The recent school shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida has resurrected the ongoing debate between those who support increased firearm legislation to combat the increased incidence of mass shootings, and those who feel that such legislation does little to solve the underlying problem.
The
specific language of the Second Amendment states that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall
not be infringed.” It prohibits the federal government from making any laws that would hamper the ability to defend against unlawful violence. Americans have interpreted the wording to believe that every
individual has the unrestricted right to own a gun, but according to former
Chief Justice Warren Burger, such a
belief is “a fraud on the American public” and the right was intended to be
reserved for the purpose of ensuring collective security by arming a state militia.
It was not until the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Columbia vs Heller that the Second Amendment was interpreted as
supporting the individual’s right to own a weapon, “unrelated to service in a
militia” for self-defense. The ruling in the case applied first to the federal
government and was later expanded to include state and local governments in McDonald v City of Chicago.
A Wall Street Journal article on
February 16, 2018 reported that 80% of the worst mass shootings in the US that have
occurred since 2012 involved the AR-15, the weapon used in Parkland. The headline reads “AR-15 Type
Rifles Are Fast, Deadly And Very Popular,” thus focusing attention on the instrument rather than the wielder. A website sponsored by
the NRA states that rifles are far less frequently used than handguns in the
commission of a crime. In fact, the AR-15 has been responsible for less than
10% of all violent shooting incidents since 2000. Regulation hasn’t had
much effect in the past because there are always loopholes in the system.
The public has been led to believe that people who are
mentally ill are automatically at risk to be perpetrators of violent crimes. A federal law in place since 1968 prohibits the
possession of firearms by those who have been judged mentally ill by a
government body or who have been committed to a mental facility without their
consent. The states also have rules that
involve the right of the mentally impaired to own a gun. Hawaii doesn’t allow
the mentally impaired to own a gun without medical clearance, while in
California, an individual is committed to a mental hospital and legally found
to be mentally impaired is banned from owning a firearm for 5 years. However, many of the people responsible for violent crimes had never previously been diagnosed with mental issues, so mental health is not a reliable indicator of a propensity for violent crime, and using such a general standard for predicting criminal behavior is insufficient as a solution.
What would be helpful is to have a way of predicting who
might actually be at risk of acting out on their violent impulses. In a follow
up article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Technology Can Redefine the Mass Shooter
Problem”, writer Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. suggests that technological assistance
might provide some useful indicators, particularly given the wealth of online information that is available through
social media and other sources about an individual’s habits, preferences and
activities. There were many warning signs in an analysis of Cruz’s online presence
that, in hindsight, were ignored. But the flip side in evaluating such
information, as Jenkins points out, is that we might be too hasty in jumping to
judgment based on our own individual biases. The truth is that there IS no ironclad way to
determine who will commit a crime until after the act. To target a
certain population without concrete evidence is a violation of its civil
rights. It is one thing to have rights that may never be exercised and another
to have a right summarily taken away.
By itself, a gun/firearm is merely an object, much like a knife, or
a hammer or a plane. It lacks cognitive capacity and cannot function without human assistance. The outcome depends on the intent of the individual who uses the object. As a friend recently pointed out to me, the
planes that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were instruments in the largest
single mass murder on US soil. The murderers of 9/11 were foreign born young
men who had been ideologically indoctrinated to believe that Americans were
evil. Yet planes are still used as a method of long distance transportation. We
have instead increased our vigilance by monitoring passengers and crew and
imposing uniform restrictions on them.
WSJ Op Ed writer Peggy Noonan, along with Amy Wax and Larry
Alexander in the Philadelphia Enquirer, point to a fundamental breakdown in the
cultural cornerstones of society over the past 50 years as a causal factor for the
increase in violence and mental instability in the population. The generation up
to the late 60s followed a commonly accepted way of living and behaving. The precepts
of the bourgeois culture as Wax says in "Paying the price for the breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture", were: “Get
married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get
the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness.
Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the
country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in
public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.” There was no Internet, social media or
dehumanized entertainment at that time to flood and warp impressionable young minds
with images of violence and illicit or aberrant sexual behavior.
The disturbing change in the culture has created
what Noonan refers to as a toxic atmosphere, as dangerous to the mental well-being
of the nation’s youth as maternal smoking during pregnancy is to a developing
fetus. Noonan quotes data from the
Center for Disease Control (CDC) showing that 20% of children from 3 to 17 have
suffered from mental or emotional illness at some time during the course of
their childhood.In a public address the day after the shooting, President
Trump asked the children who felt “lost, alone, confused or even scared” to
seek help from the adults in the community, their families, teachers and
spiritual leaders.
But what if those
adults are not equal to the task? Both Noonan and Wax believe that society has grown
to emphasize the rights of the adults over the needs of the children, a trend
Wax suggests began with the counterculture movement of the 60s. The adults who
are supposed to espouse the standard cultural values that promoted a strong,
healthy and functional society instead abdicated their responsibilities. Wax says: “The
loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged
groups. That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing
welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the
need for two parents. A strong pro-marriage norm might have blunted this
effect. Instead, the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing
children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, crime, and
poverty.”
Without a strong foundation, whatever is built on it, i.e.,
the lives and stability of future generations, is weak. Noonan uses the
abortion debate as an analogy in examining the mindset of shooters like Nikolas
Cruz towards themselves and their victims, theorizing that they may feel that if
an unborn baby’s life is of no value and can be cavalierly ended, no life,
whether of offender or victim, has any value. Trump emphasized that the way forward is to “...work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity
of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections.” Our attention
should therefore be focused on repairing the void in empathy and connection, in
creating an environment that fosters cohesion rather than isolation, and in seeing
that our youth are given the mental, emotional and physical tools and training to
foster and strengthen, rather than weaken or destroy their self-worth. Only then do we have any hope of stemming the
occurrence of further tragedies.
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