And once again, brace yourselves for the post-massacre debates. Gun control will be but a blip on the screen, and quickly the deterrence narrative will devolve into either 1) the mental state of the shooter or 2) an insistence that “if only someone in the crowd had a gun, they could have stopped this.” The conversation stops there….everytime.
So I already heard from one person who embraces the second “explanation.” Sigh. My concern is how quickly people embrace the second (alleged) deterrence narrative. Somehow gun violence will be brought under control by…..more guns. Tautological logic in action. And the first one, which emphasizes the individual psychological problems of the shooter, overlooks the broader structural factors that allow this to happen over and over again. I am suggesting we shift the deterrence narrative onto new terrain and seriously entertain gun control in this country. At present this is a stalled conversation across most elements of the political spectrum.
This also hinges on the logic of exception. Each shooting is framed as stunning, spectacular, an aberration, thereby obscuring the broader structural factors and the US political culture in which gun-wielding and citizenship are oddly fused.
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