we have the power to change this
and we will
Once again, the unimaginable has happened. 19 children and two teachers were murdered by a gunman at an elementary school in Texas and the guys who spent the last few weeks talking about how much they love babies once again have very little to say about the ones that were just slaughtered with an assault riffle under their watch.
When I launched Airplane Mode, I promised to deliver you solutions and I’m determined to do that now more than ever. Gun violence might feel like one of the most solution-less issues, “there’s always going to be bad people with guns,” Ben Shapiro might say, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. When it comes to gun safety, solutions are not the problem, the fact that they’re just not being implemented is the obstacle. We know this is solvable issue because other countries have done it and they have done it well.
Make no mistake: just like abortion rights, this country is united on gun safety. It’s the leadership of the Republican party and their besties in the gun lobby that’s the problem. As Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told me back in 2016 for Vox, "This is not a controversial issue out in the American public. Polls show 90 percent of Americans support background checks before you buy a gun, and [they] support keeping terrorists, or would-be terrorists from getting guns. There is virtually nothing in America in which 90 percent of Americans agree. This is an exceptional issue to have that much consensus. And yet the NRA, the gun lobby, doesn’t support it and there are many members of Congress listening too."
Gun safety is not a wedge issue, but for the gun lobby that sentiment has been easy to overcome. In 2021 the lobby spent a record $15.8 million keeping members of Congress (mostly Republicans) in line with their agenda. We should expect even more of that in the coming weeks and months ahead. Take, for example, what happened after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. According to the lobbying and campaign finance trackers at Open Secrets, “Lobbying by gun rights advocates nearly tripled in 2013 after a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2012. The following year was the closest the Senate has come in the last decade to passing meaningful gun control legislation.” And as we all know, no meaningful legislation has been proposed or even come close to being passed since. It was that easy.
America feels like it might be hitting rock bottom right now because the Republicans and their paymasters are successfully fulfilling their anti-life agenda. They tell us Covid is fake, masks are for wimps, health care is not a human right, and that gun massacres are un unavoidable aspect of American life. Now we live in a world where Ted Cruz, a Harvard educated United States Senator, stares right into a camera and proposes armed cops in elementary schools as a reasonable solution for a rich and prosperous industrialized nation.
You are not crazy, this is not normal, and there is a breakdown of truth happening right before your eyes. Thankfully we have also witnessed moments of immense clarity since the shooting. For instance, Beto O’Rourke’s interruption of Governor Abbot’s criminally pointless press conference yesterday. It was like a balm for all the gaslighting from politicians sending out thoughts and prayers for a problem they most certainly can fix without divine intervention. Notice how the person angry about a preventable mass shooting was calm while the guy swearing and shouting like a petulant child was the one doing nothing about it.
I could leave you with a million depressing stats about how many classrooms we could fill every year with children who die from guns, but instead I’ll leave you with the words of at least one public servant who is determined to do something about it.
Your outrage and pain are not in vain. The majority of us want change, and while it has felt painstakingly slow, our collective outrage can create the kind of momentum that makes useless politicians irrelevant. What gives me hope right now is knowing that people are more engaged than ever. I’m seeing it in my social media feeds and I know you are too. Even people who don’t live in America believe in her potential.
We tend to forget sometimes that the government belongs to us. It’s time for Americans of all stripes to stand up and speak up loudly until the change, that oh-so-obviously-needs-happen change comes to this country. Everyday people like me and you have the power to do something in the absence of real leadership. We are stronger than the gun lobby. If we can debilitate the NRA’s dumb annual conference in one week, imagine what we can do in a year.
What if we the people united to fight for our real right to life? A life where we make our own choices about our bodies, where we are safer from gun violence and our needs for food shelter healthcare are a priory? The majority of Americans United under a real
Right to life would have gun control measures and human rights and bodily autonomy for the people who are not protected by the constitution. What if it included livable wage, healthcare for all, climate repair and nurturing, mental health and well-being? The reality is the minority of people shouting this false right to life rhetoric are taking actions directly against life. From a branding perspective they are doing the equivalent of promoting a product as doing one thing when it’s doing the opposite. Like marketing a toothpaste made of sticky sugar as a cure for tooth decay. We see their lie.
Thank you for this post and your continued leadership on gun violence. You've continued to lift survivor voices, while refusing to stigmatize those voices. I appreciate it.
p.s. has anyone figured out why Abbott and Patrick look like they're attending some sort of civil war re-enactment?