So, I was reading an article on CNN, Facebook, or someplace about the current ongoing debate about guns in America. In it, the author suggested that we need a “moon shot” moment along with the associated national effort to effect change in gun violence in general and mass shootings in particular.
In September, 1962, President Kennedy spoke at Rice University and laid out the goal: “to send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth”. This was to be done within the decade. Kennedy did not outline how to do it, but he clearly stated a measurable goal and a deadline by which to accomplish it. In July, 1969, the goal was accomplished.
So, suppose you are giving a speech at the foot of the Tower on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. This mall in front of the tower is the site of the August 1, 1966, shooting committed by Charles Whitman. In your speech, you are going to give a Kennedy-esque goal along with a deadline by which it happens. Your goal has to be something more concrete than “no more mass shootings by the end of next week”. It has to be something more along the lines of “By the end of 2025, the United States will not have experienced a mass casualty shooting for the previous 12 consecutive months. We will commit whatever national resources are required to accomplish this goal.” Heck, even throw in, “We do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard.”
So, put another way, what does the solution to gun violence look like? Two extremes: through some magical force, all guns in private citizens’ hands are confiscated and melted into slag. The guns simply no longer exist. Oooooorr, gun violence has all but disappeared because everyone in the USA over the age of 10 years is packing serious heat. Anyone who gets out of line is shot dead before the carnage gets going.
What does the USA look like when we have eradicated gun violence in general, or mass shooting events in particular?
The author of the piece I read suggested that we should agree on the characteristics of the solution before we can begin to discuss methods.
You don’t need magic or the supernatural. All you really need to do is to change the attitude of the American people and their perceptions of gun ownership, to basically continue the trend of the last few decades which is less guns per household because people voluntarily CHOOSE to not own a gun.
You aren’t going to do that in 10 years, sadly…it will take much longer. Partially I honestly think is because of the anti-gun movement, ironically enough. Try and take something away from someone and a percentage of them are going to fight harder to keep it. Have them voluntarily give it up and they won’t. Somehow you’d need to shift the average Americans viewpoint to something more like that of, well, the attitude of pretty much all of the other top-tier nations, i.e. that they don’t, by and large, want guns and think it’s perfectly fine for the government to heavily restrict them…and to voluntarily just turn the things in with no fuss and no muss.
Not sure this will fix the violence issue in the US, but might shift the violence to something other than a gun as a first resort. I honestly don’t see a ‘moon shot’ gimmick plan thingy working for this, but I’ll be interested to see what other 'dopers think on this.
If lots and lots of major motion pictures hammered on the theme – the way, now, that they glorify guns (John Rambo, I’m talkin’ about you!) – then it might produce a gradual cultural change.
We turned cigarettes from cool to uncool in twenty years. We could do it with guns.
(Probably wouldn’t be profitable. Shoot-em-up movies sell a lot of tickets.)
Yeah gradual cultural shift seems to be the most likely path - from what I can tell, going to the moon appeared to be an aspiration that resonated broadly across the nation, so to me it doesn’t seem likely that any sort of “grand plan” to eliminate gun violence would succeed without a shared vision.
As a non-American, it blows my mind that people still use the 2nd Amendment to justify the right to bear certain small arms, that largely do not enable people to function in a militia that would either allow them to stand up to a tyrannical government OR to replace the need for a large military. It seems to me that it is largely cultural baggage and an inherently conservative constitutional system (not in the liberal/conservative spectrum, but more in the “difficult to make changes” meaning) that prevents the repealing of the 2nd Amendment.
As for the OP though, I don’t see how an “everyone armed to the teeth” solution could possibly guarantee that no mass shootings would occur (and definitely couldn’t guarantee that shootings on the whole would go down). If everyone and their grandma could carry a gun, would that have changed the outcome in Vegas? So a “all guns confiscated and destroyed” solution seems like it would be the direction it would have to go, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Improve social conditions in a few neighborhoods in a few cities that are responsible for the majority of gun violence. Start with St. Louis, New Orleans, Detroit, DC, Chicago.
You would have to disband the NRA first. They have way too much political pull! Politicians are too indebted to them, they are afraid to vote for bills and laws that the NRA deems against the rights of gun owners and their agendas. It is a sad state of affairs. I don’t think the founding fathers meant it to be this way, at all!
