On the morning of Oct. 1 my phone buzzed.
CNN informed me, informed me in one simple push notification, that another mass shooting had occurred—this time in Oregon. I let out a vocalized sigh, and without much hesitation or thought, I immediately went back to work.
Is this the new normal?
Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, mass shootings have become increasingly routine in this country. Public outrage over these incidences is diminishing with each event. We are killing each other, and we have become numb to it.
To add insult to injury, we act like it is completely out of our control. And many of us will do everything we can to morally justify doing nothing about it.
In his speech following the aftermath of the tragedy at Umpqua Community College, President Obama expressed his unmitigated frustration. “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough,” he said. “It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger we should feel. It does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America—next week or a couple of months from now.”
It is preposterous that the most powerful country on Earth, the supposed beacon of freedom and peace, is helpless to protect itself from its own people.
We gladly spend the time, money and energy to fight terrorism.
The Air Force drops warheads on foreheads. The TSA screens every last crevice between your body and your clothing before boarding a plane. The NSA collects data on everyone we can — citizen or not — all in the name of preventing another terrorist attack.
So why can’t we protect us from ourselves?
According to the CDC, from 2004 to 2013, 316,545 Americans were killed by firearms on U.S. soil. 313 Americans were killed by acts of terrorism.
The numbers don’t lie. We are terrorizing ourselves. Our priorities are objectively out of place, and the politicization of this issue doesn’t allow us to think objectively.
We point our fingers away from the guns. It’s a mental health issue we say, not a gun issue.
Some of us even have the audacity to claim that these things happen because we aren’t heavily armed enough. They claim, if only all the students and teachers had guns, then they could have defended themselves from this monster.
I challenge anyone to look me in the eye with a straight face and claim that an environment completely saturated with guns will ultimately lead to less violence. Anyone who truly believes that must be stuck in some quixotic, misconceived, Wild West fantasy land.
So what can we do about this?
It turns out that there’s a model “down under” for us to follow—Australia.
Australia is strikingly similar to the United States. It’s a former British colony that values personal liberty and has a history of conquering the untamed frontier they now call home. The Aussies hunt. They own property. They have rural communities. They’re diverse. They are like us in so many ways.
On April 28, 1996, a massacre in Tasmania led to immediate, sweeping gun control measures throughout Australia—The National Firearms Agreement and Buyback Program.
Since then, they haven’t had a mass shooting in 19 years.
It isn’t because Australians are mentally healthier than us. It isn’t because they are a slightly more homogeneous society than us. It isn’t because they have a lower population than us.
The reason that Australia has remained free from massacres is because they chose to do something about it. Nearly two decades ago, the Aussies came to the bold conclusion that a society with fewer firearms is a safer one.
Because of that decision, Australia doesn’t have this hellacious normal that Americans have become tragically accustomed to.
There is nothing normal about this new normal.
It can change.
Duncan Rodman is a senior majoring in mass communications. He can be reached at duncanrodman@mail.usf.edu.
