When It Comes To Gun Control, We're Shooting Blanks

Several people I've spoken to over the past week have asked me when I'm going to post about the Santa Barbara shooting. The answer each time has been "I'm not", but frankly I'm tired of being asked so here I am.  I will say this: I am disheartened by the fact that I've seen dozens of posts in my Facebook feed about the murderer, his name on everyone's tongue, and no one seems to know the name of one victim. I'm disheartened that this has won him the fame I'm sure he was banking on. I'm disheartened by the fact that what should first and foremost be a conversation about gun control has digressed into a conversation about misogyny, which it should not.

A lot of people will be surprised by and furious at that assertion. I understand that and that's fine with me.  I think it's pretty clear what my feeling is about gender-based violence.  I have devoted a significant part of my life to fighting it for the last 8 years and just created a theatre collective to try to fight the attitudes that lead to it.  In two weeks I will give a speech about how the end of misogyny lies in the raising of our sons.  My work speaks for itself.  But the perpetrator of this crime -- I categorically refuse to use his name -- killed four men and two women.  If I say that that makes this a crime not about sexism, people will counter by saying that he killed three of his victims with knifes, therefore it isn't a crime about gun control either. Yes, the reason for his rage was that he couldn't have the women he wanted.  Still, I believe that to make gun control anything less than the central issue here is a huge mistake.  He shot eleven people, male and female.  Because he wasn't a 'better shot', only three of them died.  Had he been, we'd be looking at as many dead, of both genders, as there were in the Aurora theatre shooting.  Was he a misogynist?  Yes, yes and YES.  His manifesto is chilling and his view of women horribly perverted.  But what he spoke of doing and what he perpetrated were incongruous.  He stabbed his male roommates, shot and killed two women at a sorority house and then moved on and shot and killed a man in a deli.  The shooter was imbued with many different genres of hate.  Alongside his hatred of women was an equal level of vitriol for non-whites, particularly non-white men who dated white females, as evident in excerpts from his writings: 

"You're just butthurt that you were born as an Asian piece of shit, so you lash out by linking these fake pictures. You even admit that you wish you were half-white. You'll never be half-white and you'll never fulfill your dream of marrying a white woman. I suggest you jump off a bridge."

"How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves."

Clearly, this is a very sick, venomous individual steeped in inward self-loathing that later turned outward.  Criminologists have long asserted that stabbing is a far more personal and 'intimate' form of murder than shooting.  It requires close proximity to the victim, more time, the use of brute manual force, and a willingness to get one's hands dirty in the most gruesome sense of the word.  The perpetrator of this crime, himself biracial, stabbed his three male roommates all of whom were Asian.  To me this suggests that as much as he disliked women, his most profound hatred was for the non-white part of himself, which was also killed in his final suicidal act.  Why is it not being called an anti-Asian crime?

One article that I have seen popping up a lot over the past few days is one which refers to the crime as “an act of misogynist extremism”.  What?  I'm sorry, but I take issue with that journalism. Referring to some of his posts and video as such is totally accurate, but referring to the actual crime that way is confounding to me.  To say that it qualifies as such because he was jealous of men getting girlfriends, as one writer has suggested, is reaching at best.  Not only do I find this inaccurate, but I find it offensive.  I have come across more articles referring to this shooting as extreme misogyny than I have or ever did with regards to cases in which misogyny was clearly the primary motivator, as in the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian girls, or the 2006 shooting of five Amish girls in their schoolhouse, or the 1989 shooting of fourteen young women in Montreal.  If you want to cite “acts of misogynist extremism”, let us shine that spotlight on cases in which two-thirds of the victims were not male, and in which those targeted were not of both genders.  I also find the categorization of the crime in this way to be deeply dismissive of  four of the six victims as well as of their families, who are burying and have been shattered by the loss not of their daughters, but their beloved sons.

