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I live in China, where the 2nd Amendment (among many other US rights) has no jurisdiction.

I vividly remember the day of the Sandy Hook attack. I was reading Shanghai Daily, the local English language newspaper. Of course the school attack was the headline. As I turned the page to read the continuation of the article, I got confused. What had been a story of a terrible shooting in the US became a story of a school attack in western China.

It turned out that there were two different school attacks the same day. In the US, where a semi-automatic rifle was used, the death of a classroom's worth of students and adults. In China, where it was a knife attack, 4 people had to have their injuries examined at a hospital but no one was seriously hurt, much less died. It was as if someone was running an experiment to let us see the effect of a single variable on the outcome.

Many Americans certainly love guns. And a majority of Americans deeply love cars. But somehow we all accept that our access to cars come with severe limitations. I need to have a valid driver's license and insurance to legally operate a car. There are strict laws limiting where and how I can take and use my car. If I violate the driving laws, I face immediate arrest. All of this is true, despite the fact that a car really does confer a very real freedom: that of movement. But state limitations on our driving are not controversial or politically sensitive at all.

The reform I would love to see explored is to apply some of the same "personal responsibility" approach to guns. If I want a car, I have to carry insurance against the possibility that my vehicle may harm someone, since it is big, heavy, and dangerous if it hits you. This is true even if I am a very safe driver and have never been involved in a crash or other violation of driving law.

If I want a gun, it seems reasonable that I should also carry insurance on that, since it is similarly dangerous, even if I intend to use it safely. Requiring insurance doesn't impair one's "right" to a gun, but it does provide a structure for incentivizing safety and would encourage people to be thoughtful about how many guns they owned, and how carefully these guns are kept. It would also create a financial system to help pay for the carnage that does occur. And insurance companies would have an incentive to lobby for greater safety, with all the influence they have shown in other areas of policy.

Americans are truly irrational about firearms. I recently had a conversation with a co-worker who is a good friend. He said that he came from a long line of responsible, safe gun users, who loved to go hunting and never hurt anyone with their weapons. A few minutes later, he noted that his stepfather, grandfather, and uncle had all died of suicide by gun. He did not notice any contradiction.

A couple of decades ago, Big Tobacco seemed invincible. It's amazing that we all finally acknowledged that secondhand smoke was a hazard and banned smoking in restaurants, airplanes, and so on. Few would argue that a smoker's "right" to puff poison into his lungs is violated by requiring that he not share it with everyone one else having dinner that night at McDonalds. What will it take us to get to a similar point with guns?

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

I received an email from an old friend who after noting that his son lives in San Antonio and is familiar with Uvalde, TX said that, for him, this tragedy was "close to home." He's right. If we have ever loved anyone--children, spouse, friend, cheer leader in high school--the grief is at hand, close by.

It will be 10 years come December since I was sitting in the barber chair in Colchester, CT watching the news while getting a haircut. The breaking news came from Newtown, Sandy Hook. My daughter had written an essay on the Columbine massacre for school earlier that year, or the year before. I'm old.

But not old enough not to be angry with politicians willing to continually sacrifice our citizens, our loved ones, to a Yahoo conception of unencumbered personal freedom. What else is it? What would you give up if it meant that your child, your spouse, maybe that cheer leader whose now an elementary school teacher, would not be shot in a classroom, at church or just coming out of Starbucks with a latte? We all accept a little less personal freedom for the general good. The government is supposed to be there to protect our rights and one of those rights is life. Our government is doing a piss poor job when it comes to the right not to get shot especially by a deranged assault weapon toting lunatic.

Mr. Fallows is right. It's just a matter of time before it happens again. Maybe its happening right now in other place that is always too close to home.

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Thank you for your eloquence.

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IT almost certainly won't do any good but I tweeted McConnell that the blood of these children is on his hands.

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He does.

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I've lived in Sweden and Japan and until then I did not realize what it felt like to live someplace where guns and gun violence were not an everyday concern. It was liberating! Americans don't realize the low-level but constant tension we feel because we must always be cognizant of threats, people in stores with weapons, and the daily news of gun violence and tragedy. We don't even realize the burden we carry with us - until we experience life without it.

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May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Author

Yes, I know just what you mean.

Even during the years we lived in China, there were *lots* of things there that were constant sources of anxiety. (My most acute fear was of being killed as either a pedestrian or a passenger in a country of first-generation car-owners who viewed stop lights, sides of the road, etc as all "advisory only." Deb was badly hurt when crossing a street in Beijing, with a green light, by someone not just running a stop light but doing so going *the wrong way* on a one-way street.)

