February 2018

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Please stop telling me that gun control “won’t solve gun violence.”

Because no shit. I know it won’t. And I don’t know anyone who thinks it will.

But gun control works. It reduces gun deaths, and when done right, dramatically so. This isn’t speculation. It’s an empirical reality. Lives will be saved. Not all of them. But a hell of a lot.

In addressing the social ills that feed America’s gun-violence epidemic, access to guns should be low-hanging fruit. Good gun control makes it harder for the wrong people to get guns.

I realize strict gun control won’t zero out gun deaths in this country; I realize a determined-enough killer can find a way around the law. But “this won’t 100% eradicate the problem so why bother?” is a bad argument.

The harder it is to get a gun, the harder it is to kill someone with one.

We should want to make it harder.

Despite being the third-worst school shooting in US history, I’ve heard some discussion about how much worse yesterday could have been, about the countless lives that were likely saved by the proven evasive tactics in which the students and teachers were trained, as if we should be proud of this, as if we should find solace in the fact that there’s enough relevant data to develop effective life-saving strategies for these things, as if we should feel good that our schools now hold routine mass-shooting drills and that so many children knew exactly what to do to save themselves, as if it’s a relief that we’re so well trained for these attacks that “how much worse it could have been” is the miraculous testament we pull from once-unthinkable tragedy.

I am beyond grateful for all of yesterday’s survivors. But I am bewildered by the cost at which their lives were spared.