The title of this page is wishful thinking. I am pretty sure it does not exist in any credible, organized form. But it should - we need it.
The United States is arguably the greatest experiment in societal transformation ever conceived, an attempt to implement democratic government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." The Founders may have had a much narrower definition of "the people" than we do today - they certainly were not thinking of racial minorities and women when they wrote our founding documents. But that was then, now is now, and we can forgive them. The structure they created extended simply, albeit with much effort in social engineering and legal clarification, to the more inclusive scope that we espouse today. And some day, we may even achieve the current ideal.
But a society is more than its basic laws. Society includes mores, expectations, folkways, attitudes, fashions, and more. And today there is an attitude afoot that threatens to belie the foundational assumptions of American democracy. It is an attitude suffered by the hopeless and the hateful that mass murder is an appropriate, perhaps the only, expression of their frustration and anger. Sixty years ago this was unthinkable. Sure, we had our angry young men, our destitute, our mentally ill ... these are sad pathologies of the human animal. Yes, occasionally they committed the ultimate crime. But that was rare, shocking, and unacceptable. It isn't any more. In the past year (I'm writing in August, 2019), there have been around 400 mass killings, defined as four or more injuries or deaths in an apparently random attack. Mass murder is a daily event, part of the fabric of our society, not even newsworthy outside its local community unless the body count rises to double digits. Children, seniors, preggies, handicapped, ... none are exempt. It is beyond horrible.
And the normal community cries out for gun control. Guns are the weapon of choice for these attacks (although we have also seen explosives), other countries have fewer guns and fewer attacks, so the obvious reaction is to call for the elimination or dramatic reduction of access to guns. I agree that reducing the supply might reduce the violence somewhat. I endorse calls for rational, practical actions such as universal background checks, red-flag laws that permit confiscation of guns from psychologically suspect persons, prohibition of assault-style weapons, and more. But I do not fool myself into thinking such steps will solve the problem. They will not. Along with a minor reduction in violence, these laws will boost the illegal arms industry, almost enough to fill the void in legal weapons availability. There are 250 million guns in civilian hands in the United States, about half the guns in the non-military world. Those weapons form the inventory for a vast network of underground trafficking. Prohibition of alcohol almost 100 years ago showed the futility of banning something that people want, some desperately. Even if we eliminated all legal gun purchases, even if we convinced many law-abiding citizens to turn in their guns, even if we conducted vast search and seizure operations, millions of guns would remain ... and they would remain in the hands most likely to use them for ill. And most of those actions would be beyond what the Congress, the Constitution, and the courts will allow. We can't eliminate violence by banning guns.
So what can we do? As gun enthusiasts like to say, "Guns don't pull the trigger. People do." It is people we must address, desperate, lonely, angry people. Some are distraught over personal circumstances - let's help them before they turn to violence. Some are full of hatred - let's teach them to love, or at least not to hate. Some are seduced into violence by sensational coverage of violent events - let's stop the saturation coverage of massacres and the naming and implicit glorification of perpetrators. Children grow up seeing dozens of fictional murders on their screens every day - let's stop promoting violence in entertainment. Some feel abandoned by a government that should respect them - let's change government's primary, person-directed activity from prosecution to protection. And some have no respect for government itself - let's teach civics again. Let's teach all our children what I was taught year after year in school about democracy, freedom, civil rights, pluralism, pride, and respect. Not just once in seventh grade, but repeatedly, from kindergarten through high school. Let's remake America's impression of itself. Let's identify youth at risk and help them to grow up sound and responsible. Let's direct hundreds of millions of Do Something dollars to education, jobs, positive publicity for the America we used to have and most still remember. Let's produce videos and feature length movies about admirable characters overcoming adversity, resisting temptation, eschewing violence. Let's reinvent heroism. But let's start now and do it aggressively, because the generation growing up today does not remember, and some never knew, an America that was proud and safe and compassionate and full of opportunity. Let's restore that pride, renew that safety, recover that compassion, and re-make those opportunities. Call it the National Civics Initiative if you wish. We can do it. It will take time, determination, experimentation, retreat, re-grouping, and repetition. We can do it.
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