Entertaining the Alternatives to Gun Violence in America

I just couldn't go back to business as usual

BUSINESS AS USUAL OR BREAK THROUGH?

This past Tuesday afternoon, I was getting ready to perform a set of music in an assisted living home. A TV was on with breaking news about the school shooting in Texas. It was a sobering moment, and I could feel a pall as raw sadness and echoes of violence filled the room. Whatever comedic impulses I often inject in my performances were drained away. Instead I switched it up to feature songs of healing and positivity. That helped. Meanwhile, I couldn’t go on with business as usual. I can pray and I know which way to vote, but I also wonder what stand I should take. I manage my media intake (almost no TV, very little print, and very selective online feeds) and I generally keep my well-formed political opinions offline as I’m but an entertainer and musician—but my head and heart couldn’t rush back into “business as usual” with performing and doing the usual music posts.

I’m weighing in on the conversation about gun violence in this country, moving toward the opinion that members of our political system have made a Faustian deal with the gun manufacturers (I’m told they make the most profit from assault weapons). Somehow they equate “the right to bear arms” with the right to own household appliances. The framers of our Constitution lived in a time when guns were single-shot weapons, catalogued with bayonets, swords, and archery equipment. They probably didn’t imagine that the “right to bear arms” would include arms that are the equivalent of portable cannons and that people today would be able to buy high-tech weapons with nearly the same ease it takes to get a drivers license and a car loan. The pro-gun rights activists deflect the point that the shooters routinely have front-loaded mental health issues that got past the screeners. Instead, gun-rights activists promote the arming of teachers and converting schools into militarized barracks—a  way to sell even more guns! It also strikes me that the politicians pointing fingers at those “politicizing” gun-related tragedies are usually politicians who are financially supported by the gun lobby.

I’ve listened to many arguments that support rights—some very thoughtful—but they’re drowned out by the volume of gunfire and the taking of innocent lives in schools, community centers, and houses of worship—places where we’re supposed to feel safe. Since I was a kid I heard the statement “If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns,” a grossly absurd and illogical defense of gun rights. It’s time to move off the distortions and stubborn interpretations of gun rights and support political and spiritual solutions. This is America—we managed to put people on the Moon, and I’m sure we can find a much better way to manage the distribution of weapons.

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