This is an old post, from after Sandy Hook re: gun rights

I wish people understood the difference between church and state. This country was not created under God, no matter how sacrilegious that sounds. It was founded by men deeply distrustful of government overreach and to protect religious freedom (and from religious freedom).

The Constitution is not Biblical Scripture. The Constitution does not borrow from the Bible. It does borrow from other written works, most of which were written in response to mass unrest of their times. We have the right to bear arms, but what does that mean? Does that mean every man, woman, and child, every civilian, gets to carry a gun? Does it mean lawful gun owners get to carry it on planes, or in churches, or schools, or restaurants and shops? Is there any proof that a bad man carrying a gun is solved by a good man carrying a gun? Do we want to go to a school where untrained teachers are carrying assault weapons? I know I wouldn’t, nor would I want my child to. God did not give you the rights inherent in the Bill of Rights. The US government gave you certain rights, nearly all of which have exceptions. You have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to yell FIRE! In a crowded room. You do not have the right to walk naked down the street. Or to wear obscene logos. Or to commit child pornography. You have the right to protest certain events (such as Westboro Baptist Church does, as an example) but others have the right to block you from being heard. You have the right to practice your religion, but you do not have unlimited rights in that area—for example, you cannot practice bigamy or break other laws in the name of that practice. ALL our rights come with certain limitations. It is ridiculous to suggest anything else.

Please understand that some of the reasons being bounced around for the shooting are both insulting to the victims and ludicrous. Like Katrina years ago, people are saying that God is punishing us for our godlessness? Really? God killed 26 innocent students and teachers, because the rest of us needed a lesson? To say nothing that of all the sin in this country, in the West, in the world, this was his punishment? This happened because one mentally ill person made it happen. And because of the systemic support that made this happen (i.e. obsessive protection of gun rights to exclusion of anything else). As an addendum, this was also not punishment for perceived godlessness in schools. No prayer, no Creationism, gay teachers, anything else the Christian right is angry about. It was one crazy person.

This is not the time to double down. This is the time to seriously look at what we can do to prevent future massacres of kids. This is the time to look at gun control measures. To look at mental health measures. To have a very public conversation about what is happening and why.

I wrote that back in December, 2012, after the Sandy Hook shooting. At the time, that seemed like the worst things could possible get and gun reform seemed possible, held back only by a white majority GOP that hated their black president. With any other president, Congress would likely have acted. Maybe not. It is irrelevant to speculate as it did not happen. Instead, things have gotten progressively worse. A look at some statistics are terrible (these come from the website https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence). Between Dec 2012 and June 12, 2016 (the Pulse Nightclub shooting, in which 50 died), there were 994 more shootings. At the time, Pulse was the worst in US history. Then Vegas happened, October 2017, when 59 died. It remains the worst, but hardly the only terrible one. There is the Feb 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17. [UPDATE AS OF APRIL 2023, there is also Uvalde, two teachers and nineteen students killed, and a rash of mass shootings in March and April of 2023.]

Mass shootings continue to rise, even as gun violence in general has gone down. Statistics show that in the US, about 12 of every 100,000 citizens are killed from gun violence, compared to the second highest country in the West (about 3 per 100k), or the UK, nearly zero. Most of the West have relatively strict gun law—even Switzerland, a country that NRA fans like to quote as doing things right—and nearly all have much lower incidences of gun violence. The United States ranks dead last in gun control in the developed world.

Of course, mass shootings are not the only gun-related problem. The number of accidental shootings among children has gone up over the past decade. Suicides have gone up. No one is naïve enough to think that if guns went away, all mass killings, suicides, etc. would magically go away. Nor is anyone seriously suggesting removing all guns. This is about gun control, not gun removal, and no, this is NOT a slippery slope conversation. It just isn’t, so stop. We need realistic gun laws. We also need realistic assessment of mental health, which has grown little since my original post above. We need to be looking at two other groups that have been responsible for their fair share of shootings: domestic terrorists, and the overlapping subject of misogyny and racism. This post is not about policy, however, it is about acknowledging that, as with so much else, with every incident, we have outrage, protests, promises things will change. Then nothing does change, in part from political traction, but in part because people move on and live their lives. They get bored, they move on to different subjects they are passionate about, and the flame and its momentum dies. Before we can have real change on this—or any other topic—we need to change how quickly apathy sets in. Fix that, and real change might be possible.