It’s difficult to write about the recent shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. One fears saying something stupid or insensitive. Further, given the emotional heat regarding the tragedy (see the Tennessee Legislature) it seems there is a ready cadre of folks out there primed to willfully misinterpret any opinion that does not exactly match their “priors.” The worst thing about mass shootings (particularly school shootings) is the actual shooting, the death. But with no snark or cheekiness intended, the second worst thing about mass shootings is the insta-reaction to mass shootings. I cannot be the only one tired of the rehearsed reactions, now so predictable that one doesn’t have to read any such response. What you imagine will be the response from various quarters almost certainly turns out to be their actual response. Sun-up tomorrow and the next solar eclipse are only slightly more predictable.
The first reaction is to try to pigeonhole the shooter. Are we all not a little guilty of thinking, upon hearing of another shooting: “I hope the shooter is one of them, not one of us.” It might not be your first thought, but it is likely in the first three. There is the feeling of exasperation when the shooter turns out to be “one of us,” and that relief and maybe even a slight sense of vindication when the shooter is “one of them.” Whichever side is getting its ox gored this time tries to explain it away, while their opponents claim that this was a natural outcome of [insert contentious policy preference or imprudent rhetoric by political opponents here]. Thank God for the internet, because we can always find at least one political opponent saying something dumb with potentially violent connotations so we can play the “gotcha” game.
I think both sides are becoming all too comfortable with demagogic rhetoric and actual political violence. But this careless rhetoric and violent activity stems, at least in part, from a political culture that has turned demonizing our opponents as an existential threat into a commonplace artform. It’s becoming more and more true that “everybody does it.” This means that not to engage in such nefariousness is to unilaterally disarm. A vicious circle ensues.
These shootings are a real conundrum. I, for one, do not trust anyone who claims to have the solution. Let’s put it this way. Until about five years ago, America was on a roughly twenty-five-year trend in a decline of crime and violence. The mid-1960s to the early 1990s were a violent time in America. This had, I think, two causes. The first cause was policy, particularly legal policy. Various court cases in the 1960s (Miranda, Mapp, Escobedo, Gideon) along with the brief unconstitutionality of the death penalty in the early 1970s gave accused criminals more rights and hamstrung the police to some extent. It is a bit pejorative, but not totally unfair, to call this legal era “pro-criminal.” Certainly popular culture (see Dirty Harry or Death Wish) saw it that way. Criminals, sociology and common sense tell us, respond to incentives. The impression and the reality that it was easier to commit a crime and get away with it incentivized crime.
Another explanation for the rise in crime, and perhaps a stronger one, is demographic. An overwhelming percentage of crime is caused by young males, roughly ages 15-30. Well, what happened in the 1960s? The first baby boomers, the bulge of population coming after the Second World War, started to hit its prime crime years. And when crime started to decline in 1990s? The last of the boomers were exiting their prime crime years. Thus, the rise and then decline in crime.
Something else happened in the mid-1990s. Most notably in the 1994 federal crime bill, American took a renewed “tough on crime” stance, namely greatly increasing incarceration. Whatever you can say about this policy, taking violent people and putting them in prison makes the rest of us safer. That probably contributed greatly to the drop in crime. Another part of this policy was an increase in the number of police officers. In some municipalities, New York City most notably, there was a shift to more assertive police tactics. The federal crime bill coincided with an assault rifle ban. Perhaps this too contributed to a decline in crime, though it must be said that after the ban sunsetted in 2004 the country saw at least another decade of decline in violence. Still, by the late 2010s America was a relatively safe place to be.
But something else was occurring at the same time. Although data is open to interpretation, the number of mass shootings and almost certainly the number of fatalities in these shootings was on the increase. How is it that violent crime, including gun crime, was on a steady and quite remarkable decline, but the number and deadliness of mass shootings was on the rise? We might say regular violence was becoming a rarity while spectacular violence was becoming more common.
What I am calling “regular violence” has increased in the last five years, especially in particular cities (San Francisco and Chicago, for example). Some claim that this is the result of a new wave of “pro-criminal” policy, this time coming from elected officials, including prosecutors, who object to aggressive policing and incarceration as policy measures. It must be said that highly publicized abuses of police power (Ferguson, Missouri and the George Floyd incident are examples) contribute to these views. Perhaps part of the increase in crime is again a reading of the incentives by those tempted by crime; the perception that one will not be punished gives rise to greater crime.
