Last week, President Biden took bold steps issuing executive actions on guns. Few things stratify the American public like the word, “gun”. That debate runs neck and neck with the abortion debate. That’s how it all goes when both sides are right and both sides are wrong. It is true that America was founded with chutzpah and rudimentary firearms. The west was tamed with guns. The gun culture is scratched right in to the very soul of Americana. It’s also true that while other countries have mental illness, the incidents of high schoolers or elementary school kids being splattered is pretty rare if not nonexistent. When the latest if these incidents happens, the rest of the world is shocked when Americans defend the gun. Funny how that works, when there are more guns than people, someone will fire one and someone will get in the way. As much as Americans have the history of gun culture and the constitutionally ensured right to “keep and bear arms” it creates problems. The original intent is a time that’s now gone. Nobody has a gun because they might have to shoot a tyrant. As with any zealotry, a gun fetish is toxic and dangerous.
As it stands now, there are roughly 35k Americans dead, annually, from gunshots. That’s actually a massive numbed especially compared with other industrialized nations. While shooting happen in Australia and France, they’re pretty rare. Seems tough to shoot someone without a gun. While the right argues the 35k number saying “many of those are suicides” dead is dead. Yes, a despondent, untreated vet is susceptible to suicide (roughly 11 a day), many could be avoided were it not for the swift efficiency of a gun. America will never eliminate the gun culture. A “gun free America” is as laughable as “a drug free America”. It’s pure fantasy. The question isn’t one of “solved” it’s one of “improve”. Can we improve those numbers? Of course we can.
It’s been decades since Nixon launched “the war on drugs”. It’s never been a war on drugs, it’s been a war on people who use drugs, well on black and brown people who use drugs. White people have always enjoyed defacto decriminalized drug use. By any metric, the war on drugs has been an abject failure. Drug use and the possible consequences of it are hard enough with which to deal, does adding militaristic policing really help? Not only does it not help, it hurts. It’s a massive and violent red herring.
The gun culture and gun problem didn’t start when Nixon decided to disrupt communities he hated and announced “war”. As a matter of constitutional scholarship, he doesn’t have the power to declare war, the congress does; so if we’re at war, it’s technically an illegal war. Maybe it’s a hyperbolic branding of the effort with which we will fight drugs? Not really. It’s a war, complete with casualties, prisoners, a body count, a fiscal and a human cost and guns, lots and lots of guns.
The Biden administration is uniquely poised to make a bold move. Could be the holy trinity of legislation to address social problems. A compressive mental health reform bill could do a few things: it could IMPROVE, not solve, IMPROVE the situation at the boarder. Migrants, refugees, seeking asylum are coming because their own communities are ravaged by drug cartels looking to satisfy the voracious appetites for cocaine in North America. Nobody wants to walk across the desert to come and be treated like a second class citizen. Were their home communities stable, with opportunity, they wouldn’t take that risk. Improving mental health services and options is not only more effective, it’s more humane. If we’re at war, we’re at war with our own families, friends, neighbors, the mail carrier etc. Drug use permeates the culture, it’s here, it’s among us, what we do about it matters.
And then there is the gun issue. Would ending the war on drugs end gun violence? No. Would it help? Without question it would help. Wars aren’t fun without guns. The first time I saw someone buy cannabis in California I was in shock. Someone came to their house, they showed them what they had, product was selected and that was the end. No guns. No violence. It was as exciting as pizza delivery. Chicago has a massive gun problem. What’s everyone so upset about? Turf for drug sales. The great irony is the history of violence over intoxication in Chicago. We used to call it “the Volstead act” or more commonly, “prohibition”. What quelled the gun violence in Chicago in that era? When alcohol sales and distribution were once again legal, the gun violence stopped. The same would happen now if we had a safe system of distribution.
Some of the classic liberal rhetoric is how “gun violence is an epidemic, a public health crisis”. Maybe. If there is one thing I have learned in mental health care it’s that when one person gets better, the systems around the individual gets better. This would be true on a macro level as well. If drug use were treated as a public health crisis and not a crime that is solvable by military style interventions, it would improve many of the systems around drug sales and distribution. If acquiring drugs were as exciting as ordering a pizza, far fewer people would be shot and we would see a decline, a sharp decline, in shootings. A 10% reduction is 3500 lives. Imagine if we weren’t at war.