National Review Online
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
On Monday, in the city of Highland Park, Ill.,
a deranged goblin of a man opened fire on a July 4 parade, killing
seven innocent people and wounding three dozen others. After an intense search,
the culprit was apprehended and taken into custody. Yet again, a mass shooting
has sullied America.
And, yet again, it is unclear what lawmakers can do to
prevent the next one. Just weeks ago, the Senate passed a gun-control bill that
Chris Murphy described as “the most significant piece of anti-gun violence
legislation in nearly 30 years.” Today, posturing as if nothing has been done
recently, Democrats are asking for more. But what, exactly, does that mean? A
red-flag law? Illinois already has one. A permitting system for the purchase and
ownership of guns? Illinois has that, too. “Universal” background checks? That’s already Illinois law. What about “assault weapons” and
“high-capacity” magazines? Highland Park has banned both since 2013. Concealed carry? That was prohibited at the
parade under an Illinois law that renders it illegal to carry
firearms at “any public gathering held pursuant to a license issued by any
governmental body.” Straw purchasing? That’s already illegal, and, besides, the
gun was obtained legally. Can the courts be blamed, perhaps? They cannot. In
2015, the Seventh Circuit upheld Highland Park’s ban on “assault weapons” and
“high-capacity” magazines, and the Supreme Court then declined to take up the case. As for Heller, McDonald,
and Bruen — thus far, nothing that has flowed from them even
intersected with this case.
Because they are, relatively speaking, so rare and so
unpredictable — and because America is so free — mass shootings remain one
of the most intractable forms of crime. The ubiquity of firearms all but
guarantees that a person who wishes to obtain one will do so before too long.
The breadth of the First Amendment makes it tough to track threatening or
unusual conversations. Absent a set of reforms that would gut the Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, there is no way for American authorities to keep
tabs on everyone who comes across as a little weird.
But if states are going to institute systems designed to
keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, it is not too much to ask that
they use them. In the aftermath of almost every mass
shooting, we learn that the suspect was “known to authorities” — which, in
almost every case, means that the shooter was known to his community, too. And
so it was here. The Highland Park shooter did not spring ex nihilo from
the shadows; he repeatedly telegraphed his intentions. In one video, uploaded
in August 2021, he foreshadowed his attack on the July 4 parade. In
another, he dramatized a school shooting. In a third, he fantasized about
getting into a shooting war with police. Per officials in the city, local cops
had interacted with him twice in 2019 — once when he attempted suicide, and
once when he threatened to “kill everyone” and had 16 knives, a dagger, and a
sword confiscated as a result. Illinois has a broad “red flag” law in place,
and it requires gun buyers to have a current permit. Why, we must ask, did
these incidents not trigger prophylactic action?
We would put a similar question to the press. Study after
study after study shows that mass shootings are highly “contagious,” and that,
as NPR put it in 2019, “intensive media coverage seems to drive
the contagion.” This is a free country, and its media must be free to act as
they see fit. But perhaps they could see fit to take that into account? As of
Tuesday afternoon, every major press outlet in the United States remains
fixated upon the shooter. In our fame-drunk culture, this indulgence can be
deleterious. A little less of it would be welcome. As a matter of course, we
ask gun owners to be responsible, and we ask citizens to be vigilant. Is it too
much to ask the press whether the need to squeeze a few extra clicks out of a
story is worth the risk of encouraging the next shooter?
And beyond that? Beyond that, Americans would do well to
set incidents such as this one in their proper context. Random acts of violence
are, indeed, terrifying, but they are terrifying because they are so rare. When
allocating our limited time and resources, we ought to remember that while the
most spectacular criminals garner all the attention, a devastating attrition
continues unabated in the background. On the day before the shooting in
Highland Park, 15 people were killed in Chicago. Thus far in 2022, there have
been 250 murders in Philadelphia, 175 murders in Los Angeles, and 102 murders
in Washington, D.C. Bringing down those numbers will take hard work,
intelligent policing, a willingness to enforce the laws already on the
books, and a commitment to engaging with the problem in its most common form —
and not just when it provides clicks, outrage, and a chance to poke one’s
political enemies in the eye.
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