Now IS The Time

Life in the second decade of the twenty first century is grand, so much easier or safer than even fifty years ago, much less two hundred. We can travel anywhere, anytime, without fear of falling from the sky or being high-jacked in mid-flight. We can drive at outrageous speeds, surrounded by others moving just as fast, and feel five times safer than when I was young. My children do not have to fear being crippled by polio or killed by whooping cough. Women are not dying from “back-alley” abortions, and are safer than ever from all manner of threats in childbirth. Lives are no longer threatened by lead paint or lead in gasoline.

The list goes on and on.

At some point, we collectively decided as a society that we should, could and would overcome these and many other threats to us as individuals living in a large, complex society of other individuals. None of those improvements were quick, easy, or involved a simple, single “silver bullet” solution. But the difficulty, complexity, and time required did not deter us. We chipped away, passing a law here, making changes in the social ethos there, and watched as things improved.

For example, death on the highway. Multiple factors were involved, and multiple improvements were applied, over the course of the last half-century or more. When I was young, over 50,000 people died a year in car accidents. Now, the number is 10,000 less, with more than twice as many people in the country, five times as many cars, and even greater numbers of miles driven per year. Some of the change was through laws, some through improved systems, some through improved infrastructure, some through changes in cultural norms, and some thru good old fashioned capitalism, corporations responding to what purchases wanted and what they needed, but didn’t know they wanted. A few examples: laws mandating seat belt use, greater use of limited access highways, more restrictions on obtaining a driver’s license, regulations concerning airbags and structural improvements in cars themselves, shift in attitudes towards driving drunk (“friends don’t let friends …”, designated drivers, MADD, etc.), better tires and safety systems on cars, and on and on.

A similar approach is seen in the air. The last deaths involving a major domestic flight were in Long Island, November 2001. Used to be, every year it seemed another plane crashed, killing many people all at once. Here, it may be that capitalism was the biggest factor: airlines have a HUGE interest in keeping their passengers safe, and so are willing to spend whatever it takes on pilot training, plane maintenance, and other avenues to accomplish that. Each crash was investigated. The government mandated progressive improvements. Radar and other devices were used to keep planes away from each other, and at the proper altitude. Eventually, the process of small continuous persistent improvements has paid off big time.

In medicine, vaccinations for children and adults, improved obstetrical care, and many other systems have resulted in fewer people dying needlessly than fifty years ago.

There is absolutely no legal, technical, or economic reason to not adopt a similar approach to mass murder, and the relentless loss of single lives, mediated by easy access to weapons that far exceed the mandate of the Second Amendment. Clearly, there is a line over which we should not cross: everyone can agree that individuals should not possess nuclear weapons, or F-15 fighters, or any number of other weapons of mass destruction. It’s thus not a question of principle, but one of drawing the line: when does a weapon pass from the category of “needed for self-defense or hunting” into “designed for mass killing”. Let’s draw that line a little closer to reality by banning specific guns, both long and hand, as well as ammunition and ammunition delivery systems, which make mass killing possible.

We have to be honest about who is doing this mass killing: young (17-40) men with serious disturbances to their brain chemistry. Figuring out ways to help them and their families, ways to keep weapons away from them, ways to keep them safe and secure … that’s the responsibility not of Congress, or the “Health Care System”, or insurance companies, or the police, or just their parents and friends. It’s something we all need to be accountable for. We can’t just give up on, or be scared of them; we need to develop comprehensive systems to identify and manage them, just as we do with other potential killers like cancer, drunk drivers, childhood diseases, and shoe bombers.

Those of us who think even one life lost to a bullet is wrong must keep the conversation going, to provide the same level of moral suasion that changed attitudes about drunk driving, or in an earlier era, about racial segregation in education, public accommodations, the military, and all other aspects of life. It can be done, it just requires concerted, systematic, repeated emphasis on what we should all agree on – that we don’t want any more mass killings in public places, be it of school kids, movie goers, any of us. We need to try EVERYTHING, not just the ONE THING any one of us might believe is the silver bullet. We can start by not being angry at each other. This is not about who’s right or who’s wrong; it’s about saving lives.

After all, it is the Christmas Season: Peace On Earth, Goodwill Towards ALL.