Some Thoughts on the Tragic Shooting of Children in Connecticut

The recent and tragic shooting in Connecticut draws out of one a number of thoughts, most of which are of no utility. This is as it should be since such incidents are the type that really should touch a person’s emotional system much more than ones intellect. Of course, at some point in one’s reaction the question of what could be done to make a second such incident impossible rises as a challenge. The first thoughts, for most of us, are something a bit like a fairy tale. Next time, the schools should protect the children better. Someone should have known and we should have listened better. Such “solutions” are tempting, but of course, by themselves they lead to nothing of any value.

After a while, our thoughts get a bit more strategic and we might think of things that really would work, if only we lived in a very different world than the one to which we are consigned. That sort of thinking leads to what is probably the most popular line of reasoning. We need to stop allowing violent people to obtain guns. If we are particularly careful we might add “like those used in this tragic incident.” So we see an effort to keep assault rifles from the hands of violent people. But, that too is a bit too open ended and it might occur to us that we are not very likely to ever identify all the violent people with whose hands the assault rifle should be kept from holding.

Making any of these strategies work would require a level of control that far exceeds our ability to exert. Will we ever identify every violent person? Will we really ever be able to eliminate the existence of all the assault rifles? Not very likely. Identifying all the violent people would require including lots of people who are not violet but share some characteristics of those who really are violence prone. Only in the excesses of the identification can we hope to include most, but even here not all the people with the propensity to do something so horrible as happened in Connecticut.

In other words, one of our immediate problems is that to even approach success we need to commit our own set of excesses. Perhaps our sins would not be nearly as bad as the potential that we are trying to forbid, but still they are troubling, especially to the ones we lock up for their unrealized potential. So, one of the difficulties we immediately run into is a basic truism of most of our actions which is that there are always unintended consequences to our efforts to be good. One might argue that if we simply ban all assault rifles that would eliminate the deaths from Assault rifles. If one is not terribly thoughtful, this solution provides a good deal of hope and seems to not incur much in the way of negative consequences.

One of the problems, though, is the all too common confusion between policy and intention. In other words, we ban the sale of assault rifles in the confusion with our intent, that assault rifles will no longer be in existence and therefore will not be available for use for such tragedies. Banning assault rifles may very well decrease the number in existence in the future. This reasoning is somewhat like that used by our government to save money. We are saving money by reducing the rate at which we borrow as though that were the same as actually saving money. It is not and we are not likely to develop a way to accomplish our goal of eliminating the existence of assault rifles by reducing the rate at which they are acquired.

That the ban will not eliminate the offense from ever happening even by the cause of the misuse of assault rifles is one thing, but of course our goal is not to eliminate the murder of innocents by assault rifles, but what we want to do is eliminate the murder of innocents by any means available. If the problem is posed thusly, it has the sobering effect of making it crystal clear that we will never succeed in that goal.

There is a very useful saying that comes into play at this point, which is that perfection should not become the enemy of the good. Maybe we should be happy with decreasing the number of new assault rifles in the future and recognize that eliminating them is not possible. The application of this aphorism leads to the question of whether the problem has to do with the access to the assault weapons and whether a ban would actually decrease their availability. Maybe it would in several hundreds of years. Flintlock weapons are certainly harder to possess now, than they were when first invented. But, of course, they have been replaced by numerous more modern weapons, including the assault rifle. What will come on the market in 5 or 10 or a hundred years from now? We can only guess, but in any case it will not be a pleasant, of that we can be pretty sure if the past is any guide to the future.

Of course, that begs one of the difficult questions that assault rifles are not even the most likely weapon, let alone the only weapon that might be used for terrible actions. Africans in Rwanda, for example know that one does not need modern weapons to kill hundreds of thousands, let along 26. So, we are lead to considering other approaches or perhaps multiple approaches to at least lessen this problem. The obvious consideration might then be given to turning the problem around. Suppose we consider not how the violent ones commit their crimes, but how the victims might be given the chance to not be victims.

This line of reasoning turns us to consider protections that might be instituted. We are not likely to think that arming the 7 year old child with a carry permitted weapon is the answer, but we might consider providing armed guards at our schools, for example. We know that will not be foolproof, because that has failed before, but perhaps it will be a good solution, if the school is the place where the attack is going to be lodged. We might also consider training several people in each school to serve as defense. Guns could be locked away in several places in a school and school officials who normally work in each area be given appropriate training to respond as needed. Some airline pilots have been trained to be ready in case of an effort to take over their plane and the same idea might be instituted in the schools.

Anyway, we soon get to the point of asking ourselves why this problem is so hard to solve in a way that is really effective. Having a large number of armed “good people” seems to be a solution on the way to being good, but it is not complete or perfect, and after a while it appears obvious that we will never come to a completely effective, perfect solution. One of the reasons why this and all such problems are difficult is that we do not have a very clear and simple notion of the causality that underlies the tragedy we wish to avoid. In other words, we do not and cannot identify the cause as some simple, correctable effect, because there is no simple cause for us to find. For example if you go into a room that is dark and you wish to cure that problem, it is reasonably easy to think that a light might be the answer to eliminating that problem of darkness. So, we install a light with a light switch or if there is no source of electricity, we carry a flashlight that provides light and its own source of power.

Another difficulty that arises is that looking in the direction of the mental health issues becomes greatly more complex than focusing narrowly on the gun involved. Most problems are much easier to approach if one stays with the immediate and the concrete. Moving to abstract and delayed solutions is neither nearly so attractive nor so easy to think about. Putting into place a mental health system that does not duplicate the problems that John Kennedy hoped to eliminate when he virtually destroyed the mental health system in America presents a huge challenge. So, those with a great motivation to do something are likely to focus on the concrete and immediate, again, banning assault weapons, without much attention to the level of success this will result. The fact that such an approach will not likely have any serious impact on the problem that is the elimination or at least major reduction in violent deaths is not nearly as easy to consider, to grasp and to resolve.

So, to summarize, we can try several approaches and hope they will each have some rate of success. We can try to regulate guns out of the hands of violence prone individuals. We do that now, but perhaps that effort can be improved. We can arm and train more people who are good and willing to try to intercede when the need arises. We can look more closely at the problem of identifying those with the desire and willingness to (and often a history of) committing violence and take steps to prevent them from carrying out their intentions by blocking their efforts. We can also remain concerned and caring in the face of the inevitability of such horrors. We must not get to the point where we accept that such action is never going to be fully eliminated. We can continue to be observant and to report any indication of a propensity for violence and we can demand that mental health assessments be provided and acted upon when judged to be a real risk, while holding such actions to a high standard of proof.