There’s a funny clip from the movie, LA Story. Friends gather for lunch, which includes familiar faces and some new guests. One such new guest is Sara, a British writer visiting the Los Angeles area to write a story about the city. During lunch, LA is struck by an earthquake. First, everything rattles. Second, the tables shake out of their positions and shuffle around. Next, items start to fall, and even the ice sculpture cracks, decapitating a melting swan. While this event naturally distresses Sara, the others’ reactions intrigue her. The LA natives blissfully continue their meal as if nothing happened. That subtle, though intentional, joke implies that, as dangerous as earthquakes can be, they’re so common in Los Angeles that they’re neither newsworthy nor even noteworthy.
I get it; there’s an aura of “When in Rome” to it all. On a particular vacation trip to Miami, I drove north on Interstate 95 along the coast. I drove past a fire engine on the shoulder of the freeway; it sat immediately behind a car lit aflame. As I observed the black smoke and bright orange flames from that car, I also noted that the traffic had not slowed down significantly. Sure, some motorists looked in quiet fascination, but the traffic had barely slowed from the evening pace. Had this been my new home state of Washington, traffic would’ve been stuck for hours.
Though on some level, both these events should elicit a certain level of distress. They’re each an indication of a scenario that exposes us to risk. However, having seen a particular scenario frequently enough, we learn to mentally file it away as “non-threatening”, even when it is.
Learned Helplessness
As I wrapped up my studies at the University of Miami, I earned enough credits in psychology (fifteen) to earn a minor. I retained many of the lessons from those lectures. Those ideas continue to bounce in my head as I pattern-match these phenomena with real life. I vividly remember the lecture on learned helplessness. This lesson even included the accompanying gruesome experiment, where they shocked dogs. First, they subjected dogs to uncontrollable bad events (electric shock). Second, the dogs try to avoid the shock, but nothing that they do makes a difference. They eventually stop trying. Finally, even if the situation changes (they may avoid the shock by jumping over a fence), they do not try to avoid the electric shock anymore.
Naturally, they asserted that this also occurs with humans. We see glimpses of that in the way that smokers will give up trying to quit smoking after trying time and again to stop. Many other scenarios exist, but this is one of the most trivial ones. Much like the dogs from the experiment, the perception of inevitability may similarly remain with humans. Smokers can quit smoking.
Are mass shootings inevitable?
In May 2022, a shooter went into a school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 21 people (2 adults and 19 children). Here in the US, we average more than one mass shooting a day. Let’s wrap our heads around that, we have more mass shootings than we have days in the year. What about school shootings? The numbers are still nauseating. Gun rights advocates maintain that taking away guns from anyone is not the answer; the answer is ‘a good guy with a gun’. Robb Elementary School had 376 good guys with guns. Is this your definition of success? What is the threshold of failure? 23 corpses? 35 corpses?
Ted Cruz suggested that the school had too many doors and that the shooter gained entry too easily. Dare I ask what he suggests for the shootings that occur in malls or movie theaters? More and more, they suggest that the answer is to arm the teachers as well. That’s terrific; the prerequisites to teach in high school are now a master’s degree in education, a concealed weapons permit, and a qualification in marksmanship.
As for all those good guys with guns at Uvalde? No one has been found liable for that colossal failure. Given the same set of circumstances, there’s no reason to believe that they would do anything differently.
The flawed vision of the good guy with a gun
Imagine you quickly run to either the grocery store or the convenience store. Did you forget your wallet? How about your phone? You had a quick question for your spouse about the product that you need but forgot your phone. Did you walk into that store and forget to bring in a grocery bag? Upon arriving at work, I have forgotten either my work badge or my Fitbit at home a handful of times. We forget things all the time, and the likelihood of forgetting something is proportional to the infrequency (or unlikelihood) of needing to use it, a gun is no exception.
First, there needs to be a good guy with a gun to stop a shooter. The safeguard only works if you’re consistent about using it. While you can disable some airbags on your vehicle (for child seats), they’re on by default. Newer cars will nag you into submission if you fail to put on your seatbelt. Simply put, you’re more likely to remember your keys or wallet than your firearm. If you forget (or neglect) to bring your firearm when you get a Slurpee, you’re just another potential victim.
Second, you can’t consistently have a good guy with a gun with everyone you love. Do you have aging parents who occasionally shop at the grocery store without you? Are they comfortable wielding a firearm? What about your children? Will you accompany them on every trip to the mall? How about going to watch a movie? No? Attending church should be safe. You can’t be everywhere to protect your loved ones; there needs to be a reasonable expectation that most places should be safe from mass shooters.
The ‘good guy with a gun’ response is like installing a screen door on a submarine, flawed from the start.
Mass shootings are not ‘a fact of life’
Vice President JD Vance once asserted that school shootings are a fact of life; school shootings weren’t a thing before April 1999 (Columbine). I find it profoundly ironic that the vice president of the Make America Great Again party never mentions making America like it was in March 1999, before school shootings were common. There’s no talk about regressing the United States to a time when mass shootings were not a daily occurrence. Like the dogs that were electrically shocked, they want to convey the idea that mass shootings are inevitable.
Bullshit.
I’m not suggesting that we ban firearms from law-abiding citizens. Tens of millions of people in the United States own firearms; only a few thousand (or perhaps hundreds) conduct mass shootings. Statistically, that’s about 1 of every 10,000 or 0.01% of gun owners. I suggest that we do a better job of identifying those 0.01% and preventing them from getting guns. Too many mass shooters are getting guns legally. The Uvalde shooter acquired his guns legally. The Buffalo supermarket shooter bought his guns legally. The Maine shooter obtained his guns legally. No, we’ll never eliminate mass shootings, but can we at least get them down to weekly instead of daily?
Lobbyists drive the demand for firearms for everyone through our legislators. They paint a picture that this is normal, like gravity; it’s not. They’ll tell you that it is inevitable, like rain; it’s not. Contact your legislators. Tell them that if they refuse to keep firearms from those who should not have them, you will elect a candidate who will. Learned helplessness be damned; you do have control.