Thoughts with No Prayers
Two weeks and two mass shootings in the United States, one at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., the other at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
In Buffalo, an 18-year-old man and avowed white supremacist killed 10 Black people using an assault-style weapon. He was subsequently taken into custody by police. In Uvalde, an 18-year-old man using an assault-style weapon he had purchased two days earlier killed 19 school children and two teachers while confused police officers milled outside the school.
The shootings generated the usual response from Republicans who have blocked virtually every effort to enact the most reasonable gun restrictions: thoughts and prayers.
I do not believe in God, so I do not believe in prayer. All I am left with are thoughts.
Anger that is a gut-level fury.
Revulsion at the politicians who disregard the majority of Americans who want reasonable gun control.
Fear for our children – and my grandchildren – who must live with the threat that a madman might enter their school at any time.
Concern for the teachers who train for gun violence and think of how they would sacrifice themselves for their students.
I could fill a dozen columns with statistics that make clear the problem.
The CDC reports that in 2020, gun violence became the number one killer of young people, surpassing motor vehicle accidents and disease.
The number of dead resulting from gun violence of all kinds is staggering.
There were 692 mass shootings in 2021, the most since 2014, when the Gun Violence Archive began keeping records.
So far in 2022, some 640 children aged under 18 have been shot and killed, and more than double that number – 1,594 – have been injured.
Of that number, 140 of the children killed – and nearly 300 of those injured – have been age 11 or younger.
There are guns in roughly 40 percent of American households and far too many children know where and how those guns are stored.
Again, I could fill a dozen columns with the relevant statistics, but what is the point? The numbers do not matter to Republican leaders who send those thoughts and prayers to victims’ families at the same time they block, over and over and over, any effort to stem the tide.
The most recent studies from April 2020 show a majority of Americans, somewhere between 53 and 55 percent, favor some reasonable restrictions such as better background checks prior to purchase, background checks for gun show and private sales, and restrictions on sale of assault weapons and rapid-fire devices.
But party affiliation reveals the deepest possible divide. According to the Pew Research Center, a large majority of Democrats and those leaning Democrat favor some regulation. A large majority of Republicans do not.
With Donald Trump continuing to fire his base with the most ridiculous claims that Democrats want to confiscate all guns, there will be no meaningful shift, and so little chance of finding common ground.
The Uvalde shooting provided the latest discouraging evidence.
Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, argued the shooting was the result of problems with our mental health systems. It was not a gun that killed those children. It was untreated mental illness.
But researchers have shown that mass murderers are not necessarily mentally ill. The compulsion to kill is more often tied to ideology or personal grievances. It is easy to call mass killers insane, but that avoids the issue of gun control. Furthermore, the generalization perpetuates the stigma attached to those who really are mentally ill and who are more often the victims of all forms of violence.
The Uvalde shooter apparently has no history of mental illness. But he does have a history of aggressive behavior, according to his family. Still, he was able to walk into a Texas gun store and walk out with an assault-style weapon.
Efforts at the federal level to improve background checks that would block sales to those with diagnosed mental illnesses or sociopathic records have been routinely blocked, and are now blocked in the Senate as I write.
Absent Congressional action, reasonable gun regulations will be left to the states. Twelve states have regulations that are tougher than those at the federal level. One or two more may follow suit after Uvalde.
But who will take bets that those regulations will stand up in the Trump-packed Supreme Court?
No prayers from me.
But I have my thoughts. Anger. Revulsion. Fear. Concern.
And hopelessness.
