What Will It Take to End Mass Shootings?
Part two of four of Lego Legacy Legislation: What Is It, and How Can it Solve Our Problems? Gun Control Edition
Seeing one horrific death of a child after another from mass shootings doesn’t appear to be enough to stop mass shootings; but the more we focus on preserving the freedom of the gun owner while protecting the rights of those who might be harmed by guns, the more likely we will be able to prevent gun violence. “What?!” you might be saying, “Why should we care about preserving the rights of gun owners?” It’s because each time there’s a governmental threat to ban guns, the sale of guns goes up and mass shootings still occur.
We all need to think with our teacher/parent minds here—what’s the first thing a defiant person does when you tell them they can’t do something? They prove you wrong by doing it. What happens instead when you offer the freedom of choice, teach risk/benefit assessment, and point out natural consequences? People make better choices, don’t feel controlled, and are more likely to step into the responsibility of freedom with pride and conscience. We all need to get out of the habit of telling people what to think, and into the habit of teaching how to think. Human beings are driven by reactance to survive—taking people’s freedoms away does not work. If we want to stop driving the momentum of more gun violence, we have to stop perpetuating the threat of laws that take freedom away and use language that supports freedom of the gun owner in the name of protection for each and every one of us.
What is Freedom?
As I’ve written before and will write again, freedom is the state of being free: the right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint (within laws that govern and protect inarguable harm to others). That’s where we get stuck, the “inarguable” part. Now, let’s briefly look at freedom from both abortion and vaccine debates. In each case, one side is arguing that the other side is causing harm. Both of those issues are arguable from either side as to what may constitute as harm, who is harmed by the actions of another, and what the very definition of “harm” is in each case. However, when it comes to guns there is no such debate. Both sides can agree, for the very intent and purpose of a gun is to harm. A gun is not a decorative knickknack, it’s a weapon intended to kill. Even if under the guise of protection, it’s protection by way of harm. A gun is a firearm that was created to cause harm, and to protect people from harm, by threatening harm to those who threaten to harm—or of course, to kill animals for food or sport. There is no other purpose for guns. That is their one and only function: harm. So, when an 18-year-old wants to use their freedom to buy a semi-automatic rifle, it’s a simple and reasonable question for the person who is selling it to use their freedom to ask, “Why?”
John Cassidy reported in The New Yorker that in Israel, a pro-gun country, one needs to be over the age of 27, if they haven’t served in the military, before they can even apply to own a gun. Then they must have notification from their personal physician that they are mentally stable and pass a gun safety test before they are issued a government license permitting them to own a gun, and not every applicant is approved. If we know and all agree that the primary purpose of a gun is to harm, which could put each and every one of us at risk, it should not be an easy thing to purchase. It’s not taking any one person’s freedom away to require a process to buy a gun which could protect the personal freedoms of many others.
We’ve Been Here Before and Succeeded
We can look back at how the tobacco industry was systematically altered by a series of seemingly small acts that led to significant changes as a guide on how to protect the second amendment while also preventing mass shootings. When the FDA required tobacco companies to print the surgeon general’s warning that cigarettes cause cancer, directly on each package of cigarettes, it was not enough to get people to quit smoking; but shutting down public places where people could smoke was. It used to be legal on TV to advertise cigarettes directed at children in cartoons; now it’s not. Restaurants, airplanes, buses, and trains used to have “smoking and non-smoking sections;” now they don’t. Tobacco companies used to be able to sell cigarettes to minors; now they are prohibited from selling to anyone under the age of 21. One “Lego law” at a time can change the gun ownership landscape, and everyday citizens have the power to make this happen. People who want to smoke still have that freedom, they just no longer have the freedom to impose the risks of smoking onto others.
Ok, I’m Listening. Tell Me More. Empower Me to Create Change.
New laws start with a lobbyist who writes new legislation for an elected official to introduce. In the March 26, 2019, Vice episode entitled, “This is how to hire your own D.C. Lobbyist,” we meet the founder of “Lobbyist 4 Good” Billy DeLancy, who explains that it is “a crowdfunding platform that lets everyday people hire a lobbyist to get their voice heard and make actual change on Capitol Hill.” $5,000 will get you a part time lobbyist for one month and up to 35 meetings with congress and staff to take your issue to Capitol Hill to get new gun safety legislation written.
In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, I watched an impassioned video clip of Steve Kerr. He slammed his hands on the table and yelled, “When are we going to do something?!” I was moved to tears and grateful that he called out the senators who could make a difference. I saw the emotional and compelling Jimmy Kimmel response too. Steve is the NBA basketball coach of the Golden State Warriors. Jimmy a talk show host with access to nearly any celebrity. Both of these powerful men, and the wealthy athletes on each team, and every celebrity who tweets out “thoughts and prayers,” collectively have enough money to hire all the lobbyists needed to get insurance gun laws in every city, in every state in America. We can all do something about this today. We know what needs to get done, and we know how to do it. The next step is taking that action.
But We’re Told that Gun Laws Don’t Work
Critics of gun insurance proposals have claimed that criminals will simply disregard the law. I concur, for that’s usually what criminals do. The question we want to ask ourselves is—are mass shooters generally criminals? The one who just killed 19 children wasn’t a criminal. In fact, most mass shooters are typically young men who procure guns from sources in which the proposed gun insurance laws would dampen.
Remember, the goal of “Lego Legacy Legislation” is not to come up with one perfect law to protect us against one giant problem. Rather, it’s designed to build a better world for the legacy we leave behind, one Lego at a time. Voltair’s words ring true: we mustn’t let perfect be the enemy of good (enough). Sometimes done is better than good because good can always get better. It’s time to get gun insurance laws done. Today!
No one has made smoking illegal by implementing smoking laws. People can still choose to dangle their cancer sticks from their lips if they want to, but now that most clubs are smoke-free, musicians like my husband and vocalists like myself and my daughter, no longer have to worry about getting lung cancer as a result of performing for a living. (Now, we get to worry about Covid instead.) Requiring each gun to be insured if it’s to be used, will not make guns illegal or infringe on the constitutional rights to own a gun, but it will add another layer of protection to preventing mass shootings.
This concludes Part Two: What Will It Take to End Mass Shootings?
In Part Three of Lego Legacy Legislation: What Is It, and How Can it Solve Our Problems? Gun Control Edition, Explains How To Insure A Gun Solution
Sage Justice is intensly sincere. Balancing wisdom and humor she most often writes deeply personal solution based pieces about the enduring virtues that connect us all: love and healing. She is an award-winning playwright and critically acclaimed performing artist who has appeared on stages from Madison Square Garden in New York City, to The Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. Ms. Justice is the author of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, an activist, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and an alumna Artist-In-Residence of Chateau Orquevaux, France. She is a co-founder of The Unity Project which fuses activism with art, to educate and inspire, with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness. She has a series of short reels about living with the rare genetic disorder, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that you can find in a highlight reel on her Instagram page @SageWords2027
.photo by Margot Hartford