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THE GUN-SAFETY RATIONALE FOR A NATIONAL STRIKE [1]

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Date: 2023-04-06  

Fear, Loathing, and Guns: When a society loses its ability to self-regulate. Photo credit: Paul Rappoport Photography

During an early lecture in one of my first graduate courses in clinical psychology, the professor said, tongue in cheek, “You are here to understand the subtleties of mental illness. You don’t need a Ph.D. to know that the guy in Times Square, standing on a soap box, draped in an American flag, wearing an aluminum hat and claiming to be Jesus incarnate is either a street performer or mentally ill. The man on the street, without a Ph.D., knows when the blush is off the rose.”

Today, there are no more tongues in cheeks, and the aluminum hats have been replaced by AR-15s. American citizens don’t need advanced degrees to know that when a society agrees that routine mass murders, daily street shootings, and assassinations of children are normal and acceptable, that it has completely lost its mind. Such a belief is the very definition of insanity.

But here’s the good news. We haven’t really lost our minds. We know that this is crazy. What we have lost, however, are our voices. The pictures, the videos, the body cams, the news reports, the pundits, the politicians, the analysts, the thoughts and prayers, and all the rest of it drives you crazy every time you’re forced to bear witness. Your gut aches, your mind bends, your heart cries out for it to stop and you don’t need any more convincing. What you do need is for it to end. For it to stop! What you do need is for sanity to regain a foothold in American daily life, and for laws, policies, and behavior to be established that will protect us from an out-of-control gun culture that has turned our streets and neighborhoods into America’s killing fields.

Our constitutionally derived free speech must become our counter-weight. It must bind us together so that we speak with one coherent voice. One distinct voice, on one specific day, everyone tied together with the same passion and the same message: Better laws!

Here’s the truth. The division in this country is not about the Second Amendment, gun rights, or ideology. Yes, these divisions do exist, but they are not at the heart of this particular problem. Even though I’m sure you’ve heard this elsewhere, let me reiterate it: this is about money, profits, and power; and then, secondarily, about how those things are used to distort information in order to shape public opinion in a particular direction.

Here’s an important statistic that will shed some light on it. If I can trust my google search data, the U.S. firearms industry is worth $28 billion dollars. When you look at what it adds to the U.S. economy every year, that figure jumps to over $51 billion. Guns are only part of the story. Gear, accessories, paraphernalia-- everything guns-- is a major industry and a lucrative business.

Monied-interests, lobbyists, and politicians stoke the ferocity of mood in the second- amendment and ideological communities for their own purposes. Yet most people with legitimate arguments for gun rights are not fanatics. Most of them in fact support rational gun safety measures.

Resistance to improving gun safety laws emanates from the gun lobby, the gun makers, and the NRA. They foment paranoia and rage in the law-abiding gun community and manipulate them into thinking that America is coming for their guns. They intentionally pit one faction against another, slowing the wheels of progress and apparently bringing it to a compete halt.

Why is a nation-wide general strike for improved gun legislation necessary? For this reason:

There are 332 million people in the U.S., and 258 million of them are adults. Taking the more conservative figure from a poll of polls, 70% (or more) of these 258 million adults want stricter gun laws: that amounts to an overwhelming majority of Americans.

70% of 258 million people translates to 193 million adults nation-wide who want more robust gun safety legislation.

We need to see these people in the streets. We need to hear their collective voice. We need to have them speak—to their legislators, at capital buildings, to the rest of the country.

If our children are slaughtered and maimed and horrified in their classrooms, don’t they need to speak too? Age should not be a barrier to demanding safe schools.

If you want to talk “crazy”, here’s what’s crazy. A small minority of citizens, a handful of politicians, and a bunch of industry executives are forcing the rest of us to wonder whether we will come home for dinner or in a body bag. Only a few short years ago this statement would have sounded hyperbolic, even alarmist. But not so today. The BBC News reports that so far in 2023 there have been 130 mass shootings across the U.S. (at this writing that’s only 3 months), that in recent years the number of mass shootings “has gone up significantly”, and that “in each of the last three years, there have been more than 600 mass shootings, almost two a day on average”.

This is why we must protest as one, at least on one day, united together, whether we own a gun or not, because the vast majority (upwards of 70% to 90%) of us all believe and want the same thing. We believe the current laws regarding gun use and possession are weak and inadequate, we want to come home alive, we want our loved ones to come home alive, and we want gun legislation passed that will put an end to the gun mania in this country.

Politics and politicians are not what they used to be. Gerrymandering, redistricting, grievances, obstructionism, etc. intentionally blur the lines when it comes to gun legislation. The gun issue has erroneously been combined with other unrelated matters. Those happy with the status quo seek to conflate, confuse, and muddy the waters to keep gun safety activists on their back foot. It’s a tactic. The matter of gun safety-- despite how it is often incorrectly portrayed-- is a singular issue, distinct, unitary, unparalleled, and unrelated to any other.

Polls and statistics assert that Americans are not divided on this matter. Almost the entire country wants the same thing: safer schools, safer streets, tighter gun laws. When it comes to guns, the right, the left, the middle, regardless of party, are all on the same page.

That old professor pretty much had it right. This is not complex. If, when a relatively small segment of society aids and abets the conditions by which others can readily murder at will while supporting the right of still others to do so; then the ways in which the people are perceiving the problem and the ways in which they are managing it has gone off the rails.

Why do we need a national strike, a nation-wide protest, a day of recognition? Because when people face overwhelming odds, they tend to give up. The gun lobby knows this. That’s why they remind us every day that we can’t succeed. They undermine our self-confidence, our convictions, and our resolve. This leads to hesitation, doubt, reluctance, passivity, ambivalence, and indifference. It is all these things that are killing our kids. We need a nation-wide strike to strike a different and decidedly activist posture.

Do not mistake inaction for apathy. None of us are apathetic about this. Our hearts ache and our consciences suffer. But as a species we tend to be followers. We are prone to let someone else do it. Social psychologists know this. People are inclined to follow the leader. Fads, fashion, crazes, obsessions, manias, copycats, and preoccupations, reflect this. If the herd is passive, individuals won’t act. If the herd suddenly takes off, everyone takes off with it. If we want better gun laws, we’d better find a herd inclined to act. Inaction in this instance is deadly. The gun-safety-herd in this case is over 200 million strong, all wanting the same thing, yet waiting for the stimulus to act.

Protest is an American tradition. It is a stimulus. Our forefathers staked their very lives on the right to free speech. Empowerment empowers others. Action is contagious. Make a declaration. Strike a deal with yourself. Strike a deal with your kids, with your friends and family, with your neighbors, and use that right of free speech to put a protest in place to stimulate others to action. A 24-hour peaceful protest/work stoppage/general strike/nation-wide would be a wonderful beginning. Can you imagine?

Protests work, but only when they are large enough (widespread), loud enough (passionate), and demand change (consequences) from the powers that be. We are that proverbial man on the street. We know when behavior, with or without an aluminum hat, is anomalous. The ever-increasing culture of gun violence in America is a sign of a society-wide psycho-social derangement. Societies and sub-cultures, just like people, can suffer psychologically. Our one voice may be an important first step in helping to heal our declining mental health while clawing our way back to rational living.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/6/2162433/-THE-GUN-SAFETY-RATIONALE-FOR-A-NATIONAL-STRIKE

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