Last Friday
a disgruntled high school student armed himself, went to his school, and went on a rampage that ended with himself dead and with a classmate fighting for her life. Naturally, after such an event, our sensible people ask what could have been done to stop this madness from happening again.
Consider the following:
- An assault weapons ban wouldn't have prevented the shooting. The shooter had a pump-action shotgun that would not be covered under the proposed bans.
- Since the shotgun had a fixed, internal magazine, the magazine ban wouldn't have applied, either.
- Absent of evidence of a history of mental illness, universal background checks wouldn't have prevented the shooting. The shooter was 18, and he bought the shotgun legally, after a background check, from a gun store.
- Nor is there any indication that a waiting period would have stopped him. Reports are that he waited a week after purchasing the shotgun to go on his rampage. This was not an impulsive act. It was deliberate and malicious.
So, in total,
none of the gun control measures that have been proposed by Serious People in the last year would have done anything to keep that shotgun out of the shooter's hands. To keep him from obtaining that shotgun, we would have had to propose, and pass, much more restrictive measures. At minimum, we would have had to require a mental health evaluation before the shooter was allowed to buy - an evaluation designed so that an agitated, disgruntled person would fail. Other, more restrictive measures, such as locking the guns away or simply banning firearms altogether, might also have worked, but had no better chance of passing.
Nonetheless, take away his shotgun, and the shooter would have likely gone on a rampage anyway. He had three gasoline bombs and a machete in addition to the shotgun; any of those would have been at least as gruesome and lethal as a shotgun blast. (In fact, he used one gasoline bomb to burn a substantial part of the library. By the way, each of those bombs was a violation of Federal law on its own that carries serious prison time. He didn't care.)
However, there was one measure that was suggested after Newton that Arapahoe had in place, and that measure almost certainly saved lives. That measure kept the rampage from doing more damage, and led to it ending roughly eighty seconds after it began. Arapahoe had a sheriff's deputy on the premises acting as a School Resource Officer. That deputy identified himself as a law enforcement officer and confronted the attacker in the library. The shooter then ended his own life.
To put it more succinctly, in this specific case, the gun control crowd was wrong, and the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, for all his Uncle Molesty creepiness, was right.
Which brings us to the topic that the title of this post promised: what could have
prevented this tragedy?
As I stated after Sandy Hook, there has to be a conversation about why violence is an acceptable way to validate one's masculinity. Right now, one of the accepted ways to affirm one's manhood after one's pride is wounded is to commit acts of violence. If you're powerless, it's a demonstration of power. If you've been slighted at work or school, it's a way to avenge the slight. It's been a year and we STILL haven't had that discussion. And then an 18-year-old boy needed to assuage his wounded pride, and he used a shotgun and gasoline bombs to do it. If he had chosen another path - such as showing up the idiot teacher with a perfect score at the next meet - he'd still be alive, and his classmate wouldn't be fighting for her life in the hospital.
We need to have that conversation about masculinity. Without that conversation, it doesn't matter whether we ban guns completely. The violence will continue, in our schools, our workplaces, and our streets.
