It’s a sobering subject to talk about. More Americans have been killed in mass shootings over the past month than have died in Iraq so far this year. 13 people were murdered in Binghamton, New York alone last Friday and three Pittsburgh police officers were shot dead by an alleged white supremacist who supposedly believed the Obama administration was coming for his guns. John Avlon, columnist for the Daily Beast, says we can't solve the problem if we don't keep track of the dead. Avlon spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s American Morning Friday.
Kiran Chetry: You started a running tally on the website the Daily Beast. You say keeping a tally is an important reality check. Please explain.
John Avlon: I think so often we cover the tragedy of these shootings and then we move on to the next thing and we don’t see it in the larger context. You can't understand this violence unless you see it in context. And when you realize that more Americans have been shot in mass murders this month than have been killed in the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan this year, that’s a sobering reality check. And it’s the kind of thing that can maybe help us face reality and then marshal our forces to change it.
Chetry: Whenever we're confronted with senseless violence, we want answers. We want to know what's causing this. Some say it's the bad economy. Some say the move to ban weapons is causing people to buy more weapons. Do we have answers?
Avlon: There's no clear answer because each of these individuals is motivated by their own sickness and hatred. Clearly there’s an increased sense of desperation and violence. Some folks do point to the economy and they have sort of a root cause theory of increased violence. We know that in bad economies domestic violence increases for example and some of these shootings were of family members. A man in Washington State killed five of his children. But I think also there's a copycat quality. This is all snowballing upon itself and that's why it's even more important to call attention to it and see it in aggregate, not just to be focused and then move on. And then to really start looking at what we can do, what common ground we can build on to stop this cycle of violence.
Chetry: Firearm sales in large retail outlets are up 39% this year and you wrote about how some people are fearful that this administration wants to take away second amendment rights. You write, “We can work toward a centrist cease-fire in this culture war. Fighting gun crime aggressively does not have to be inconsistent with the individual right to bear arms.” But it's such a polarizing issue. You’re never going to dissuade the people who believe that the more guns we have, the more people are going to die, period. And the others who say don't take guns away from a law-abiding citizen so it's the criminals and the people who want to launch attacks that have them. So how do you get common ground?
Avlon: What I'm talking about is the politics of problem-solving. Rather than just throwing up our hands and saying, look, we're never going to agree, we’re deeply polarized on this issue. Let's look at what common ground there is and then build upon it. Even the NRA supports increased mandatory sentences for crimes committed with guns. We can have a zero tolerance policy for illegal gun trafficking and people who have gun possession and those who commit crimes with guns. That's an area we can build on. Rather than always retreating to some conservatives being even afraid to talk about gun violence for fear that we’ll invite more legislation and some liberals wanting to ignore the reality of the second amendment. Those polarized positions don't help us solve these problems. And when you have a crisis like we have now, that’s what we need to do. Solve problems and build on new common ground.
Chetry: Attorney General Eric Holder recently talked about possibly reinstituting the assault weapons ban that was under the Clinton administration that was allowed to expire under the Bush administration. He got a letter from 65 House Democrats who said, you know what, let's not touch this right now. There are Democrats in the south who have been elected by saying we understand the fundamental feeling that the second amendment needs to be protected.
Avlon: And one of the questions will be whether the assault weapons ban, which was allowed to expire in 2004, is going to be seen as being part and parcel with the second amendment. That’s going to be an interesting question. We have Eric Holder and President Obama who campaigned on reinstating the assault weapons ban, which was backed by many law enforcement agencies in 1990, and then the leaders in Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid opposing it for fear that there will be a third rail politically for some of the more conservative Democrats. That's the kind of issue. You’ve got to wonder, at what point does the body count begin to adjust the political calculation?
Here are the statistics from thedailybeast.com:
“54 innocents dead in nine shootings over the past four weeks. In Iraq, 45 U.S. soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice in 2009. In Afghanistan, 43 soldiers have been killed since New Year’s Day.”
Editor’s note: 5 U.S. soldiers were killed in an Iraq bombing today, April 10, 2009.