Missing the point

The recent theatre shooting in Aurora was a profound tragedy for the country as a whole, as each and every one of these assaults is. Each time something like this happens, whether the Giffords shooting or the Fort Hood shooting, the old feelings of disbelief, followed by grief and outrage, come back just as strong. And yet, each time, the same political actors continue to trot out the old arguments, with only minor variations on the same themes invariably regarding gun violence, video games and rock music, particularly in the United States. Though in this case, I have actually seen some novel examples when it came to the politicisation of this tragedy. You really kind of just have to shake your head and wonder about the sort of people who believe that the proper response to people abroad sincerely expressing their disbelief, grief and outrage over a tragedy like this one (as we ourselves do when it happens in, say, Norway) is to throw your chest out and say, ‘well, your country has mass murderers too, and at least MY country has a free press’ (as Justin Mitchell seems to think).

That rather misses the point, in a rather profound way. Expressions of this kind of defensive, knee-jerk chauvinism do not address the point that, as the statistics show, we are a brutally violent country when it comes to assault deaths per capita, right alongside Estonia and Mexico, and far out of proportion to our economic status and development, though it would seem that we are slowly but surely getting better (H/T to Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber for the link and statistics). (The assault deaths rate for China is not included here as China is not an OECD member, but China usually has between a quarter and a third of our intentional homicide rate per capita according to the UNODC data - between 1.12 and 2.0 per 100,000 as opposed to our between 5.0 and 5.6.)

The proper response to a tragedy on our own shores, then, is to ask what sorts of reasonable measures we can take to improve our society (because bragging to the China expat community about how we have it so much better over here because we can print the word ‘murder’ in a headline is probably not going to stop the next one from happening). Gun control, sadly, is likely the only issue that will end up being discussed - and it also has the vice of being the issue which is inevitably preëmpted by lobbies on both sides of the aisle with deep pockets matched only by shallow argumentation and lack of scruple. It also happens to be, if not irrelevant, then a single consideration among many: Canada has more guns per capita than we do, but a mere fraction of our per capita violent crime rate. Other equally or more relevant aspects - like the economic woes which only serve to exacerbate people’s sense of desperation and existential unease; like the lack of support for decent policing in many municipalities; like the dysfunctional way in which our society treats the poor and the mentally ill; or (indeed) like a sensationalistic free press corporate media oligopoly which, driven by profit and the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ mentality, delights in telling us that we all need to be scared of each other, all of the time - are less sexy and less controversial, and thus more liable to slide under the public radar.

For now, though - grief and outrage are the justifiable reactions. Let’s just be sure that we can put them to use in the long haul, toward improving our culture and our economic structure so that it leaves fewer people out in the cold and dark. The survivors (all of us included, in the theological sweep of things) as well as the victims need our remembrance.