Less than a week has passed since the Umpqua shooting, and already the story is beginning to fade from the headlines. The only story I could find about it in today's issue of The New York Times was a rather generalized editorial about gun control and the influence of the NRA.
We need to keep our attention on this story, as there are still a lot of issues to be addressed. Although Christopher Harper-Mercer was the sole shooter in this massacre, a lot more people have blood on their hands, bearing varying levels of indirect responsibility for what happened.
Part of the reason these atrocities keep happening is that the media and the American people, as a general rule, let the shootings go after a brief period of frenzied attention. That needs to stop. Although the shooter is dead, the other people who play a role in making these shootings possible need to be called to account. This is difficult, given the large numbers of people involved, but it is essential if we want change.
My Gut Reaction: It may only take a single person to pull a trigger, but it takes an entire society to give a madman a gun.
Analysis below the fold...
The largest amount of indirect responsibility for the Umpqua shooting has to go to Harper-Mercer's mother, Laurel Harper. Despite knowing that her son had emotional and mental problems, she remained an enthusiastic gun owner, trumpeting her support of the Second Amendment online. As the New York Times reported in the story linked above:
In an online forum, answering a question about state gun laws several years ago, Ms. Harper took a jab at “lame states” that impose limits on keeping loaded firearms in the home, and noted that she had AR-15 and AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, along with a Glock handgun. She also indicated that her son, who lived with her, was well versed in guns, citing him as her source of information on gun laws, saying he “has much knowledge in this field.”
“I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs & AKs all have loaded mags,” Ms. Harper wrote. “No one will be ‘dropping’ by my house uninvited without acknowledgement.”
Harper's responsibility for her son's actions is - or damned well ought to be - criminal. She was disturbed enough by her son's behavior to take him to a mental hospital when he refused to take his psychiatric medication, yet persisted in taking him to gun ranges. In essence, Laurel Harper is 2015's answer to
Nancy Lanza.
However, the extent of indirect responsibility for the massacre goes far beyond Harper-Mercer's idiot mother. There are entire segments of American society that have blood on their hands from this shooting as well as countless others. I will cite individual examples of people who represent these segments; however, the individuals are only small parts of much larger groups.
For starters, there are the Republican politicians who desperately try to deflect the gun issue in order to appeal to the Republican base and court the National Rifle Association. Consider, for example, the repulsive statements of Ben Carson, who basically argued that the Umpqua victims brought it on themselves by not manning up and taking down an armed gunman. He has also said that "I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away." (Yeah, I bet he was a real empathetic doctor.)
Carson represents just one of many politicians who help keep the violence going in exchange for their thirty pieces of silver from the NRA. As Lee Drutman of New America described in The New York Times:
The National Rifle Association poses a credible threat to any lawmaker who crosses it. It uses a clear rating system to evaluate candidates. It helps its 3 million members broadcast their demands. Many will support candidates based on N.R.A. ratings alone. The N.R.A. also spends aggressively in congressional races ($28.4 million in outside expenditures in 2014), and can deliver votes, which is even more valuable than money.
By contrast, groups that support gun control legislation haven’t yet proved they can deliver enough single-issue voters to decide a close election. While these groups are growing in size and membership, they still have a long way to go.
Also contributing to the carnage is a legal philosophy of strict constructionism that misinterprets the Second Amendment as blocking even the most basic gun regulation. This legal sophistry gives aid and comfort to the politicians and the gun nuts, covering the bloodshed with a veil of dubious constitutional arguments. One example of a legal scholar promoting such garbage is
Glenn H. Reynolds, a. k. a.
Instapundit, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. He stated his position in a recent New York Times editorial, promoting the canard that the guvmint is going to march in with jackboots and take yer guns away:
And, if you’re at all a gun rights supporter, to support “reasonable” gun control measures you have to trust politicians who say they only want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazies, not confiscate guns from everyone. That’s hard to do when President Obama — who said in 2008 "I won’t take your gun away” — now says that Australia, with its draconian program of gun confiscation, is a good model.
(Yeah, Glenn, a government buying back a now illegal item from its citizens is just so draconian. Il Duce himself would have gasped in horror. Just keep telling yourself that.)
The biggest group of culprits, however, isn't politicians or legal professors. It's everyday Americans, the ones who send their money to the NRA, the ones who vote in right wing politicians. We're talking about the people President Obama warned about: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In some respects, these people are the most guilty of all. Without their votes, the politicians wouldn't dare countenance the unending cycle of gun violence in our country. Without them, Glenn Reynolds would just be a libertarian crank at a Southern law school. Without the laws they have helped push through, Laurel Harper wouldn't have been able to give her homicidal maniac of a son a massive gun collection.
The blood is on all their hands.