It’s started. The unconscionable and cruel “if only’s.” Especially about the police. The Uvalde, Texas massacre and others like it can be blamed for but one reason: our gun laws are immoral and insane. By assigning any blame to the police, we distract from that dispositive and ugly fact.
We both agree and disagree. I read the French piece a little differently than you. I thought he was addressing, writ small and admittedly with great anger, the Uvalde’s police departments own training manual’s explicit demand for courage and immediate action from its officers. But he/we should all take a breath.
It’s easy to blame cowardice, but it’s also not necessarily true that the officers at the scene acted in a cowardly way. What if they had a legitimate reason to believe that they would be endangering the lives of more children by charging in blindly? We don’t know for sure what happened and we shouldn’t label people as cowards until we do.
The murder of children is a heart wrenching tragedy. It makes us angry at the inexplicable and unchangeable – so we do what humans do. We lash out. We blame the doctor. We blame the lawyer. We blame ourselves. We blame God. All of whom may bear a degree of responsibility.
Where I do agree with you, fully, is that anything that distracts us from ending horrific tragedies such as the one in Uvalde is a horribly wrong-headed thing – including blaming the police, who did not cause the tragedy, but may/may not have responded to it improperly. Gun reform might help, so let’s do it. Now. But it’s wrong to focus with such singularity on gun reform as if this relatively simple idea would cure what is a complex and horrible disease - as wrong as it is to focus on police performance. Even meaningful gun law reform alone won’t stop these tragedies - disobeying the law is not an impenetrable barrier for those intent on their evil. Neither will red flag laws alone nor focusing on alienated men alone stop the tragedies - just as anti- bulling campaigns, as important and widespread as they are, didn’t stop the tragedies. But collectively, all of these things together, might help. Maybe there are other solutions we haven’t considered. I don’t know. It’s a highly complex problem that does not loan itself to one solution answers. And we shouldn’t deal with our anger by allowing ourselves to believe that it does – “If only”. We should face these horrors with a sense of seriousness and purpose that is not distracted either by the fury of our own anger (calling others cowards) or are own desperate desire to believe that if we just did one thing differently we will be able to cast out the demon within us.
David I think you need to challenge your own thinking here. This is a sickening situation and there is a lot of emotion in your response. Work through your thinking:
This is an exceptionally rare event, and there are more guns than people in America, why do you think gun control is feasible? How will you get rid of all the guns? Imagine you work a miracle and abolish the second amendment, then what? How are you actually going to get all guns out of the hands of private citizens? Go door to door, go through everyone’s closets and collect them all and then what? How will you deal with resistance?
Because that is what you have to do to ensure no extremely messed up individual can ever do something like this. America is a big place. It is three times more people than the UK, Australia, and New Zealand combined, with large land borders all of those countries lack.
I would love for guns to disappear from America overnight. But I am not going to waste my time trying to protect my children from guns when there are literally thousands of greater threats to their life and happiness that I can address. You should not be wasting yours either. There are so many more worthy problems that are mundane and not so tragic and impossible to address.
I think it is feasible to restrict or ban military style weapons.
These are rare events and constitute a very small percentage of gun deaths, but these events have a lot of negative knock-on effects in terms of fear and loathing.
I have no illusions that the second amendment will ever be abolished or that all guns can be confiscated.
I do agree that there is an extremely limited amount that a citizen can do about this issue.
You may be right that we are stuck with the status quo.
And you are right that I was ticked off by the focus on what the police could or should have done rather than the real issue, impossible or not to solve.
Nuclear attacks are also rare, but catastrophic events. Are we wasting our time preparing for that? I don’t think we are wasting our time here, complicated problems are often solved through trial and error and take time. If there is a problem, then there is likely a solution, even if it isn’t immediately known to us.
I should add that the most basic health advise is, “eat right” and “exercise”. In my opinion the same goes for gun regulation, mental health and laws. Many diseases cans be prevented, but not all. I still choose to eat right and exercise.
Regulations work in other countries where citizens have access to guns. So, yes, certainly we have no chance of ever being gun-free, although I'd hope that we could have limits on who owns what guns.
Forget the shifting of blame. The simple facts are that guns are too easy to obtain, and the lethality of many is greater than necessary other than in combat. We're never going to eliminate the hundreds of millions of guns out there. But even small steps can get us started on a path to greater gun safety. We all know what they are but the minority rule of our federal government prevents enactment of anything meaningful.
