The head coach at our high school was an old boy named Monk Edwards. Monk was not the most articulate person on the staff. He was not even the most articulate coach, but he was the boss. Monk would often begin his little talks with us bright-eyed boys by saying: “Here’s the deal.” Sometimes he would say: “Here’s the thing.” And occasionally he would emphasise his point: “Here’s the deal on the thing.” We’d crack each other up imitating Monk saying: “Here’s the deal on the thing.”
The deal on the thing
Years later, and after too many college philosophy courses, I decided the deal and the thing are interrelated. I doubt Monk gave it much thought. But if you do think about it, cause and effect are just a more Aristotelian approach to the deal on the thing. Let’s apply the deal on the thing to Americans and guns.
On 28 August, 23-year-old Robin Westman took an assault rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, all legally owned, and fired indiscriminately through a window at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota where school children were attending a back-to-school mass, killing an eight-year-old boy, a ten-year-old girl and wounding 18 others.
Immediately, the politicians said their thoughts and prayers were with the victims and their families. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey told NPR: “Prayers are welcome. Thoughts certainly welcome. But that’s not enough. These kids were literally praying in church. And it is on us right now, not just to sit back. It’s on all of us to take the necessary actions so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.” We’ll see.
Mass shootings in the US
Wikipedia lists 40 mass shootings for the month of August alone.
I expect there have been plenty of thoughts and prayers. No action. Just a few of way too many examples in recent years:
- 1999, Columbine High School Colorado: 13 students and 1 teacher killed, 20 wounded.
- 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut: 20 seven- and eight-year-olds killed.
- 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada: 58 people killed, 546 wounded. The worst mass shooting in US history.
- 2018, Parkland Florida high school: 14 students and 3 staff killed, 17 wounded.
- 2022, Uvalde Texas Elementary School: 19 students and 2 teachers killed, 17 wounded.
Innumerable thoughts and prayers. No action.
There were only 16 mass shootings in the US between 1900 and 1965. In 1966 an ex-Marine named Charles Whitman murdered his wife and mother, grabbed some guns, climbed to the tower of the University of Texas and randomly killed 16 and wounded 17. According to the Rockefeller Institute’s research and analysis on mass shootings, since 1966 there have been 502 mass shootings, most from 2000, with 1,714 killed and 4,371 wounded.
The deal on the gun thing
The human population of the US in 2024 was 340 million; the gun population 393 million. About one-third of adults own at least one gun, according to data on Americans and guns from Pew Research Center. That averages over three guns per gun owner
Some 61% of Americans say it’s too easy to get a gun; 58% favour stricter gun laws. Forget it. Most Americans never had Monk Edwards for a coach and don’t understand the deal on the thing.
When analysing the deal on the gun thing, we need to take into consideration three factors: the law, politics, and culture Let’s start with the easy one.
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
A debate raged for many years exactly what the framers of the Constitution meant. Finally, in 2008, the Supreme Court came down in favour of the gun rights advocates in the Heller Decision. But Justice Scalia stated: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” So even the Heller Decision leaves open the possibility of putting limits on gun ownership. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler noted that the gun debate has stalled in politics, not in the law: courts have upheld the vast majority of gun control legislation.
Politics and guns
And that brings us to the other thing – politics. The gun industry had a $92bn impact on the US economy in 2024. Money talks in the form of a powerful gun lobby and politicians listen. While a majority of Americans favour stricter gun laws, many politicians either reject any sort of gun control entirely or try to avoid it like a goofy uncle at Christmas. The gun lobby spent $30mn helping get Trump elected in 2016. In 2020 it spent about the same. That scaled back to $14.7mn in 2024.
House Speaker Tip O’Neill said: “All politics is local.” Politicians, especially those with ‘safe seats’ in GOP states, first need to win their primary. The gun lobby can give them money and support… or it can back a more reliable gun advocate, call out the troops, and those backsliders will likely go home to sit on their porch listening to birdies chirp.
Arching over the legal and political things is the deal – American gun culture. Among the 32% of Americans who own guns, there is a hardcore group for whom guns go well beyond firearms. It’s not about guns; it’s about them: who they are – their beliefs, their values, their freedom in the land of the free. You can’t separate their guns from their existence. They resent being called “bitter” by Barack Obama who said, “they cling to guns or religion…”.They feel insulted when Hillary Clinton tosses them into a “basket of deplorables”. Some long for the good old days and think that life today is too complicated and too dangerous. A woman in Lancaster, Ohio said she voted for Trump in 2016 because, “I just want it to be like it was”. “Like it was” means, among many things, not being scared of what’s “out there”.
The American gun lobby
The gun lobby has convinced them that they need to protect themselves from what’s “out there”. According to Pew Research Center, 72% say their guns are for protection; only 32% say for hunting. Out there are all those bad guys. They need a Glock 19 to protect their homes. Police constantly practise shooting but a 2019 study found Dallas police struck their target only 35% of the time. The New York police were even worse, a measly 23% accuracy in 1990. Mr Bangbang Jones is more likely to shoot the dog or himself with that Glock 19 than those evildoers he’s so worried about.
The gun lobby claims that any gun safety law is the thin edge of the wedge. First, it’s universal background checks, then high-capacity magazines, and before you know it ‘they’ will come to take away your guns. Who are ‘they’? Those snooty liberal gun safety advocates. Without the gun lobby, ‘they’ will take over the government and then they’ll take your guns. And once they have your guns, they will destroy your way of life. Gun advocates say: I will give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands. It’s us against them. That’s the deal on the thing.
