Frigging Mass Shootings

Gah. Two mass shootings in the last 24 hours.

Aside from prayers and sympathy for those affected, I have only free-form thoughts.

Even commenters on the conservative sites I consult seem to be reeling. There's the occasional "this has to be antifa" or "there's a whiff of false flag to this," but these comments seem to be getting ignored or, better yet, shut down. There are even some gun control advocates voicing a few radical ideas (i.e., perhaps it's not a good idea for the average citizen to have access to mass-murder weapons like AR-15s). These, too, are getting shut down, but the fact that they appear at all means something.

With events this fresh, hot takes are inadvisable. A manifesto with anti-immigrant (posted, of course, on 8-chan) is rumored for the El Paso shooter, but so far nothing is known about the Dayton shooter beyond the fact that his younger sister was among his victims. The media, having learned that mass shooters are play into copycat motives,

The standard gun conversations are unfolding. Thus far, Republican reaction appears to be clustering around how bad those video games are (a long-debunked point). Of course, many of the preferred courses of action from Democrats (more restrictions, registration) have precious little evidence to back them up. The thing that seems most likely to work, judging at least from other countries, are outright bans. Get guns (most guns, at least) out of civilian hands.

I'm for removing guns from most of society. As one RedState comment noted, God didn't ordain the second amendment. Humans did. They can amend otherwise.

That's depressingly unlikely, though. Other commenters on that site have registered their own "from my cold, dead hands" sentiments. As in, "I will shoot anyone who comes at me trying to take my guns." Clearly there's more going on here than guns per se. Somehow (cough, cough, NRA, cough), gun ownership has gotten wrapped up in identity. Threaten guns, threaten identity.

If I'm right about that, the path to reducing gun ownership would necessitate something like a moral revolution, making gun ownership dishonorable, distasteful, barbaric. Imagine a world where learning someone owns a gun is like learning they have a room full of hand-drawn torture porn. He owns a gun? Like, a real, non-toy this-is-a-tool-for-killing-people gun? Ugh.

I don't think there is anything necessarily immoral about owning a gun. I can understand how people in certain parts of the country need guns for their livelihood (hunting, keeping predators away from farm animals, etc.). But I don't see much sense in anyone owning a rifle intended (or all-too-easily modified) to pump out dozens or hundreds of bullets in the space of under a minute. I can't see the founders having imagined such weapons, let alone intending to enshrine a right to owning them as somehow essential to American identity.

My father, interested in the culture of guns, bought a gun himself and took a conceal-carry course. I remember him reflecting that the predominant feeling in his classmates was fear, an emotion I tend to detect in a lot of right-wing discourse. I've toyed with the notion of doing the same and writing about it. But, given my occasional bouts of depression, having a gun in the house probably isn't a grand idea.

So I doubt the gun conversation will get anywhere--again.

I do hope, however, that the futility of the gun conversation doesn't eclipse attention to the El Paso shooter's anti-immigrant motive. If the manifesto rumors are correct, the shooter had bought completely into the "white genocide" narrative. That story (or mind virus) promulgates a conspiracy theory that brown people are pouring over the southern border to usurp white people's "rightful" place in the country. (Like white people usurped native people's place, I guess?) They will "replace" white people.

That's the kind of deeply dangerous zero-sum mentality I've written about before. It circumvents rationality to target reptile-brain cognitions of us/them conflict. It's also the kind of scaremongering that Trumpist nationalism too often feeds.

That narrative needs killing, and quickly. Better, it needs to be made repugnant, as reviled as urinating on potatoes in Wal-Mart. Really? You're spouting that zero-sum crap again? Gross. 

More tomorrow,

JF