I have to say that while I agree with the call for more regulations on gun ownership, that is only part of the problem. We live in a society which glorifies violence and which relies on violence to achieve its objectives, both internationally, where drones are only one of the ways the US government is slaughtering innocent people, and domestically, where heavily armed police terrorize communities
they are sworn to protect. The glorification goes on in the news media, in films, in tv shows, etc. In such an atmosphere, one would expect individuals to be much more likely to resort to violence to deal with real or perceived complaints, and statistics show that to be the case. For example, long ago, I interviewed two Israeli women from a group called Women against Occupation. They told me that the incidence of violence against Israeli women is very high, and they attributed it to Israeli soldiers returning home after committing atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. If you train people that violence is a good way to resolve problems and if you glorify violence, you should not be surprised when the society becomes imbued with violence. So, by all means, let us try to clamp down on assault rifles and other firearms, but do not be fooled into thinking that that will eliminate or minimize the violence which is endemic in US society.
I also read the passionate plea which is circulating by the mother of a young boy who has frequent episodes of intense violent rage. All human societies and all countries have such people, and current medical knowledge does not have effective treatment for them. So, the question is what can be done to minimize the damage and why do we see so much more of it in the USA than in other developed countries. The phony austerity campaign which has infected the world has certainly cut back on funds and facilities to treat individuals prone to senseless violence, and the USA has been a leader in austerity for decades. That means first of all that mentally disturbed people are much more prevalent here, particularly outside of any kind of socially supportive environment which could help to minimize violence. Second, the promotion and glorification of violence that I discussed above makes it more likely that people with real or perceived grievances will turn to violence. Third, the availability of weapons such as assault rifles makes it easier for violence to become catastrophic violence.
The first two factors are highly intertwined with the agenda of contemporary capitalism and would require a massive revolution in our society to change them. The third is more of a reform, and it is conceivable that we could fight for it and win. Many people are discussing, for example, banning the sale of weapons that are only of use in slaughtering people and the ammunition that they use. That is certainly a rational thing to do so long as we realize that the larger factors would be left untouched. A very large number of such weapons are already in circulation, and it seems unlikely that most of them could be confiscated. Even if one of these tragedies is prevented by such actions, it is still worth doing. However, we can expect that there will continue to be such human disasters, and we should be prepared for the opponents of gun regulation to use them to undercut regulation. I can already hear them saying: You see. You regulated gun ownership and use and you did not stop mass killings with guns. It will be difficult to prove that we cut the number from 7 a year to 5, for example since these are essentially random events with some nonrandomness stirred in, such as copycats, for example.
In summary, there are some things we can do short of rebuilding human society from scratch, but those things will have limited effect. Whether even those limited actions can be done depends on us. I like to refer to a statement by the character Mother Courage in Berthold Brecht's play. She observes that there is hot anger, which quickly fades away, and cold anger which fuels real activism and which lasts until something real is achieved. The days after a tragedy like this one are filled with statements of hot anger, which may provide some release to powerful emotions but do not have any long-term effect. What we need now is sustained cold anger which prods and prods until some real change, however small, is achieved.
