It's Going To Get Worse

Briana Sanchez/El Paso Times

Another day, another mass shooting in America. Actually, this most recent event was a two-fer, with 19 lives being lost in El Paso, Texas, and another 10 being taken in Dayton, Ohio some 13 hours later.

Cue the Republican lawmakers issuing “thoughts and prayers,” and the subsequent outraged Americans rightfully responding with “Fuck your thoughts and prayers, we need gun control,” followed by angry conservatives claiming any type of gun control whatsoever is an attack on the second amendment, believing that a ratification written in 1791 should still apply today.

But it’s pointless to continue to have this debate. Handguns for protection, rifles for hunting. That makes sense. There’s no reason civilians should have access to high powered semiautomatic weapons - the same weapons used in war. There’s no sensible argument for it. Those same angry conservatives will tell you that we need access to them, because what if the government decides to become a tyrannical state and we need to defend ourselves? Well, I hate to break it to anybody that actually believes that, but if the government decided to use militarized force against its own people - there’s very little your AR-15 can do about it. We’re talking about the most powerful military on the globe. One that can (and has) decimate countries with the snap of a finger, without needing the Infinity Gauntlet. Your assault rifle isn’t going to save us from tyranny. Thanks for thinking of us, though.

So, of course we need common sense gun control. Anyone arguing otherwise is doing so in bad faith or is simply an ignorant, partisan hack.

But I’m afraid America’s troubles go much deeper than gun control.

There is a significant difference between a mentally ill person taking a firearm into a school and viciously mowing down innocent children, for no discernible reason, like we saw in Sandy Hook - and a hateful, radicalized man targeting specific groups of people in the name of a perverted ideology. Both are tragedies, but where the former actually is commentary on our mental health system and the lack of sensible gun control, the latter is terrorism.

The people who are capable of shooting up hispanic communities, predominantly black churches, as well as mosques and synagogues, already legally own the firearms to do so. They have no history of mental illness. Some of them don’t have records period, or any inclination that they could carry out such an attack.

The current president of the United States, of all people, has awakened such terrorists. Using dog whistles and bullhorns alike, he spews venomous, hateful rhetoric that his cult followers then use as fuel to commit some of the most heinous acts in world history.

Right wing terrorism is on the rise, and while everyone is talking about gun control, absolutely no one is talking about how these shooters all fit a very similar profile. All of them have been radicalized online. All of them have troubling social media posts that should’ve been taken more seriously. Many of them have “manifestos” in which they name the president directly as one of their inspirations.

We look at car bombings in Middle Eastern countries and collectively shake our heads, asking ourselves how can people live in countries where such attacks are commonplace. There is no daylight between what those countries face, and what we’re dealing with right here in our own backyard. Make no mistake: Mass shootings are domestic terrorist attacks. They’re our homemade version of a Middle Eastern suicide bombing.

This is going to get worse before it gets better - if it gets better.

If Trump wins reelection in 2020 - white supremacists will feel even more emboldened, and will ramp up their attacks on people they consider to be “others.”

If a Democrat wins in 2020 - those same white supremacists will be even angrier than they are now, and will feel a need to retaliate in the only way they see fit.

America has ignored the very real conversations about its dark history for far too long. These feelings of racial animus that date back to the birth of this country have been bubbling under the surface. The election of the first African-American president accelerated what was already a clear and present danger. The wounds that we tried to let heal by simply ignoring them have been ripped open with a rusty blade.

The cancer is metastasizing.

I don’t know what the solution is, or when it will come. But yesterday made it abundantly clear: We’re not getting off that easily. Not this time. We will have to address the very real threat of white nationalism head-on. There’s no looking away. No whispering amongst our closest friends and relatives.

The elephant in the room has just murdered another 29 people.