This morning’s New York Times carried one of the most telling op-ed pieces I have read in quite some time. It enlightens all the more by its very predictability, coming right on schedule after the latest American mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. The piece is titled “Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America” and it was written by one Robert Leonard, who is news director for a couple of radio stations in rural Knoxville, Iowa. In it, Leonard attempts to make a case for “understanding” rural conservatives’ “first principles” and “ideals.”
Here’s a sample of Leonard’s argument:
“To my conservative friends, it’s a matter of liberty and personal responsibility. Even after a horrific event like the school shooting in Florida, where 17 people were killed, more gun control would be compromising those first principles. For them, compromising those principles would be even more horrific and detrimental to society than any shooting. What my conservative friends see is not gun control, but rather control, period.” (Emphasis mine.)
And there it is, plain as day: the “freedom” to own a firearm (a “first principle,” based on a distorted but Supreme Court-endorsed interpretation of the Second Amendment) is more important than the freedom to live for the children in Parkland or Newtown. Gun control would harm society more than any number of future mass shootings of children, toddlers, senior citizens and/or assorted men and women. Guns preempt people (at least the people unfortunate enough to be killed by them).
Leonard further explains that “Republicans think the fault lies with the person — the perpetrator of the evil. Bad choices result in bad things being done, in part because the perpetrator lacks the moral guidance the Christian faith provides.”
“The reaction to mass shootings highlights this difference,” he goes on to say. “Liberals blame the guns and want to debate gun control. For conservatives, the blame lies with the shooter, not the gun.”
This is so wrongheaded and simpleminded that it beggars belief. Rational people, liberals included, blame people for these shootings. People are imperfect—this is a universally acknowledged principle, yes? The basic reason that rational people want to impose gun control after these mass shootings is to prevent imperfect people from getting their hands on these weapons. As Britain and Australia have done. As the Scandinavian countries have done. All with demonstrably improved results, i.e., fewer mass shootings (none at all, in Australia’s case).
This is beneficent control. This is society coming together to produce a beneficial outcome for its members at large. It is the very opposite of the cult of the individual that has conservatives under its sway in this country.
There is no such control in America, and thanks to people like Leonard and his friends there likely never will be.
I despise the notion that someone’s “freedom” to own a gun is viewed as more important than someone else’s life.
I despise the fact that Democrats (“liberals”) consistently kowtow to these people, as Connor Lamb just did in Pennsylvania.
I despise the twisted nostalgia that romanticizes gun culture as heritage and a way of life. “It’s been many years since I hunted squirrels and rabbits with my Grandpa Leonard,” the writer says, before fondly recalling that “I retrieved the squirrel, still warm, in the cool Iowa summer morning, and laid it in the pile of four or five he had already shot.” What a tender childhood memory.
I despise our fragmented society for following its predictable path and normalizing the shooting in Parkland, just as it has all the others. You think March For Our Lives will make a difference? Dream on.
I despise the New York Times for running this fallacious argument from the heartland without comment or context.
I despise self-deluded Middle Americans like Robert Leonard and his “conservative” friends. I despise the Republican Party (and the Democrats as well; see above). I despise the National Rifle Association.
I despise rational citizens, including myself, for failing to devise a way to overcome this grotesque American sickness.
But, I do salute Mr. Leonard for his inadvertent public service—his op-ed has made the crux of our cultural divide crystal clear. (I’d like to think this is why the Times published it.) His side (40 to 50% of the country, by most accounts) believes that gun control (merely control, not a ban as many would favor) is more horrific and detrimental to society than any shooting could ever be.
This is what we’re up against. Good God, America—how did we fall so far, so fast?