The New Normal

When the headline first hit my newsfeed, I’ll admit I ignored it.

I ignored it until a cascade of related stories made it clear that this was no run of the mill mass shooting.  It’s been almost a week, and the media furor over the deadliest gun violence incident in U.S. history so far has yet to subside.

The Las Vegas shooting has many of the hallmarks of such incidents, and a few baffling twists.  All the usual tropes have been invoked—heroic law enforcement, firefighters, and EMTs, equally heroic vets who ran toward the gunfire as everyone else ran away, devoted couples tragically meeting with the death of one or both partners, and family members wringing their hands awaiting news about the fate of loved ones.  And, of course, the endless speculation over what made the shooter do what he did.

Stephen Paddock fits some of the stereotypes of the mass shooter.  He’s white.  He’s male.  And, he’s been described as a loner.  So far, so good. 

But, he was older.  Affluent.  Successful at business.  He had no past history of violence.  No known mental health issues.  No extreme political or religious convictions, either.  All this has us scratching our heads, because there was nothing at all to lead anyone to believe Paddock was capable of such an act.

Unsurprisingly, rumors and conspiracy theories hang thick in the air.  The ever-opportunistic Islamic State took credit for the shootings, claiming Paddock had converted to Islam months ago.  Even though the FBI quickly debunked the claim, that didn’t stop a couple of my students from using it to argue in class that them Moozlems are a threat to ‘Murica and they should all be rounded up and deported. 

Such reactions are par for the course.  Americans are prone to hysteria, and not just over the jihadists hiding under every bed.  The shooting has brought the never-ending debate over guns, always simmering, back to a rolling boil.

One of the few sensible gun laws we have forbids private ownership of fully automatic weapons, though there’s a grandfather clause which means that such weapons obtained before the ban are available for purchase albeit at a steep price.  Not to despair, though.  The so-called bump stock device can enable your inadequate semiautomatic weapon to produce a similar rate of fire to that of a full auto.  Hence, the particular lethality of the Las Vegas massacre.

For once, congressional Republicans and Democrats appeared open to a discussion over gun laws.  The NRA, which seemed similarly open earlier in the week, retreated to form and has since come out against an outright ban on bump stocks.

The Second Amendment argument is weakest when it comes to private possession of automatic weapons and conversion kits for legally sold semiautomatics.  Automatic weapons are not practical for target shooting or hunting.  Even the military has very specific uses for automatic weapons and machine guns, and most members of a standard infantry squad are riflemen trained in making well-aimed single shots.  Anything else is a waste of good ammunition.

If I haven’t made the point clear by now, it’s this: Automatic weapons have no logical purpose except to indiscriminately kill large numbers of people quickly.  Which then begs the question: Why would any rational citizen want an automatic weapon?

The discussion now returns to the logic, if you can call it that, of gun politics.  I am partial to the argument that it is not so much the presence of firearms in our society, but the culture surrounding them that is the problem.  To put it bluntly, guns are a phallic symbol for certain males insecure in their manhood and eroding socioeconomic status.  They’re basically a substitute dick. 

This fixation expresses itself in its mildest form in the lobbying for liberalized concealed carry laws.  Essentially, it’s an argument rooted in the man-as-protector ethos.  It goes something like this: If only I had a concealed gun, I coulda stopped that maniac shootin’ at everyone. 

This assertion doesn’t account for the likelihood of the would-be hero being mistaken for a bad guy by yet another would-be hero packing heat.  Or by the police.  It also doesn’t account for situations such as last Sunday’s where a handgun is a useless countermeasure against a guy firing a rifle from a 32^nd story window.

The fixation’s most troubling manifestation arises from our cultural celebration of violence.   A real man teaches his enemies a permanent lesson.  And the thought of apocalyptic vengeance is appealing.  It’s the ultimate form of dominance over other, lesser people.  It’s like playing God.

Most of us sublimate these fantasies by watching action movies or playing first-person shooter games.  NPR this week profiled a venue in Las Vegas which offers patrons the simulated experience of firing an automatic weapon.  A soundbite featured a couple of them telling the reporter how exhilarating it felt.

How did Stephen Paddock feel as he fired into the crowd of concertgoers below him?  If it was anger, it was an anger no one had noticed until then.  He carefully planned and methodically prepared for the shootings, and thus can be assumed rational enough to have known what he was about to do was wrong.  Had he not been cornered in his room at the Mandalay Bay and forced to commit suicide to evade capture, Paddock had planned an escape from the scene further demonstrating he was compos mentis.

Maybe he did it because he could.  Capability is motive enough for some people.  We probably will never know for sure, and it really doesn’t matter. 

The one certainty is that another mass shooting awaits us in the not too distant future.  Get used to them if you haven’t already.  It’s the new normal.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar