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People kill people… with guns. Preventing killers from having the most murderous weapons is the best way to prevent their murders. Politicians who won’t admit that are the problem.

The Incision

SHUTTERSTOCK

Yes, this is about guns

I can’t bring m yself to watch the news out of U valde, Texas. A s a father, the sadness of parents grieving the preventable m urders of their children is too painful to even contem plate. I can’t im agine having to live it like 19 fam ilies are being forced to right now.

T here’s little I can write that hasn’t already been written, little I can share about the em otions that haven’t already been felt. B ut here, I want to talk about the question we should have answered a long tim e ago: H ow do we prevent these kinds of m ass m urders?

W hile no two murderers are the sam e, the m urders they com m it share som e com m on characteristics — som e least com m on denom inators. Prevent ing them requires us to focus on those. A nd m ore than any other characteris tic, the single m ost salient character istic shared between m ass m urders is the weapon the m urderers choose: A gun — and not just any gun, but sem iautomatic assault-style ri es. That’s the kind of gun that has no use except for shooting a lot of people in a short pe riod of tim e. You don’t hunt deer with an A R -15; they’re m ade to hunt people.

O pponents of gun reform will argue that the vast m ajority of gun owners will never com m it a m urder. T hat’s true. T hey’ll argue that m urders can be com m itted without guns. T hat’s also true. T hey’ll point to the m indset of the m urderers. A fter all, every single m ass m urderer has a com plex fram ework of social, em otional, and circum stantial factors that led them to this. Fine.

So, yes, of course we should force ac countability on social m edia platform s that radicalize and isolate vulnerable people. O f course we should invest in m ore broadly available m ental health services. A nd yes, let’s tackle poverty and the circum stances that com pound isolation, vulnerability, and poor m en tal health. I’m for all of those things. Let’s do them !

B ut none of them would address the single thing that m ass shooters have in com m on: they pull a trigger. G uns are A m erican m ass m urder’s least com m on denom inator. It’s true statistically – m ore gun ownership predicts m ore gun deaths. A nd it’s true anecdotally, both m ass m urders over the past two weeks were perpetrated by 18-year-olds who bought weapons of war legally.

So what stands in our way? G un apol ogists argue that any e ort to reduce gun access am ong would-be m urderers would risk infringing on A m ericans’ right to “bear arm s.”

Let’s step back here to analyze whether you can call access to a gun an actual “right.” Philosophers speak of “positive” and “negative” rights. N egative rights are those things that others shall not take away — that you cannot be denied as a function of being human. T he right to breathe clean air or speak as you choose to without infringem ent by your governm ent — those are things that cannot be taken away from you.

T hen there are “positive” rights. T hose are things that you ought to be provided in order to live a dignified life. T he right to an education or housing or healthcare. B ut guns? G uns don’t add to our lives. T hey take them .

W e are the only country in the world that in any way enum erates a right to arm s. A nd even that’s up for debate. Ex trem ists would have you think that the Second A m endm ent im plies anyone has a right to have any gun, anywhere at any tim e. B ut let’s look at what it really says: “A well regulated M ilitia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear A rm s, shall not be infringed.”

Regulation shows up in the first three words! A nd it’s couched in the notion that those rights exist to protect access to a “well regulated m ilitia.” It’s also why it guarantees the right to “the people,” rather than every person, to “keep and bear A rm s.”

T he m eaning of “A rm s” has also changed since the C onstitution was ratified. Those were the times of mus ket balls that you had to reload after every shot. T he fram ers could not have im agined the laser guided high-capacity semi-automatic assault ri es their words would allow to proliferate.

U ntil 2008, the Second A m endm ent was interpreted as a collective, rather than individual right. M eaning that com m unities had a right to a “wellregulated M ilitia.” T hat was until the Suprem e C ourt revised that interpretation in District of Columbia v. H eller in 2008. In that ruling, the court struck down a W ashington, D .C ., law banning handguns and requiring that long guns be stored disassem bled and unloaded. T he C ourt held that the law infringed on an individual right to bear arm s — interpreting that individual right into existence.

Yet the court’s interpretation is vastly out of step with the A m erican public, who by wide m argins support assault weapon and high-capacity m agazine bans, universal background checks, red ag laws, and other sensible gun policies.

W hat’s stopping us from pass ing those laws? Political extrem ism . The National Ri e Association has fully captured the G O P — supporting anything short of any gun for anyone, anywhere, any tim e would be punished through the political prim ary process. C onsider Texas Senator Ted C ruz who had the gall to blam e the U valde m as sacre on… the fact that the school had a back door.

T he irony, of course, is that the sam e people who are opposing gun reform self-style as “pro-life.” It seem s they value the lives of unborn fetuses m ore than the value of actual children — be cause they value the rights of guns to be owned m ore than the rights of wom en to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy.

M eanwhile, a few D em ocrats care m ore about an arcane parliam entary procedure than finally canning the filibuster and passing sensible gun reform . O thers, including the entire D em ocratic H ouse leadership, just backed an anti-abortion D em ocrat with an A rating from the N R A whose hom e was raided by the FB I in a South Texas H ouse district over his progressive prim ary challenger.

It’s been ten years since elem entaryaged children were m urdered by a m ass shooter in their schools at Sandy H ook. M ost of the children who were killed in U valde hadn’t been born yet. T hey lived their entire lives in a world where we knew the risks they faced, and failed to prevent them anyway.

By A bdul El-Sayed

O riginally published M ay 26 in T he Incision. Get more at abdulelsayed. substack.com.