There's No Such Thing As A Safe State
Every US Town Is A Mass Shooting Possibility Until We Change Federal Laws
“We’re just not used to this,” Maine Representative Chellie Pingree was saying, when I turned on the news last night.
She kept repeating the same sentiment. Over and over.
“We’re just not used to this…” and “It’s very unusual to have something like this happen in our state…” and “We pride ourselves on being a very safe state…” and “Very unusual for a place like ours…” and “It’s just a very uncommon event for us…” and “Every state is vulnerable to it and this is just a reminder that a safe state like ours could be in this same position.”
That’s what I heard upon walking in the door from family movie night. Only took me a second to figure out we’d had another mass shooting in the US.
My mind had been elsewhere. I’d been with family watching the movie Maverick, and I was still surprised when I got home how much it had turned out to be like watching a Star Wars movie — except with US jet fighters instead of X-Wings, and a nuclear facility not a Death Star. Some things are unexpected.
Some things aren’t unexpected, though.
If anything, mass shootings in America are expected.
The unexpected parts are where, and how bad. It’s been a while since we had a big one, but if you look at the numbers we have a freaking ton of them.
No state is safe. No place is safe.
To think that any place is safe is to ignore the odds, and to ignore statistics. Just because you’re in a low-population state gives absolutely zero immunity to mass shooting vulnerability. None. Nada. Zilch. That’s not how mass shootings work. That’s not how humans work. That’s not how US gun availability works.
I don’t write that to criticize Representative Pingree. She sounded very much in shock. It is understandable to react with horror, and with sentiments along the lines of “how could this happen here?” It’s not unusual. Even as I type this, Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC is asking if no place is safe in the US. No, it isn’t! Why would we think it is?
Humans have a jacked-up understanding of risk. We’re pretty terrible at it.
As a society, we have enabled widespread firearms access.
What did we think would happen?
Why would we think that any one area is “safer” than another? What on earth would lead people to think that?
Denial, is what I offer. We’re in denial.
We’re in denial about so, so, so very many things and we’re working hard in many cases to uphold that denial. Because what do you do? What do you do when you have to send kids to school — or just out to live — knowing full well that someone with a gun could end their lives?
But then, we’re mostly also sending those same kids (and family and friends) out into the world without much protection against covid — an established virus that can cause organ damage especially with repeated infection, that can cause disabling long-covid, or that can cause other complications including death. As a society we seem to have decided that the vaccines are good enough so let’s just go with that, even though the science says we should be doing disease prevention too to truly prevent damage to humans at scale. We’re mostly choosing not to. Denial helps that along.
We’re also mostly blowing off climate change. It’s so huge and there’s so much pushback and there are other things that need attention we say… even though the weather’s getting creepier and birds don’t migrate like they used to and we’ve got a really bad feeling about the whole thing but any real change we make that makes a difference in the places where we live for climate change will need lots of folks and big commitments and we just don’t seem to have the momentum so…. what? We wait? We watch it get worse? From our giant houses, with the AC and/or heat cranked? From our giant SUVs? From our office buildings that we chill like restaurant refrigerators?
We’re terrible at risk.
We’re actively avoiding dealing with very real risks — at scale.
But some things we know.
We know there are too damn many guns.
We know that most people nearly anywhere in the US have access to all those guns.
We know that a very few states (and DC) have a few laws that make it harder to get to at least some of those guns so the risk is a bit lower in a few spots. Yet anyone can drive right across state lines — or the District of Columbia line — with a car full of guns and no one is likely to stop them. We don’t have state barricades and inspections. Even states with gun laws aren’t safe from mass shooters.
The thing is, we haven’t activated the majority of Americans.
We haven’t truly activated the majority of Americans.
We could.
Any of us could.
All of us together could.
The majority of Americans say they want stuff like less total widespread availability of guns. Why haven’t we mobilized that majority to freaking get out and vote that way? Why in every election do so many people not vote?
What if we could more fully activate, energize, and motivate Americans to vote? For like… less guns? More democracy? Better healthcare for Americans? Child labor laws? Women’s rights? Actual equity? A more sustainable and resilient future given the threats bearing down on us now?
I think we can motivate Americans to actually get out and vote… and I think it has to be with an actual big, huge, loosely coordinated push.
I think we’re collectively scared and cowed and timid and frozen watching the MAGA people push a culture war of hate… and that we’re nervous to stand up and get out front. I think we’re not sure we could take them on in bigger ways than the dangerous, hateful BS that they push. I think we’re hesitant to push the status quo… and that’s how it holds.
We could. We could push. We could push more. We could push bigger and in more coordinated ways and using bigger leverage.
We haven’t yet tried.
Maybe it’s time?
I’d like to think so.
We have ideas about how to do such a shift. Seriously. Except it’s not going to work if we don’t get people engaged and get some volunteer action going to start building this big idea. Join us. We’re doing Zoom calls Tuesday evenings and Friday afternoons most weeks after this one.
We’re not going to get different results doing the same damn things.
Let’s try some new stuff. Get courageous. Get bold.
Why? Because maybe we can make this country genuinely safer in a few years with work we can start now. Maybe in a few years people won’t have to live in a country where we know damn well no place is safe because nobody knows where the next active shooter is going to hit. If we do it right, maybe in a few years someone can say a place is safe and it might actually mean something because we’ve reduced the enormous availability of guns.
We’re nowhere near there, but it’s reachable. We have to make some big choices between here and there.
Make this choice: join us on a Zoom call.
Susan Collins also commented that "this just doesn't happen here" (I paraphrased). Riiiggghhhttt. It's you who are right, Vanessa. It can, it has, it will happen anywhere in this country--because it's the guns. The shooter can be sane; the shooter can be freakin' nuts. But it's the damn gun that wreaks the havoc. What is so hard to understand?! We make school children do active shooter drills; some businesses do the same. What is wrong with this picture? What other country subjects its people to this idiocy? If we are to return to sanity in this country, if we are to start the process of feeling--and being--safe again, we must get rid of the guns.