The next step

In the weeks ahead, before the public stops paying attention, there will be endless repeats of the videos from Virginia and endless discussion about what went wrong, how it could have happened and what can be done.

Much of the discussion will be absurdly simplistic, some of it extreme, and a bit will be horribly offensive. The discussion is important in itself, and it’s good for America to enter into a dialogue about things like gun control.

But let’s be clear about one thing: If the killer hadn’t been able to get his handguns, those students would be alive today. The United States is alone among the world’s developed nations in having such a rampant gun culture. No other developed nation makes it so easy to have guns and no other developed nation has the extreme problem that America has with gun violence.

The Virginia killer followed all applicable gun laws in Virginia, and so did the dealers that sold him the guns and bullets he used on his murderous rampage. One of the gun shops sold 32 guns that were used to commit other crimes. Clearly existing laws offer zero protection to innocent people.

The question has been asked, can laws ever provide protection? Can America’s gun laws—even if the NRA didn’t exist—ever prevent future gun massacres? Clearly as written, they can’t, but neither can they be changed in a way that would provide protection because there’s no political will to do so. The NRA leads the right and far right in a messianic cult in which the gun has replaced the cross as their religious fetish object, and the great mass of Americans have bought into their world view: Gun laws can’t protect people.

Bullshit.

Most developed countries have recognised that freedom to pack heat doesn’t equate with freedom in general and they restrict gun ownership to people with a legitimate reason for having one, like hunters, farmers and gun collectors. It’s really not that hard to figure out: Control access to guns and you reduce the opportunity to use guns to kill people.

There are also many issues beyond guns and gun control, issues swirling around what creates these mass killers. If we can work that out, then it might be possible one day to intervene before the “silicone chips inside their heads get switched to overload” (to borrow from the Boomtown Rats).

These two things—figuring out what makes people do such things and the need to control guns—are not mutually exclusive. In a perfect world, they’d happen at the same time. But this isn’t a perfect world, and the two can’t happen at the same time, or probably at all.

As America tries to figure out what happens next, there’s one overarching reality: Without a dramatic change in culture, laws or both, such massacres will happen again and again. The alternative is to try a new approach, a bold new direction. The choice, and the next step, is up to Americans. For the sake of all the innocent victims—past, present and future—I hope they get it right.