If there were more gun regulations, then the frequency of mass shootings would decrease. Noah misspoke when he said this is a rare event: we have averaged 10 mass shootings per week so far this year, and for the past decade we have averaged a little more than one per day. We, as a nation, should pass the regulations that would save the police from having to run towards gunfire so often.
It is sad to hear so many Americans say that they know what the solution is, but they are resigned to this reality because they feel there is nothing they can do. Well, there is something you can do: Stop voting for those 50 senators who refuse to do the right thing.
That's a great point. You'd think that, for police, restrictions on military grade weaponry owned by citizens would be a priority, if not existential, issue. However, the "defund the police" sound bite really hurt police support for Democrats.
“Defund the Police” was a branding error. They should have hired a PR firm. “Reallocate the Police” would have been better. I’m sure a PR firm could do better. “Defund the police” sounds like “abolish the police” to the republicans, but it was really a call to reallocate police efforts. Not every problem needs “a man with a gun,” but when you call the police, that’s what you get. Sometimes you need a social worker or a mental health specialist. Once you call “a man with a gun,” you get exactly that, and if there is a gun present, it is sometimes used.
I agree. I also think police are underpaid and generally undertrained given the responsibility we give them and the important role they play in society.
Disagree. If it's worth assigning blame for this shooting at all, one should assign a substantial chunk of the blame to the police.
A key part of the police's shtick is that they're supposedly the brave, thin blue line that holds back violent crime; if police are unwilling to even TRY to halt an active shooter when the police are themselves armed, when the police massively outnumber the shooter, and the shooter's confined to one room, what's the point of the police? They're not even living up to their own self-image!
Admitting that might be "a terrible way to attract people to serve in our police forces" but if so: let it scare people away from serving as police! If cops won't do the bare minimum, why hire more of them?
That's not to say that we can't blame easy access to guns as well. But we can blame multiple things, and I propose that the Uvalde police be one of those things.
We both agree and disagree. I read the French piece a little differently than you. I thought he was addressing, writ small and admittedly with great anger, the Uvalde’s police departments own training manual’s explicit demand for courage and immediate action from its officers. But he/we should all take a breath.
It’s easy to blame cowardice, but it’s also not necessarily true that the officers at the scene acted in a cowardly way. What if they had a legitimate reason to believe that they would be endangering the lives of more children by charging in blindly? We don’t know for sure what happened and we shouldn’t label people as cowards until we do.
The murder of children is a heart wrenching tragedy. It makes us angry at the inexplicable and unchangeable – so we do what humans do. We lash out. We blame the doctor. We blame the lawyer. We blame ourselves. We blame God. All of whom may bear a degree of responsibility.
Where I do agree with you, fully, is that anything that distracts us from ending horrific tragedies such as the one in Uvalde is a horribly wrong-headed thing – including blaming the police, who did not cause the tragedy, but may/may not have responded to it improperly. Gun reform might help, so let’s do it. Now. But it’s wrong to focus with such singularity on gun reform as if this relatively simple idea would cure what is a complex and horrible disease - as wrong as it is to focus on police performance. Even meaningful gun law reform alone won’t stop these tragedies - disobeying the law is not an impenetrable barrier for those intent on their evil. Neither will red flag laws alone nor focusing on alienated men alone stop the tragedies - just as anti- bulling campaigns, as important and widespread as they are, didn’t stop the tragedies. But collectively, all of these things together, might help. Maybe there are other solutions we haven’t considered. I don’t know. It’s a highly complex problem that does not loan itself to one solution answers. And we shouldn’t deal with our anger by allowing ourselves to believe that it does – “If only”. We should face these horrors with a sense of seriousness and purpose that is not distracted either by the fury of our own anger (calling others cowards) or are own desperate desire to believe that if we just did one thing differently we will be able to cast out the demon within us.
Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain managed to deal with the issue after school shootings.
There is no good reason guns of mass destruction should be legally available in America.
David I think you need to challenge your own thinking here. This is a sickening situation and there is a lot of emotion in your response. Work through your thinking:
This is an exceptionally rare event, and there are more guns than people in America, why do you think gun control is feasible? How will you get rid of all the guns? Imagine you work a miracle and abolish the second amendment, then what? How are you actually going to get all guns out of the hands of private citizens? Go door to door, go through everyone’s closets and collect them all and then what? How will you deal with resistance?