This case is horrifying.  Every massacre is.  But with every article I read that shifts the spotlight away from gun control and towards misogyny, my intuition goes on red alert and my every instinct says that that as the primary focus is the wrong one.  Why?  Because we've leapt to diagnostics when we should still be in triage.  You stop the bleeding FIRST.  You treat the cause, whatever it is, second.  Yes, misogyny was part of this boy’s psyche.  No question.  But misogyny, like racism, like homophobia -- is deep-seated.  Attempting to prevent another tragedy means taking swift action at a practical level.  Ridding the world of these sociological evils and mental ailments in a few weeks or a few months is not possible.  Passing gun control laws IS.  Of course there needs to be vigilant ongoing work to change sexist attitudes, and there is.  In the wake of a shooting like this one though, the most immediate concern must be not how do we induce societal transformation in terms of people's individuals views, but how do we -- NOW, tomorrow, next week -- keep guns out of the hands of misogynists? Out of the hands of racists? Away from homophobes? What legislative measures do you take to prevent the commission of similar crimes by people who -- in the absence of strict laws limiting gun access -- can escalate their personal prejudices into acts of horrific violence?

One thing I can say for certain -- this case morphing into one about misogyny instead of guns is one giant erection for the NRA.  They didn't even have to pull out the old "The only thing that can stop is a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" gem.  There was no need for them to divert the discussion, as they do approximately 10 minutes after every massacre, to an indictment of video games.  The digressing was done for them.

In Canada, the massacre at l'Ecole Polytechnique made gun control the first order of business for the federal government. It resulted in the passage of the Firearms Act, which introduced more stringent laws including the gun registry, screening of firearm applicants, training of gun owners and rules regarding storage of guns and ammunition.  I give credit where deserved; Mulroney got that one right. There were powerful moves made on the social front as well, the most notable being the founding of the White Ribbon Campaign.  We also gave the victims their due.  Every year on the anniversary of that day, we still across this country list the names of those young women and remember them.  Last year, I held an event in my home on December 6th which was specifically about honouring each one of those extinguished lights. That we remember that those killed in mass shootings were not only victims but flesh and blood humans means something.  I hate the fact that I know the name Dylan Klebold but none of the Columbine victims'.  I hate the fact that I know the name Adam Lanza but none of the Sandy Hook victims'.  (And I will never type either name again.)  I hate the fact that rather than spending the time and energy to pressure the government to bring about laws, the media instead spends its time turning these people into celebrities and informing us about what they liked to eat for breakfast and the puppies they had as children.  Tell me instead about the childhoods of the people they killed.

What allowed change to happen here in Canada, the change that needed to happen after Montreal, was that we didn't get distracted.  Everyone was aware of the killer's motivation -- we knew it was misogyny -- but gun control wasn't put on the backburner while we concentrated on analyzing how to rehabilitate women-hating men.  The fact that Marc Lepine resented women was not ever allowed to eclipse the fact that he was able to walk into a classroom with a gun and murder them.  We understood, in this country, that stopping the bleed must come before treating the wound.  It is as simple as asking oneself, if you were to learn that a hate-filled human was going buy a gun next week to commit a racist or sexist mass murder, what is the best chance of saving those potential victims?  Keeping him from accessing the gun, or trying to teach him in seven days that women and blacks are actually lovely people?  Yes, healthy socialization and fighting bigotry is crucially important, but it's pretty evident which you would do first.  If the States focuses on the wound first, the blood loss will continue.

All of that said, however, perhaps the discussion has quickly turned to misogyny for the reason that no one wants to admit, which is that everyone knows that the U.S. likely isn't going to do anything about gun control, ever. Those in Congress representing the "heartland of America" are never going to jeopardize their chances of re-election by doing anything that goes against the wishes of their 2nd Amendment-obsessed constituents.  And those in bed with gun lobbyists, many of whom represent weapons and ammunitions manufacturers, certainly aren't going to risk their campaign donation blood money by speaking out.  If the trade-off for money and power is more guns, then more guns is what there will be.  There are currently approximately 200,000,000 guns in a nation of 318,000,000 people.  If that isn't sickness, I don't know what is. 

So the reality is that mass shootings are now woven into the fabric of American culture, like football and food stamps.  I knew that it was essentially over -- that the majority of the U.S. government was devoid of a soul -- when the slaughter of twenty Grade 1 students couldn't shake them into meaningful action.  The Sandy Hook shootings contained everything that pulls on American heartstrings.  The victims were 6 years old. (They were also predominantly white, which - let's be frank - always makes death a bit more tragic in the USA.)  It was a week before the Christmas holidays. Their brave teachers tried to protect them and were obliterated too.  It was an incomprehensible tragedy that should've decimated anyone who calls him or herself human.  President Obama tasked VP Joe Biden with drafting comprehensive gun control legislation to bring before Congress, which he did.

