In the aftermath of the tragedy in Charleston and after spending the morning hearing about how the US is a racist nation (and by default that means white racism against black citizens), there are lots of things that need to be said.
1. This act was an individual act of racial terrorism. Given the shooter's statements (both during and prior to the shooting), the photographs including the patches on his shirt, that much is a given. But what I am trying to wrap my brain around is why his act is taken as defining a nation or a race and why this is being done by groups who, in other cases of terrorism, go out of their way to absolve larger groups of the misdeeds of a few crazy people. Specifically, we are always told that acts by Islamic extremists are not indicative of the attitudes of the larger Muslim population. In fact, as a general rule, we are told that stereotyping/profiling are discriminatory acts - especially when they include racial or religious characteristics. Still, when one crazy white male does something like this, it is followed by discussion in which pundits and public figures tell us how little we (white people) have changed and that we (white Americans) are a racist nation and when one gun owner does something like this all are tarred with a common brush. Be honest; you will never eliminate individual racism, black or white. There will always be racist individuals.
So, a Muslin convert (who is, by the way, African-American) beheads a white woman and attempts to do so to another; a pair of Muslim terrorists assault a publisher's office in Paris and kill multiple people, two Muslim brothers blow up the Boston Marathon, 9/11, and so on, and in each case we are told "The XXXXX are really good people and this is the act of an extreme minority." Why is that kind of dispensation given in those cases and not one where the shooter is white? Yes, racism still exists and, to be honest and clear, it always will in some quarters. It exists in both white and black America. So does religious hatred and intolerance. And telling us that one group is a perpetrator of it and the other a victim does little but perpetuate it. There are those whose life's work is to accentuate or even create division.
2. Bad people, racists of all colors, do bad things (like see here), but it takes a white crazy person killing black people or children to get the kind of attention we are seeing now. They will use the same tools that good people use to do bad things, from cars, to knives, to guns, to fertilizer. We have tried prohibitions in this country before and have seen how badly they fail and also the unintended consequences of them. Still, that seems to only approach some are willing to consider in this regard. Alcohol prohibition led, in large part, to a burgeoning organized crime industry that we still see flourishing today in the context of drug prohibition. Supply and demand rules the day as long as supply can be found and transported. If demand is there, someone will risk supplying it. Unfortunately for prohibition efforts, there are industrious people both within and without our borders who have been eager and willing to risk incarceration for profit in providing supply - and the odds are clearly in their favor. It is unclear why any rational person would believe that a blanket prohibition on the right to keep and bear arms (let's be honest, that is what many people want, not "common sense gun laws" - to them "common sense" would be that all firearms were under control of the government) would be any more likely to succeed.
First, all those illusions and delusions about "other advanced countries" are both mistaken and misguided. Take France, for instance, and what happened there (as noted above). Let's not cherry-pick our data. Even the data for island nations with strict anti-gun laws, such as Great Britain and Australia, do not bear strict scrutiny with regard to their success in violence prevention (see here). And we cannot forget that we are not an island nation, but share land borders with two nations, one of which is already a pathway through which large amounts of contraband and numbers of illegal immigrants reach this nation (and which suffers its own high level of violence). The other (Canada) is a long, desolate border across which it is suggested threats easily transgress.
3. In the face of such armed aggression, there are those who will say the answer is disarmament. There are those who insist that an armed citizen could not have stopped such acts. Clearly there is evidence to the contrary. Clearly the vast majority of such tragedies occur in places where guns are either prohibited or frowned upon. Places like schools or churches where some delusion makes people think they are safe. We cannot deny reality and it is clear that those wishing to kill others without interference choose places where they are less likely to meet resistance, especially armed resistance. Columbine, VT, Sandy Hook, DC Naval Yards, Mother Emmanuel, and so on.
I know, there are those who will take this as a critique of the victims, as if it is blaming them for their death. That is not the point. The point is when do we face reality, when do we learn the lesson and start to do something about it? You may choose to go through life unarmed and vulnerable. Others will not. You may say, as the Violence Policy Center does, that good guys with guns don't stop bad guys with guns. Of course it is false and their reasoning is shoddy. They determined this by looking tat justified homicides v. other homicides. But thankfully many defensive uses of firearms don't end in the perpetrator's death - in fact if they did, then the VPC would be complaining about that. Data suggest that firearms are used millions of times in self-defense, most often without being fired. But that statistic does not fit the narrative, so it is not cited. If every one of those defensive uses were to end in a death, then the VPC would be all over it. So, for them with their bias, there is no way gun owners win. The good guy notion is a myth because there are so few justifiable homicides; but if there were more, they would call it a "stand-your-ground slaughterhouse".
There is no way that guns will be eliminated from our nation. A full prohibition on firearm ownership will only disarm those who will obey it. The rest will be criminals; either those who were always committed to carrying/owning firearms illegally in the service of committing crimes or those who were legal, law-abiding owners who became criminals solely by refusing to capitulate to such a mandate.
One of those groups will prey on those who do disarm themselves, much as they have always done. The other, in order to avoid persecution and prosecution, will watch in silence but defend themselves when necessary.
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