"Politicizing" Newtown

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(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

In the wake of the horrific mass murder of children and teachers in Connecticut, there have been calls to hold off on policy arguments in the name of not politicizing a tragedy. CampusReform.org, a conservative opinion site, criticized a professor for Tweeting about gun control after the shooting. The Right Scoop attacked President Obama for what it perceived as hints about a gun control agenda in the wake of the tragedy.
The fact of the matter is, the tragedy should be politicized, if all we mean by "politicizing" is adjusting our policy in recognition that things like this can happen. But at the same time, we should be careful to recognize this shooting for what it is: an abnormal, unexpected, unpredictable tragedy. The Sandy Hook shooting is not the norm, and we cannot deal with the problem of gun violence in this country by only looking at the lessons that it teaches us.
There are certain things we can—and should—do because of what we learned (or re-learned) from Adam Lanza. He was using 30-bullet magazines, which is part of what allowed him to murder so many individuals in such a short amount of time. There is no reason that a law-abiding gun owner would need a 30-bullet magazines, and clamping down on high-volume magazines should be one of the first nationwide responses to this tragedy. It will not prevent tragedies, but it will go part of the way towards limiting their scope.
Additionally, the fact that he stole the guns from his mother emphasizes that it is gun owners' responsibility to secure their weapons. More needs to be done to hold people responsible for keeping control of their weapons.
But beyond those limited issues, the national gun control conversation—which, undoubtedly, needs to occur—should not be driven by this single, atypical massacre. We need smarter gun regulation: more effective registration of guns and ammunition, more responsibility for gun owners to secure their property, stiffer penalties for illegal gun possession, bans on high-capacity magazines and fragmenting ammunition, and increased culpability for gun owners who are negligent with their weapons. Not because any of those things would have done very much to prevent what happened in Newtown, but because they will start to deal with the broader problem of gun violence in this society.
And as I wrote about earlier today, I think one of the most important things we need to do as a society is strike at our culture of violence and vengeance. I'm not talking about video games or movies, though there is surely a conversation to be had there. I'm talking about the way we dehumanize the large segment of our society that spends time behind bars. I'm talking about the way that we create a system of morality in which there are two tiers: "criminals" and "law abiding citizens," with all sorts of abuses and depravities acceptable when they're directed at the "criminals."
I'm talking about how our states have murdered 43 individuals in 2012, teaching the marginalized among us that killing is acceptable when the target "deserves" it.