A few more thoughts on gun-stuff, then back to your usual programming

-Many are noting, correctly, that the everyday gun violence that disproportionately impacts poor and minority communities doesn't get the same coverage as suburban rampages do. This, I would think, is both due to racism/classism, and to the difference between a massacre and not-a-massacre. (A massacre of six-year-olds in the inner-city would, I should think, make the news.) But let's say that for whichever not-entirely-reasonable reasons, the front-page news is what inspires action - is that such a disaster? Consider Theodor Herzl, getting inspiration to found Zionism (some inspiration, he was already going down that road) from the Dreyfus Affair. There were far worse things happening to Jews in places other than France - pogroms versus anti-Semitic marching-in-the-streets. But what moved him was that any of this could happen in France. Along not-so-different lines, it may move some that gun violence occurs even where you would least expect it. Which does, yes, indicate a certain fundamentally-ethically-questionable indifference to those living in places where one would expect gun violence. But if the end result is, less gun violence, maybe this is just a less-savory part of human nature inadvertently making the world a better place.

-Last time I got all worked-up about this issue (and I have, every so often, since high school) I did some Googling-type research into how to get involved. And found various orgs that are super-pragmatic to the point of being, well, tepid. The overarching message: nobody wants to take away your guns, but maybe, just maybe, we could ever-so-slightly tweak the law, or better-enforce existing laws, or close some loopholes, and reduce the rate of gun violence. What doesn't seem to exist (correct me if I'm wrong!) is any group asking for the radical reduction of/elimination of the right of private citizens to possess a gun. But, like, the Second Amendment! The pro-gun-control groups are just being reasonable! They may want no more guns, but it's not done to ask for that. My thinking, though, is that if there were some vocal contingent asking for a repeal of the Second Amendment (not an exact parallel legally, of course, but Roe v. Wade wasn't case-closed for those who believe abortion is murder), taking a really radical stance on this issue, the center might shift, or at the very least, cease to move further and further to the yay-guns side. That, and your everyday pro-gun-control folks would seem, to the pro-gun side, a bunch more moderate than they do currently.

-Yes, I repeat myself, but this remains important: I'm not persuaded that we need a National Conversation about mental illness. I mean, maybe we do, but this approach to massacres (assuming it isn't just a euphemism for 'we're not allowed to talk about guns so let's say something else instead') is almost inevitably going to lead to the stigmatization - and further isolation! - of non-conformist, awkward sorts, the vast majority of whom would not in a million years do something like this.

Now, one might say, most gun owners/most guns kill no one, and most off-seeming young men don't, either. But it's both more straightforward to turn on guns than to combat... what, exactly? It seems like there's something of a circular definition of "mental illness" (to do something like X, you certainly would need to be out of your mind), as well as a kind of fuzzy, anecdotal approach to this, where everyone's a psychiatrist, and where we're no longer looking merely for signs of things like schizophrenia, but things like introversion, awkwardness. (The bullied kid: warning signs, maybe also the bully.) It just can't be that some kid (without a criminal bone in his body) isn't into sports, likes wearing black, writes poetry not about flowers, doesn't care even a little bit about Homecoming. Maybe such an individual would get some diagnosis, maybe not. If we get to a point where every personality other than outgoing-and-delightful is a disorder, if we include depression, which likely everyone could get a diagnosis of at least at some point in their lives, under the umbrella of "mental illness"...

Where I'm going with this is, it seems we can either stigmatize guns and risk offending those who, through no fault of their own, grew up to believe private citizens owning firearms is normal, or we can ask high schools and communities to consider the weird kid a ticking time bomb.