What if, though, mass shootings have another cause? I am trying to argue that “regular crime and violence” has demographic and policy causes. The number of truly saintly people and truly incorrigible people are few. Most of us respond to incentives. Just like when we were kids, the perception that we can be naughty and get away with it makes it more likely that we will be naughty. What if mass shooters, in contrast, do not respond to incentives? What if what is going on is a sickness of soul that this or that criminal justice policy will not cure? I happen to be vaguely “tough on crime” and “pro-gun rights” in my views, but I am not particularly ideological on these matters and am open to any policy prescription that might make us (especially school children) safer without being an obvious abuse of basic liberties. Still, I am not sure what policy would actually have the intended effect.
One cannot help but notice that school shooters in particular are lonely, disaffected, often from broken homes with no father figure. Often they are mentally ill. We might consider the correspondence between mass shootings and the closing of mental hospitals in the 1980s. What if deinstitutionalizing the seriously mentally ill was a catalyst for more violence, as it almost certainly was for an increase in homelessness? But family formation and what we do with the mentally ill defy easy policy prescription. The mental hospitals were horrible places. Do we really wish for their return? With families I fear that Humpty Dumpty is broken, and we will not be able to him (the family) back together again.
We need to resist the temptation to take the serious matter and so easily place it into our lazy “right vs. left” categories. What is likely a harder pill for the left to swallow, given its stronger belief in the efficacy of government action, is the notion that there are problems, school shootings maybe one of them, for which there is no particular public policy solution. For those on the right, perhaps the skepticism toward government action needs a little tempering. Just because no particular policy will “solve” the problem, doesn’t mean this or that policy might not help a little and therefore warrant a try.
As in so many cases, it would be most helpful if we actually listened to each other in good faith instead of trying to win today’s internet and cable news cycle. Can we be open to admitting we are wrong about something and the other side might be right. That requires not only that we listen in good faith, but that arguments from each side be made in good faith. I have said above that I am basically pro-gun rights, although I am not ideological about it, and it doesn’t rank high on my policy priorities. Yelling at me that I don’t care if children die, and I have the blood of innocents on my hands is unlikely to make me amenable to greater restrictions on gun ownership.
We suffer from lack of statesmanship. Perhaps we in our individual lives could mirror what we do not see in our leaders. With some thoughtfulness and humility, perhaps we can make our nation, especially our schools, a little bit safer.
I would be glad to hear the author analyze one more part of this equation – not only how the United States looks in different decades but how it looks in comparison to other nations. Is our nation more prone to produce sick souls than others? If so, why? Can things be made better by incentives or policies or is it a matter of culture in a way that it is difficult to address in such ways? What have other nations done or not done that we can learn from?
I wonder if the sheer predictability of the reactions is, in fact, problematic? Don’t we have very predictable reactions to a whole host of things? Sadness, joy, blame, etc., depending on what the event is? If there is, in fact, a common element to the events laying at their core, then it makes sense for people who to be reminded of that and to want others to focus on it. In this case, if you believe video games are the source of all this violence, then you would mention that. If you believe that mental illness or similar issues is simply a given in large populations, and the problem is too easy access to high-powered weaponry, then you’ll want to use the event as an occasion to get people to think about that. That strikes me as normal, and not unhelpful, insofar as an actual problem does in fact exist.
I also wonder if curiosity about or interest in the identity of the shooter is surprising or unwarranted? What is it that historians do to explain an event? They put it in context. So here. Someone does something unusual, like shooting up an elementary school, you naturally want to explain it, and the motivations of the shooter, which you assume derive from who they are, seems a natural route towards an explanation. Obviously this can be done badly, and perhaps most of the thinking done along these lines is poorly done (I’d say most thinking, period, is poorly done, because we’re just bad at it when we don’t get rigorous about it), but that doesn’t mean the project itself isn’t a worthy one. We try identify the critical variable. The challenge is to do it well, not settle for lazy answers.