In recent weeks, there have been several high-profile mass shootings in the United States. In Gilroy, Calif., on July 28, 2019, a man killed four and wounded 13 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival before being killed by police.[1] On August 3, a man killed 22 people and wounded 24 others inside a Walmart store in El Paso before being captured.[2] The next day, a man killed nine people and wounded 17 others outside of a bar in Dayton, Ohio before being killed by police.[3] A man killed seven people and wounded 25 in a rolling shootout with police between the Texas cities of Odessa and Midland on August 31.[4] The first two shootings appear to have been perpetrated by white nationalist terrorists[5,6], while the Dayton shooter had Antifa sympathies and violent misogynist views.[7,8] The Odessa-Midland shooter had no obvious political agenda, appearing simply to be a deeply troubled man who finally snapped.[9]
Gun Control
As usual, these events have provided impetus to leftists who support stricter gun control measures. These run the gamut from universal background checks to confiscation of firearms.[10,11] Initially, it appeared that Republicans might join Democrats in restricting gun access[12], but this now seems unlikely except for a few marginal changes[13,14], as the usual positions on both sides entrench once more. (I will assume that readers are reasonably familiar with these political front lines; those who are not are invited to research the matter elsewhere before reading further.) Meanwhile, in true woke capital form, Kroger, Walmart, and others have virtue signaled against customers who wish to carry firearms in their stores[15], and Walmart has decided to stop selling handguns and some types of ammunition.[16] Those who understand the role that corporations play in modern governance structures will recognize this as policy by proxy; corporations act toward desired policy goals when insufficient formal progress is made, then progressives defend this as a necessary workaround for government gridlock.
But what will any of the proposed measures do? Background checks are already required for most firearms purchases, and the databases are far from perfect. For example, the Odessa-Midland gunman failed a background check and did not go through one for the gun he used.[17] Another instance of failure occurred with the Virginia Tech massacre, when a gunman passed a background check that he should have failed due to his mental health history.[18] A ban on AR-15-style rifles has already been tried from 1994 to 2004, and there was a negligible impact on mass shootings.[19] The frequency has increased since[20], suggesting that other factors are actually responsible. Furthermore, the firepower available to the average American has declined in the wake of the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which banned fully automatic weapons manufactured after May 19, 1986 and strictly regulated those already in private hands. A so-called “red flag law” that allows the state to take possession of firearms from a person deemed mentally unstable and/or a potential danger to others[21] will cause people in that predicament to avoid seeking the help they need for fear of losing their guns, thus producing more shootings. A mandatory buyback or other confiscation action is not only unconstitutional, but would cause a civil war that the state and the Left would likely lose. While one could take the Napoleonic stance of not interrupting an enemy who is making a mistake, along with the accelerationist stance that conditions must get worse before real improvement is politically possible, this could cost millions of lives on both sides with no guarantee that the new social order would be better than the current one.
Heads of the Hydra
It is clear that we must examine American society to figure out what else is wrong that is motivating a heightened level of mass shootings. One can barely maneuver without bumping into a contributing factor to such violence, as there are many problems that lead people astray, deprive them of hope, and turn them against society itself. Our list cannot be exhaustive, so let us focus on some of the most prominent. First, there is the decline of religion and morality. The United States was founded upon a rejection of almost all forms of tradition and authority, including official state religion. But separation of church and state is impossible; attempting such separation only creates a power vacuum that is filled by forces that operate by religious methodology while professing secular progressive liberalism. In other words, the rejection of the Christian cathedral has given us the Cathedral described by Mencius Moldbug, in which the media, universities, corporations, and government bureaucrats work toward common purposes that have little to do with eucivic goods.[22] Although the various churches in America showed resilience for a time, their time appears to be waning.[23] Details of this process and its disastrous consequences are explored here, but the most important results relevant to gun violence are the loss of sanctity of life, the decline of penance as an immaterial technology in favor of a puritanical outrage culture, the loss of a place and institution of fellowship, and the treatment of deviation from progressive liberalism as heresy that renders a person deplorable and irredeemable. It should be no surprise that people who feel no shared sense of humanity with other people would become killers.
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References
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- “El Paso shooting death toll rises to 22 in anti-immigrant massacre”. CNN. Aug. 5, 2019.
- “Ohio Shooter Hit 26 People in Half a Minute”. Associated Press. Aug. 13, 2019.
- Holt, Lucinda; Fernandez, Manny (2019, 1 Sept.). “Shooting Spree Across 15 Miles in West Texas Terrorized Two Towns and Killed 7”. New York Times.
- Gafni, Matthias; Gardiner, Dustin; Sanchez, Tatiana; de Sá, Karen (2019, Jul. 30). “Search of Gilroy gunman's home finds items suggesting massive attack, white supremacy materials”. San Francisco Chronicle.
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- Murphy, Paul P.; Toropin, Konstantin; Griffin, Drew; Bronstein, Scott (2019, Aug. 5). “Dayton shooter appeared to have leftist Twitter feed”. CNN.
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- Voytko, Lisette (2019, Sept. 3). “Walmart Stops Selling Handguns And Some Kinds Of Ammo, Changes Open Carry Policy”. Forbes.
- Moritz, John (2019, Sept. 2). “Gov. Abbott decries failed background check for the gunman who killed 7 in Odessa, Texas”. Detroit Free Press.
- Luo, Michael (2007, Apr. 20). “Cho's Mental Illness Should Have Blocked Gun Sale”. New York Times.
- DiMaggio, C.; Avraham, J.; Berry, C.; Bukur, M.; Feldman, J.; Klein, M.; Shah, N.; Tandon, M.; Frangos, S. (Jan. 2019). “Changes in US mass shooting deaths associated with the 1994–2004 federal assault weapons ban: Analysis of open-source data”. The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. 86 (1): 11–19.
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- X, Malcolm. “Message to the Grass Roots”. Speech, King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, MI, November 10, 1963.