Then... NOTHING. In one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility I have ever seen, EVERY single recommendation was voted down.  Banning the commercial purchase of military-style automated assault weapons -- NO.  (Because who doesn't need a Bushmaster in the bedroom closet?)  Banning the sales of such guns over the internet -- NO.  (Clearly I should be able to do my Netflixing and oozie shopping in one sitting.)  Limiting the number of bullets in a magazine -- NO.  (There's no reason why a mass murder should be limited to 5 or 6 people.)  And even the most-watered down option -- imposing background checks on those wishing to purchase such weapons online -- NO.  (Because why should it be known if people with AK-47s are criminally insane?)

"The law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me". - Martin Luther King, Jr. 

And there in this quoted wisdom lies the heart of my upset about the diversion of focus in this case.  As it was after Aurora, Newtown, Virginia Tech, Fort Knox, Columbine and the whole ugly sordid list, this is and must stay about guns.  Watch this man's heartbreak and tell me otherwise.  It is naive to think that the focus can be equally divided.  One issue will always take the backseat and in the U.S., any opportunity to put gun control in the backseat will be taken.  If the conversation digresses, which it already has, it allows for a deflection of the issue, again.  It is victory for those whose primary aim is to consistently make mass shootings about something else.  Whether the motive is misogyny or racism or anti-Semitism or homophobia or my-mommy-didn't-hug-me-enough-as-a-child is a different conversation.  These issues are massive and need their own dedicated efforts to transform them.  There are movements fighting those fights on other fronts.  But the easy access to weapons of death must end.  Period.  People are being gunned down left and right.  If I am discriminated against for being female, for being black, for being gay -- I can stand up, raise my voice, shout louder and fight harder.  If I am gunned down for being any of those things -- I cannot.  I am done, silenced forever.  I am gone.  When you go to the movies or to school or to the mall and come home a corpse, the reason why the person murdered you -- while symptomatic of a deeper wound -- is secondary to the fact that they did.  Many will disagree.  I stand by that.  You always stopping the bleeding first.

And so I will say it again.  Making the trajectory of this case about "extremist misogyny" rather than gun violence is, in my view (and I only have my view) missing the mark.  

What it was was a horrible mass shooting, perpetrated by a twisted mind that raged at women amongst many other things.  Spending our time writing article after article about his narcissistic manifesto, instead of about comprehensive gun control laws, does NOT serve women.  We end up preaching to the choir yet again, instead of screaming to those in office about how they can actually do something tangible to protect us.  And as a result, all that it does is ensure that we once again veer away from focusing on the legislative change that will ultimately keep women safer.  The killer's deeply engrained sexism and racism is terrifying, but the means to act on it and end my life before I am able to change his thinking is more so.  There will be emphatic disagreement to some of what I have said; matters this emotional always result in a myriad of views.  I don't really have any interest in debating mine because (a) I've explained it thoroughly and it will not change (b) I see why people may feel differently.  I can only view it through my lens.

I cannot say that I am particularly hopeful after the lack of response to Newtown.  Evidently, twenty dead 6-year-olds doesn't meet the threshold for what triggers basic empathy for many in Congress.  Maybe it needs to be 100 kids.  Or 100 kids in wheelchairs.  Or a river of blood at a children's hospital.  Maybe it needs to be their kids.  It feels like appealing to human decency is futile so until I found myself asked repeatedly if I was going to post something, I had no intention of doing it because I am sick and tired.  I'm sick and tired of these cases, I'm sick and tired of saying the same thing, I'm sick and tired of gun manufacturers wanting more and more guns sold when they know that some of those buying will massacre, I'm sick and tired of lip service by politicians, I'm sick and tired of senseless death robbing people of their lives and joy and spouses and parents and friends and siblings and lovers and children, I'm sick of seeing article after article about that bastard in my Facebook feed.  I am sick of it. 

I will always be a passionate advocate of women and girls, and a stalwart for the ending of violence.  But when it comes to the U.S. government, their corporate interests and the 2nd Amendment zealots, I don't know what the compassion criteria are.  I don't know how one brings a soul back to the soulless.  So I ask the Universe to be kind and to protect the innocent, holding in its grace my loved ones in the States.  Yet all the while I sit in horrified knowledge of the inevitability of random carnage.  More lambs to the slaughter.  Another bloodbath is coming.  Another one will always be coming.  The current incarnation of America has guaranteed it.

- TT