Who's Responsible For the Mass Shootings? We Are

Is the President responsible? Think carefully.

In the days following this weekend’s El Paso and Dayton shootings, media professionals have struggled to assign blame. Full-time opinion-havers cast aspersions in ways that have grown familiar and tiresome. And as I’ve watched the responses unfurl, I’ve noticed patterns: the force held responsible is always “someone else.” We never find responsibility in the mirror.

Conservatives, including the President, present a laundry list of problems: insufficient access to mental health, the only health care Republicans consider mandatory (and only when it’s expedient). Violent video games and movies. Criminals bringing drugs and guns across the border from Mexico. Never mind that plenty of nations play video games without concomitant real-world violence, and guns are more likely to cross into Mexico than out.

Progressives, meanwhile, have remained steadfastly unified in blaming one source: President Trump. The President’s rhetoric, they insist, has inflamed racist sentiment, reflected in the fact that the shooters in El Paso, and Gilroy, California, echoed the President, sometimes verbatim, in their online manifestos. Except again, this doesn’t withstand scrutiny: President Trump holds majority approval among all White voter demographics except college-educated women, and most white people don’t conduct mass shootings.

Which explanation makes sense apparently depends on which position you already hold. Conservatives see the laundry list of culpability they’ve floated as supremely reasonable. Progressives find Trump’s favorite words and phrases repeated by shooters as ironclad proof. Yet I suggest both sides are showing themselves short-sighted. Whether it’s video games, guns, or electoral politics, these forces have one thing in common: us.

Let’s set aside “mental health” arguments, first. They’re a complete canard. Whenever people describe someone violent as “deranged” or “a madman,” they’re using slanted words loosely connected to mental health, but they’re really passing moral judgement. They rely on Nineteenth Century standards of mental illness, the kind which made lunatics morally equal to criminals, and turned prisons into insane asylums. “Mental health” is a crap argument, and deserves discarded.

Keeping guns and video games, however, we see our own culpability displayed. These products exist because people keep buying them. They exist as a market, and as free-market libertarians love reminding us, markets are comprised of liberated citizens satisfying their desires. If people buy guns or violent video games, it’s because they have some desire to own these things. These products fill some marketable need, for which people willingly pay their hard-earned money.

As for President Trump, let’s recall together, he was elected. Yes, his critics love reminding us he came second in the popular vote, by a significant margin; but his voting base, unlike his opponent’s, was sufficiently large and geographically diverse to win the procedure. As noted above, he holds commanding leads in nearly every White demographic, and at least for now, Whites still hold the majority in America, so yes, we’re responsible for him.

The President probably does provide systemic permission for certain people to do certain things. I witnessed vaguely left-leaning people adjust their views when President Obama conducted unprecedented numbers of drone strikes internationally; anything becomes permissible when we consider the Executive Branch to be “one of us.” So President Trump certainly offers a focusing lens for people whose behavior would’ve otherwise been strident but amorphous.

But if Trump provides permission for America’s worst elements to enact their vision, it’s because we Americans already provided Trump permission. Maybe you didn’t vote for him; I certainly didn’t. But we live in America, benefit from its economic and military protections, and accept his presidency as part of our participation in America. Even if we dislike him, President Trump is inextricable from the system we enjoy, so we’re responsible for him.

Whether we comprise the market, the electorate, or whatever, we created the conditions which made this violence possible. If we oppose the stockpiling of military weapons in civilian hands, but lose our sense of urgency between high-profile killings, we’ve contributed to the system. And saying “I don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards,” doesn’t exempt us from responsibility if we continue benefiting from laws and economic structures which make this situation possible.

Perhaps you and I, like most Americans, didn’t pull the triggers. Perhaps we didn’t directly perform, or encourage, this violence. Perhaps we voted for the other candidate in the last election. But we cannot hold ourselves aloof from responsibility—and that definitely includes me. We haven’t shown ourselves willing to thwart the system and do anything about the structures that make this violence possible. Which means, willingly or not, we’re part of it.