mall.

-- Carnation,Washington. December 2007. A woman and her boyfriend shoot dead six members of her family, including two children, ages three and six, on Christmas Eve, using large-caliber pistols.

-- Chicago. February 2008. Six women are tied-up and shot at a suburban clothing store. Five of the women die. The gunman has not been found.

-- DeKalb,Illinois. February 2008. A man opens fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing five students and wounding 16 before turning his weapon on himself.

-- Alger,Washington. September 2008. A mentally ill man who had been released from jail a month earlier shoots eight people, killing six.

-- Covina,California. December 2008. A man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opens fire at a family Christmas party at his ex-wife's home and then sets fire to the house. Nine people are killed in the home. The gunman later kills himself.

-- Geneva County and Coffee County, Alabama. March 12 2009. In a shooting spree that tears through several towns, a 28-year-old out-of-work man kills 10 people, including his mother and a toddler.

-- North Carolina. March 29, 2009. A heavily-armed gunman shoots dead eight people, many elderly and sick patients, in a North Carolina nursing home.

-- Santa Clara,California, March 30, 2009. Six people are shot dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a home in an upscale Silicon Valley neighborhood.

-- Binghamton, New York. April 3, 2009. Up to 13 people are killed as a gunman goes on a rampage at a civic center in the town of Binghamton.