And as people in China know, there are outbursts of fury, defiance, and violence all over the place there. But when those happen, the news headline says something like "Three wounded in knife-attack" or "Doctor badly beaten by furious family of patient." Not these large-scale field-of-fire massacres.

The shadow of the gun hangs over us all here.

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May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

Yes, I know what you mean. I lived in Shanghai when you did and was hit by a taxi while in a crosswalk near Tomorrow Square because the driver didn't think the red light applied to him. I never want to live in China again. Still, it's odd that Americans are unwilling to tolerate lawless drivers but are willing to accept being awash in guns and gun violence. We must change our thinking.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

What can I do to help end this? I read Frum’s article and will give more money to Mom’s Demand Action. I’ll call my non-voting representative just to feel like I’ve done something. I’ll continue to support opponents of McConnell. But these efforts feel fruitless. I told my 4th grade daughter this morning about the massacre. She told me she will try to run to the corner first and will duck as low as she can.

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Oh, about your daughter. This is just heartbreaking.

As reflected in some of the other back-and-forth here, I share your sense of futility, about what can be done to correct an obvious evil. It was depressing last night, among other sources of depression, to go back and see that I could word-for-word quote things I'd written over the past several decades, about these nonstop shocks.

I will pay new attention to Sen. Murphy and what he is proposing.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

The 90+% of Americans who support expanded background checks clearly do not support it more than they support other issues; why else would they continue to reelect people like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, etc.? They click "yes" to a question on a form with a thousand other questions but when they step into the voting booth what is on their mind? Probably the last political attack ad that was paid for by NRA funds.

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Yes. Different-but-related point: Back at the dawn of time, I worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign, which was the *first* presidential campaign after Roe v. Wade. Carter himself was pro-Roe but personally very skeptical of abortion. He was what we would now call a "pro-life Democrat," and there was practically no difference between his position and Gerald Fords.

But the national GOP went all-in on attacking Carter as pro-abortion. There was a revealing NYT article at the time, in which one of the GOP pollsters, I think it was Robert Teeter, presciently explained the strategy. He said that hard-line anti-Roe people ("pro-life") were a small minority of the electorate. BUT, he said, they cared about and would vote on this issue to the exclusion of everything else. And getting them energized in an anti-Democratic Party way was an important long term investment.

I think the same is true with "absolutist" views on 2A. It's a tiny minority that thinks there should be an AR-15 in every home. BUT they care about this to the exclusion of all else. And similarly with money from the NRA.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

I'm vigorously opposed to abortion, but also opposed to the state controlling a woman's body; consequently instead of abortion bans I support common sense programs that are proven to significantly reduce unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions. I strongly support the right of an individual to be a responsible gun owner; I also strongly support common sense laws that keep guns away from those who would misuse them. In a rational nation there would be no dichotomy - the vast majority of citizens would recognize & support similar logic and vote accordingly.

But in this binary political cosmos we've been dragged into I am tossed into a giant, boiling cauldron labeled "Pro-Abortion" and another one labeled "Anti-Gun." I am barricaded within these fictional purgatories by the shrieking voices on cable "news" shows and opportunistic politicians like the ones you described.

I'm glad you mentioned Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, as their 1976 campaign is the gold standard of how politics "ought to be" in this nation. Both men served with humility and honor - and throughout the campaign their mutual respect and admiration developed into a lifelong friendship. Ever since Reagan had the solar panels removed from the roof of the White House we've been the victims of opportunists using populist, ultra-nationalistic issues like abortion and gun control to whip up outrage and expand their power.

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In the aftermath of mass shootings, the same articles are written, the same quotes are said. Nothing new, nothing changes, and that's because America loves guns more than people. I doubt that will ever change. If you love guns, you must accept the mayhem and death that are an inevitable result. It's silly and naive to think guns can be "controlled" because as long as guns are part of America, murder of innocent people will be part of America.

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I wish I could write some "reasoned" rebuttal to what you are saying. But I can't.

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It doesn't matter because writing has never changed anything. America has totally lost itself. It's just wreckage, but we tell ourselves that if we just keep on hoping, somehow it will all be OK.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

At times such as these, invariably my first thought is this statement made by a critic of President Andrew Johnson: Forsooth [they] needs must be put aboard a ship of stone, with masts of steel, sails of lead, ropes of iron, the Devil at the helm, the wrath of God for a breeze, and Hell for their destination.

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I had not known that allusion either. Thank you.

