News of the Charleston massacre hit me with a nauseating feeling of déjà vu. Yet another vicious racist white boy with a gun slaughtering innocents to satisfy his own deranged lust for power and domination. Yet again, the horrified reactions of all of us who become the virtual witnesses for these events as they are replayed through the media. Yet again, a tight-lipped President Obama offering condolences and reminding our nation’s elected leaders that it doesn’t have to be this way — that there is such a thing as gun control.
I have written before about the insanity of a nation that makes it easier for a kid to obtain a gun than a driver’s license or a prescription drug. Victims and their families, from Gabrielle Giffords to the Sandy Hook parents and many more, have tried repeatedly to prevail on the nation’s state and federal politicians to create a process that would enable local officials to know more about who is buying guns, and for what purpose.
Of course, there is always going to be a black market for guns, and no screening process is perfect. Yes, such a system would increase government surveillance on the citizenry, particularly the gun-toting citizens among us. But we accept government tracking in other aspects of our lives, such as health and finance. We allow health insurers full access to our medical records all the time, and no one thinks twice about submitting to a credit check when they’re going to buy a house or a car. So why should it be different for people about to buy a deadly weapon?
Young men are considered by the auto insurance industry to be more dangerous to themselves and others, and parents are resigned to paying higher insurance premiums for our sons than our daughters. Why shouldn’t there also be tighter restrictions on gun ownership for young men, too? And how about some special education, along the lines of driver’s ed, on the responsible use of lethal weapons like guns.
These spasms of violence can happen in any community. Bucolic Berkshire County is not immune; we must all live with the knowledge that at any moment another kid could snap and send his insane death wish out into the world in a hail of bullets. If that kid only had access to a knife, or a laptop keyboard, his hatred might be no less, but the damage done would be of a completely different order of magnitude. I am not a fan of violent video games by any means, but they certainly provide a “safe” outlet for violent fantasies.
I will save for another day some pressing larger questions, including why so many teen boys become addicted to violent video games; why our society tolerates and even promotes media violence on a grand scale; and why we refuse to have a serious discussion as a society about the relationship between virtual violence in the media and actual violence in homes, schools, playing fields and — as in Charleston — churches.
Today, I am grieving the beautiful souls gunned down in their place of worship, where they were working together to build a better world. The racial motivation of this crime makes it especially despicable, yet another example of the way white racism corrodes the moral fabric of our country. Is this the America we want to be? If not, we must work together to manifest the dream recited daily by school children nationwide, the shining vision of “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
