Dear Lucas,
I have long been uncomfortable with politicians expounding on the subject of tragedy, public or personal. And so it is with no small amount of reticence, after reflection over the last week, that I write to share some thoughts with you in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.
As it happens, I flew to Orlando on the morning of Friday, May 13. My sister and I then drove an hour for a funeral. Our 21-year-old cousin, Hastings Kofkin, had taken his life two days earlier. The youngest of my first cousins, I always thought Hastings had overcome the tough hand he had been dealt in life. He was a positive-thinking, forward-looking young man who, it turns out, was in a secret struggle with mental health issues. That struggle was settled by a gun, legally purchased through the mail.
I will not soon forget the horror of that week, the tragic loss of a young man who was loved more than he knew – a loss that might have been preventable in a society more fully invested in addressing mental health challenges, and almost certainly in one that did not sanction the individual ownership of firearms.
One month later in Orlando, 49 lives, full of promise and possibility, were senselessly cut short, leaving scores of friends and loved ones – and the whole world – gasping for air and reason. These were daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, friends, neighbors, colleagues: individuals living full lives, bringing joy to the people they loved – joy horribly extinguished without warning.
We do not yet – and may not ever – fully understand what led to this act of terror and hate. It was an act, as Michael Barbaro observed so eloquently in the Times, which turned “a safe harbor” into a “bloody death chamber.” Whatever the precise nature of the killer’s derangement, it was targeted at a gay club. That was no accident. Almost all of the victims were gay, most were Latino, and many were transgender. The LGBT community needs now more than ever our full embrace and the use of all our powers to stamp out hate and bigotry in all of its forms. LGBT people of color, especially black and Latino transgender people, have been particular targets of violence. The smallest seeds of hate can be lethally pernicious.
It is inarguable that the loss of life in Orlando this week would have been much less significant had the killer not had access to a gun. The same may be said of the tragedies in Charleston, Newtown, San Bernadino, Aurora, at Virginia Tech, and in too many towns whose names we shouldn’t know. Most of those lost in these tragedies, most of those shot every day in the streets of our cities, and many of the 20,000 Americans lost to suicide by gun each year need not be dead. A handful of gun manufacturers and the powerful lobby that they fund, together with their water-carriers in politics and on the bench, are killing our people.
I have lost any sense of nuance on this point. Those who do not want to curtail gun ownership in this country are purveyors of death. This is a zero sum game. Our gun death rates are “in a different world” from other advanced countries. This is not because of “radical Islam.” That is a right-wing parry as laughable as it is despicable. People are dying because it can be easier to buy a gun than to get a fishing license. In the same vein,suicide attempts with guns are 85% successful; the rate with pills is less than 3%. Sometimes, people don’t kill people – guns do.
Our national debate on this subject has gone so far off the rails it is hard to fathom. The NRA has us fighting for half a loaf, and not even winning the crumbs. Undoubtedly, we need robust background checks and an assault weapons ban. It is ridiculous that we need even discuss whether individuals on the “no-fly” list should be able to buy a gun. At the state level, we need laws that require safe gun storage and take guns away from abusers and out of domestic violence situations. These are all important measures, they would save lives, and we should fight for them. I am skeptical we can win, at least not now, but we should keep fighting.
But the truth is that these are half-measures. The second amendment doesn’t mean what the pro-death camp says it does; as a practical matter, it should be repealed, or revised as Justice John Paul Stevens has suggested. And then we should stop giving people the tools to kill one another. If it is not politically viable, we should not stop thinking about how to make it so.
It is written in the Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.” So it is with guns, and for those who want our people to keep buying them and using them and killing with them. The Rabbi at my cousin’s funeral spoke extensively about the obligations of those who survived him to carry his legacy forward. If we cannot deliver change as a legacy to the lost, we can at least deliver honesty – from which change may come, some day.
Sincerely,
Micah Lasher