At first sight I was going to say the OP is impossible to guarantee: all non-tiny countries suffer mass killings, even if it is just a tiny fraction of the number of incidents as the US.
But going along with the OP and allowing for pie in the sky, maybe there are technological means? So you have armed drones covering most of the outdoors, and then all public indoor spaces require you to pass through special turnstiles that will not let you go through while holding metal.
I’m not saying this is sensible, or that there’s any possibility of the general public being comfortable about it. Just getting involved in the brainstorming.
I mean, it’s all that or maybe gun restrictions and licensing?
What legal basis do you imagine would allow this to happen?
Or are you envisioning an FDR solution? As in, pack the Supreme Court with enough of “your” Justices, and, viola! Anything you can think of is now A-OK Constitutionally speaking?
The solution I like is to say, “back away from the slippery slope,” and treat guns like other tools that are dangerous. Require folks to have a license before purchasing them, showing that they’re trained in the use of a gun. Require all sales to happen through approved channels that involve a background check–no gun show loopholes. Require all guns to be insured. Require proof of insurance before purchasing ammunition (or ingredients for making ammunition like gunpowder).
If we’re going moonshot level, require all ammunition to have markers–codes etched in the shell, chemical flags in the ammunition–that enable tracing ammunition back to its source, to facilitate enforcement of laws against illegal ammo sales.
We’ll never eliminate mass shootings, but we can cut them down to the point where we don’t have more than any other nation at peace.
What do you suppose the effect would be if you tried to forcibly disband the NRA? Again, IMHO this is exactly the wrong direction to take if you really want to effect change.
Culture is an emergent phenomenon and cannot be manipulated directly by government action. Any attempts to change the gun culture of the US directly are doomed to fail. Disbanding the NRA would not magically cause its voters to disappear.
What would work is to quintuple the number of police while decriminalizing drugs. If there were more police around then it would be much harder for shooters to find unprotected places. People would feel safer and not feel the need to arm themselves for protection. Decriminalizing drugs would remove much of the profits of the drug trade and gangs would have much lower stakes to fight about.
This far, using less than moon-shot technology, every attempt to control gun violence has resulted in people rushing out to buy guns and increasing levels of gun violence. So I think the moon-shot approach will result in every single person in this country owning multiple guns and shooting at each other. This may eventually result in an end to gun violence once everyone is dead.
Mass shootings get more media attention, but criminal urban violence, guns in dysfunctional homes, and unnecessary violence by police are all bigger problems than mass shootings — and they would probably be easier to address than psychotic mass shootings.
Why are there so many mass shootings in the U.S.? Availability of guns contributes, but is not the main problem IMO. Finland, Norway, France, Canada, Austria, Iceland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia are all developed countries with more than 0.24 private guns per capita. How often are there mass shootings in those countries? Is there something about the U.S. which fosters mental disturbances?
OP specifically asks about “mass casualty shooting.”
Millions of Americans own guns, want guns, use guns, and are not willing to give them up.
The Constitution gives them a right to own them.
The only hope for gun control lies in judicial fiat. There is absolutely no way to repeal the 2nd Amendment because you’ll never get 2/3 of the Senate or 3/4 of state legislatures to go for that. What liberals CAN hope for is a solid liberal majority on the Supreme Court- if Merrick Garland had gotten on, there’d have been a strong chance that the Supreme Court would have ruled by now “Well, how about that, the Second Amendment ONLY means that state governments have a right to National Guard units! Who knew?”
The problem is, “resonating broadly across the nation” is sufficient for a positive program, that is something that says “Let’s do this thing”, but it’s not sufficient for a negative program, that says “Let’s not do this thing”.
For the Moon landing, all we needed was enough votes to win the election, and have the government provide the funding. The 50%+1 of the voters who wanted to go to the Moon could then just get on with the job, and just ignore the naysayers who grumbled to themselves about wasting tax dollars in space.
But that doesn’t work so well if you’re trying to eliminate something. Abortion used to be illegal (and socially unacceptable), but abortions still happened. Gay sex was also illegal and socially unacceptable, but gay people still got laid. Prohibition banned alcohol, but people still got drunk. All sorts of drugs are currently illegal, but people still get high.
Even if we could elect an anti-gun government that would be willing to try some of the more extreme suggestions for gun control, some significant minority would still oppose it, and do what they had to to get guns, and some percentage of that group would still, on occasion, go nuts and massacre a bunch of people.
