A Manichean Guy With a Gun

President & Dr. Biden at Robb Elementary, Uvalde, TX

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre popularized this bromide in the days following the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012. Like its close compatriot, “thoughts and prayers” LaPierre’s saying quickly became unmoored from its roots and warped into a caricature. It’s just another piece of faux morality clogging American rhetoric now.

But it’s also a demonstration of how American public morality has become meaningless. The division of humanity into “good guys” and “bad guys” is a form of Manichaeism: the belief that the universe is divided into the altogether good, holy, and virtuous, against the altogether bad, godless, and depraved. In traditional Christianity, Manichaeism is considered a heresy. And for good reason, too: because it makes us insensible to the world around us.

As usually happens following mass shootings, the narrative surrounding last week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, has turned on identifying the menace, the crime, or the “evil.” The shooter is described as a manifestation of ultimate evil—or perhaps of “mental illness,” which is frequently a sloppy shorthand for evil. Likewise law enforcement who dithered outside the school for an hour are described in terms from a medieval morality play: “cowardly,” “shameful,” “dishonorable.”

These attempts to define “evil” situate it externally, and in absolute terms. These people are defined by one overwhelming, Aesopic moral trait and, by implication, so are we. We’re reassured that we, mercifully, didn’t kill anyone, didn’t stop parents from rescuing children, didn’t cause or enable the violence. Therefore we can confidently condemn those whose actions or inactions violate our code. Calling others “evil” defends our perceived goodness.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of the Parkland, Florida, shooting

Problem is, things are never that absolute. The Uvalde police join a host of security professionals, school resource officers, and other armed guardians who protected their lives over those of schoolchildren. In schools from Littleton, Colorado, to Parkland, Florida, school police fled, and civilian teachers who resisted the violence were the first to die. Armchair strategists love claiming they’d rush into the fire, but few of us really would.

(On a personal note, I have personally rushed into violent conflicts between people better prepared than me. These conflicts only involved fists, though. I doubt strongly I’d ever have rushed optimistically into an active crossfire. That’s why I scoff whenever somebody says “I would’ve taken the risk.” No you wouldn’t, and neither would I.)

I remember taking exception to the “good guy with a gun” narrative when it first appeared. How do we define good guys and bad guys? One acquaintance, an NRA life member and gun rights advocate, insisted we could identify good guys by their licensure. He believed that good guys had training, certification, and permits to handle and carry weapons. Goodness, for this person, is bestowed by official declaration by esteemed professionals.

Sadly, I lost contact with this individual long before last week’s shooting. I wonder how his inner narrative of goodness as accord with authority has survived the knowledge that official local, state, and federal law enforcement did nothing while civilians died. If we’ve learned anything from COINTELPRO or Ruby Ridge, it surely must be that authority and goodness aren’t synonyms—yet many people, evidently, forget quickly.

The quest for external, measurable evil has produced terrible outcomes. By imputing “evil” to others and making that characteristic their defining being, we have, at different times, segregated people by race, economic class, national or regional origin, and the kitchen sink. When we believe that evil lives in cities, or has a certain skin color, or prays a certain way, we make it acceptable to keep others at arm’s length.

The now-infamous photo of concert-goers fleeing the shooter
at the country music festival in Las Vegas, 2017

One needn’t be Christian and believe in Original Sin, though, to realize that humans aren’t neatly symmetrical. We all have the inner capacity to do tremendous good or epic evil, depending on the choices we make, the influences we let inside, and how we react to how others treat us. Moral Manichaeism lets us assign blame, and most importantly, lets us assign it away from ourselves. But that’s always false.

People who quote the Manichean heresy inevitably see themselves on the good side of the split. Wayne LaPierre’s division of humanity into “good guys” and “bad guys,” or anybody’s reliance on good vs. evil, innately ignores that these words have no external meaning. Goodness and evil aren’t things we are; they’re descriptions of things we do. And as such, they’re completely meaningless in defining how we respond to external calamity.