After Uvalde: Beyond Easy Answers

We need to focus on the shooter and not on the gun.

Photo by Thomas Def on Unsplash

When the news alert about today’s shooting in Uvalde, Texas ran across my smartphone, I wondered how long it would be until the social media would be filled with angry people. Not long. There was a lot of metaphorical rending of garments about the state of our nation that seems to worship the gun. With every mass shooting, the same messages come up; people care more about guns than they do people, we should take the guns, I don’t want to live in a country where kids can be killed in school, and so on. This anger is understandable, especially with this shooting most of the victims are children. But frankly, none of the angry tweets and posts will change anything. Last I checked, posting snarky tweets isn’t going to change this sad situation.

President Biden wondered when someone was going to stand up to the gun lobby. But is going after Smith and Wesson going to make a difference? Maybe. But his complaint feels rote like this is the question we ask every time there is a mass shooting.

This is actually what bothers me the most, we reach for answers to a question that no one is asking. We reach for those answers like background checks because they make us feel in control in a world that seems out of control. We wonder why lawmakers don’t use the answer that seems so self-evident to us. Maybe it’s because they are in the thrall of the gun lobby?

Laws like background checks are needed to deal with urban gun violence, but they don’t always work when dealing with a mass shooting. Most of the shooters have clean records, so a check wouldn’t show anything amiss.

Politicians on the right also reach for their favored answers like arming teachers or looking for the “good guy with a gun.” Neither idea is going to stop mass shooting events like Uvalde and Buffalo from happening.

None of this means we just shrug our shoulders and return to the business of the day. But if we are going to do something to stop the next mass shooting from happening, it means looking at the situation at hand. We have to ask questions and search for clues instead of reaching for an easy answer. What happened? How did it happen? What do we know about the shooter? Did the shooter leave any signs…