A Craven Madness

For God did not give us a craven spirit, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
II Timothy 1:7

I was not surprised to see that a Facebook “friend” had posted a link to Richard Martinez’s impassioned plea for gun control in the aftermath of his son’s death in the multiple killings in Isla Vista, California last weekend. In a series of interviews, Martinez called out the “gutless politicians” whose unwillingness to implement any meaningful restrictions in the availability of firearms was a major factor in his son’s killing. "Why did Chris die?" he yelled in one interview. "Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris' right to live?"

But I was very surprised to see that someone else had posted a link to an article in The Onion. I love the satire in The Onion, but this seemed in very bad taste. Above a picture of grieving college students was the headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” The article is short and it isn’t funny at all:

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Not funny, but precisely to the point.

Why are we unable to do anything? Why are we so addicted to guns? And I know that three of the seven victims were killed with a knife, so we could also ask why we are so addicted to violence. But guns are the common denominator in mass killings over the years.

As comedian John Oliver once "One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns."

After 9/11 we made drastic changes in airport security. Basically, we search everyone. We won’t allow anything more deadly than a paperclip carried on an airplane. We limit shampoo bottles to 3.4 ounces. We won’t let anyone park anywhere near the boarding areas. We tolerate restrictions that once would have seemed bizarre. And we do all of this to prevent another tragedy.

The total death toll on 9/11 was 2,996. The number still looks horrific. Even one death is too many.

But more than 30,000 people die each year in America from firearms. We have lost approximately 400,000 lives to firearms since 9/11. This is madness. To borrow the word shared by Mr. Martinez and the Apostle Paul, this is a craven madness.

The Stars May Lie, But the Numbers Never Do

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my misery,
and my bones waste away.
Psalm 31:9-10

I am not in mourning. In spite of what I have seen, my eyes are not wasting away from grief. But they should be. And we should all be grieving for our nation.

Over the past few days I have seen dozens of internet postings about Marissa Alexander, a Florida woman who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for firing what she called “warning shots” over her husband’s head. Her husband had a history of domestic violence and she fired the shots after a violent altercation. No one was killed. There were no injuries.

It took the jury less than 15 minutes to find her guilty.

Ms. Alexander is black. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

There are issues with Marissa Alexander’s case. But the broad outlines are hard to ignore. George Zimmerman is “not guilty.” Trayvon Martin is dead. And Marissa Alexander is in prison, while her husband with a history of domestic violence is alive and well.

Racism has been called America’s “original sin” and it is still with us.

We don’t need to argue the specifics of the Trayvon Martin case. On the face of it, it looks bad. But it is just one case. This one case is significant only because of the broader trends. If we look up rates of incarceration, sentencing, capital punishment, unemployment, income, education, or pretty much anything else, what we find is that black people are disproportionately on the disadvantaged side of the ledger every single time. We would like to believe that justice is blind but the statistics say otherwise.

To paraphrase Mary Chapin Carpenter, "The pundits and politicians may lie, but the numbers never do."

In the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s acquittal a white person commented that white people had not rioted after the O. J. Simpson verdict, when a black man was found “not guilty” in the murder of a white woman, and that black people should show similar restraint. And, of course, we should all show restraint. And, so far, things have been relatively calm.

But seriously, O J. Simpson? That’s a great first example. Now we will all wait patiently for the second example.

What the Simpson verdict proved is that money makes a difference. And that in some cases, class may matter more than race.

In the recent court rulings on affirmative action, someone cynically observed that colleges and universities were more comfortable with defining diversity in terms of race rather than class. Racial diversity could be achieved by focusing affirmative action on income. If a colleges and universities achieved economic diversity, they would also achieve racial diversity without ever considering race as a category. Lower income blacks and whites would all benefit. But the present focus on racial diversity allows the colleges to select students from families with higher incomes, regardless of race. And the big gain for the colleges is that such a selection costs less in terms of financial aid.

We know that racism is still a problem in America. We don’t know whether or not George Zimmerman is a racist. The evidence is mixed. We don’t know whether or not the judge, and the jurors and the police officers are racists. But we know that racism is a problem in America. And we know that we have work to do.

We also know one more thing with a reasonable certainty. If George Zimmerman had not had a gun, then no one would be dead. Without a gun he would not have followed Trayvon Martin and the altercation between them would never have taken place. And without a gun, Marissa Alexander would not be in prison. She was not in danger when she fired the warning shots.

Maybe we need to do something about the guns.