Because that is what you have to do to ensure no extremely messed up individual can ever do something like this. America is a big place. It is three times more people than the UK, Australia, and New Zealand combined, with large land borders all of those countries lack.
I would love for guns to disappear from America overnight. But I am not going to waste my time trying to protect my children from guns when there are literally thousands of greater threats to their life and happiness that I can address. You should not be wasting yours either. There are so many more worthy problems that are mundane and not so tragic and impossible to address.
I think it is feasible to restrict or ban military style weapons.
These are rare events and constitute a very small percentage of gun deaths, but these events have a lot of negative knock-on effects in terms of fear and loathing.
I have no illusions that the second amendment will ever be abolished or that all guns can be confiscated.
I do agree that there is an extremely limited amount that a citizen can do about this issue.
You may be right that we are stuck with the status quo.
And you are right that I was ticked off by the focus on what the police could or should have done rather than the real issue, impossible or not to solve.
I appreciate your challenge to my challenge!
Nuclear attacks are also rare, but catastrophic events. Are we wasting our time preparing for that? I don’t think we are wasting our time here, complicated problems are often solved through trial and error and take time. If there is a problem, then there is likely a solution, even if it isn’t immediately known to us.
Which is worse, the cure? No guns. The disease? People die. Or prevention? Regulation. I guess that’s a personal choice, but I prefer prevention.
I should add that the most basic health advise is, “eat right” and “exercise”. In my opinion the same goes for gun regulation, mental health and laws. Many diseases cans be prevented, but not all. I still choose to eat right and exercise.
Regulations work in other countries where citizens have access to guns. So, yes, certainly we have no chance of ever being gun-free, although I'd hope that we could have limits on who owns what guns.
Forget the shifting of blame. The simple facts are that guns are too easy to obtain, and the lethality of many is greater than necessary other than in combat. We're never going to eliminate the hundreds of millions of guns out there. But even small steps can get us started on a path to greater gun safety. We all know what they are but the minority rule of our federal government prevents enactment of anything meaningful.
If there were more gun regulations, then the frequency of mass shootings would decrease. Noah misspoke when he said this is a rare event: we have averaged 10 mass shootings per week so far this year, and for the past decade we have averaged a little more than one per day. We, as a nation, should pass the regulations that would save the police from having to run towards gunfire so often.
It is sad to hear so many Americans say that they know what the solution is, but they are resigned to this reality because they feel there is nothing they can do. Well, there is something you can do: Stop voting for those 50 senators who refuse to do the right thing.
Why then do the police usually vote republican? Let's get assault weapons out of circulation.
That's a great point. You'd think that, for police, restrictions on military grade weaponry owned by citizens would be a priority, if not existential, issue. However, the "defund the police" sound bite really hurt police support for Democrats.
“Defund the Police” was a branding error. They should have hired a PR firm. “Reallocate the Police” would have been better. I’m sure a PR firm could do better. “Defund the police” sounds like “abolish the police” to the republicans, but it was really a call to reallocate police efforts. Not every problem needs “a man with a gun,” but when you call the police, that’s what you get. Sometimes you need a social worker or a mental health specialist. Once you call “a man with a gun,” you get exactly that, and if there is a gun present, it is sometimes used.
I agree. I also think police are underpaid and generally undertrained given the responsibility we give them and the important role they play in society.
Teachers too!!
agree!
Disagree. If it's worth assigning blame for this shooting at all, one should assign a substantial chunk of the blame to the police.
A key part of the police's shtick is that they're supposedly the brave, thin blue line that holds back violent crime; if police are unwilling to even TRY to halt an active shooter when the police are themselves armed, when the police massively outnumber the shooter, and the shooter's confined to one room, what's the point of the police? They're not even living up to their own self-image!
Admitting that might be "a terrible way to attract people to serve in our police forces" but if so: let it scare people away from serving as police! If cops won't do the bare minimum, why hire more of them?
That's not to say that we can't blame easy access to guns as well. But we can blame multiple things, and I propose that the Uvalde police be one of those things.
My point is that police are always going to be subject to possible error and fallibility and fear. They're people, like you and me.
We will never remove those human foibles, but we can do something about the availability of guns.
The line of thought that the police are at least partly to blame vitiates the ficus we need on the root problem.
But I understand the frustration people have with the police and the wish that we can live in a country where the wicked "don't get through."
Believe me, i wish for that too.
Thanks for your response.