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May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

more innocents, more evil; thank you for the fine observations on this sad moment

The Getty Museum, painting: The Massacre of the Innocents, about 1413–1415, Boucicaut Master or workshop (French, active about 1390 - 1430), getty.edu.

"Herod, the king of Judaea, watches as his soldiers slaughter the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the infant Jesus, whom Herod feared would eventually seize his kingdom. According to Boccaccio, 144,000 children were murdered.

" The story of Herod was particularly appropriate for Boccaccio's book, which recounted the tricks that fate can play. Made guardian and defender of Galilee at the age of fifteen, Herod exhibited wisdom beyond his years. He rose through the political ranks to become king, building cities and impressive edifices. Suspicious and greedy, he executed his wife and children for plotting against him. In his old age, he suffered from a gruesome skin disease and a guilty conscience, eventually leading him to attempt suicide unsuccessfully with a sword."

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Thank you for this allusion, which I had not been aware of (the painting), but is apt.

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Oh my God. Just last week (after Jim's article on the Buffalo racist terrorist attack) I mentioned Jim's years-old article "there will be many more gun tragedies like this". Sure enough, it never stops.

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Tom, yes. There are many things that you and I have missed about daily life in the US in our respective years abroad. But this is something just deeply flawed about the US system — and with the various planks of "minority rule" built into the current federal structure (filibuster, dark money, Senate structure, judicial appointments, the intensifying identity politics of guns) it is depressingly hard to imagine and end to these horrors.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

"What are we doing?"--Senator Chris Murphy

"Cashing NRA checks."--Senator Mitch McConnell

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I could not agree more.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

Some credit is due to Justice Scalia and his Heller opinion. Prior to Heller, it was not at all clear that the Second Amendment was intended to create an individual right to gun ownership. After Heller, the gun Lobby claims a constitutional right to own an AR-15.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

I find it fascinating that the legal concept of the Second Amendment creating an individual right to weapons was actually pioneered by Huey Newton of the Black Panthers. Only in America could you find Newton and Scalia united on this issue. But you are absolutely right that Scalia's opinion, carrying the weight of the Supreme Court, will be haunting us down the decades with its 'official" status and influence.

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Dennis, excellent point. There are so many aspects of current governance structure that no one could consider "fair" or "what architects of a new federal system had in mind."

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

I find it impossible to respond rationally to this madness. I tip my hat to Mr. Fallows to write cogently, all too often, on this topic. Part of me wants to try harder to work for gun safety. Part of me wants to just ban the cursed things. And part of me just wants to give in to cynicism and say it’s clearly what we as a nation want to happen—an occasional culling of those with poor reflexes, those people who can’t duck fast enough, a reduction of the surplus population. Sometimes I just want to hear a politician say, “Only 19? That guy ain’t a good shot. Aiming for kids you ought to have been able to hit more than 19.”

Honestly, no exaggeration, retiring to Portugal sounds better and better all the time. Between the gun nuts, and the racists, and the Christofascists, and the arm chair authoritarians on the Supreme Court, I’m pretty near finished with this place.

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I really do understand the conflicting emotions, between even more intense engagement and despair. As I have written elsewhere, I remain a long-term optimist about most conditions in US society. It is hard for me to imagine a way out of this nightmare.

As I didn't mention in this post, two of our grandchildren, ages 10 and 7, are public-school grade-school students in Texas, who right now are in their last week of school before summer break. I don't think that it should take some kind of personal exposure to a broader problem to care about it. (Men should care about women, people in rich countries should care about people in poor countries, and so on.) But unavoidably it makes things even more vivid.

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Talk about anxiety. Feeling for you.

Heather Cox Richardson had a post this morning on the recent origins of this madness. Maybe it gives some grounds for a rational hope for reversal, but it still depends on overcoming minority rule, and that’s a big job.

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Thank you.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

I have no words.

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May 25, 2022Liked by James Fallows

Reading in this excellent post about Mitch McConnell, I thought his blockage of even the most basic reforms must be really about “follow the money.” It’s hard for me to het it through my head that money could work it’s way into our political system and warp minds and harden hearts to the extent it has. It’s a disease.

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May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Author

Indeed. And, as I can remember a time before widespread household ownerships oF AR-15s, and a time when a Nixon-appointed Chief Justice (Warren Burger) denounced the extension of Second Amend to every sort of household weapon (ie, before Heller ruling by Scalia), I can also remember a time before Citizens United, and the end of limits of money in politics. But we are in a different time now.

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