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| Ralph Yarl |
This week’s news hit so rapidly, it became incomprehensible. On Monday, America learned of Ralph Yarl, a Black Kansas City teen shot by a White man when he rang the wrong doorbell. (The shooting happened the prior Thursday, but details emerged on Monday.) Then Tuesday hit with Kaylin Gillis, murdered in upstate New York for turning into the wrong driveway, and Payton Washington, a cheerleader critically wounded near Austin for trying to get into the wrong car.
We’d barely grasped these assaults when Wednesday provided a one-two punch. First we learned about a mass shooting at an Alabama Sweet Sixteen party that left four youths between ages 17 and 23 dead, and thirty-two injured. Thirty-two! Before I’d even processed that, in Nebraska, where I live, the state legislature passed a controversial “constitutional carry” bill, a shitty Orwellian euphemism for basically allowing anyone, anywhere, to carry live firearms without a permit.
Basically, after three days of national news coverage driven by armed individuals—mostly older, mostly White, and entirely male—shooting strangers on lousy pretenses, the Nebraska legislature decided we needed even more of that. Okay, sure, the Nebraska Unicameral didn’t actually say they wanted more shootings. But what other outcome did they expect from authorizing more unrestricted carrying? They know at least the potential definitely exists.
Exactly what motivated the Alabama shooters remains murky as I write. They’ve been arrested, but more details aren’t currently forthcoming. But Andrew Lester, the 85-year-old White man who shot Ralph Yarl, explicitly said he was “scared to death” by a Black youth’s presence at his door. And Kevin Monahan, the 65-year-old man who murdered Kaylin Gillis, was apparently famously incensed at “trespassers,” like an unnamed character from Deliverance.
Both Lester and Monahan perceived themselves under threat within their own houses, and apparently kept weapons ready. Lester’s own description of the incident features him answering the door already carrying a gun, which indicates that he perceived the mere presence of unannounced company as a mortal threat. And Pedro Tello Rodriguez, Jr., who shot Payton Washington while she was running away, apparently had a gun in his car.
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| Kaylin Gillis |
Normal, healthy people don’t answer the door carrying heat unless they expect to need it. And they don’t expect to need a firearm unless they already perceive themselves as under threat. These people apparently see their worlds as so chockablock full of menaces that their only response is to kill the other guy before the other guy kills you. Private firearms are the chosen weapons in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes.
Worse, this isn’t new. Sociologist Barry Glassner wrote over twenty years ago that older Americans, flooded with constant images of crime, violence, and terror, come to believe the world is more violent than it actually is. Glassner cites media researcher George Gerbner, who described the “mean world syndrome,” wherein people who stay indoors and watch copious television believe that murder, violence, and crime are more prevalent than the evidence indicates.
Wednesday’s blanket legalization of permitless carry in Nebraska isn’t coincidental. Former state legislator Suzanne Geist, currently running for mayor of Lincoln, has anchored her campaign to claims that crime has become more common under the incumbent Democratic mayor, a claim that’s just not true. A candidate is willfully creating the “mean world syndrome” among Lincoln voters, while her legislative colleagues authorize more unlabelled guns.
American violent crime statistics have trended downward for over thirty years, notwithstanding the occasional limited uptick. We’re currently more threatened by wage theft than auto theft, and our life savings are more jeopardized by banks than by bank robbers. But prime-time television, a medium mainly supported by older audiences, continues churning out crime dramas, while the 24-hour news cycle lives and dies by dramatic crime narratives.
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| Payton Washington |
Therefore, older Americans are likely to believe they’re in significantly more danger during routine interactions than they really are. The presence of a Black youth—the coded enemy in many crime dramas—is enough to make older people feel threatened, and react accordingly. Thus we witness the underlying flaw of the Castle Doctrine: just because you feel threatened doesn’t mean you are threatened.
I realize “the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data.’” These four shootings aren’t necessarily representative. But in some ways that doesn’t matter: Andrew Lester perceived himself as threatened by a Black youth existing, and Americans perceive ourselves as surrounded by guns, just waiting to see who draws first. In that environment, paranoia is the smart decision, even if that environment only exists in your head. Or in campaign ads.
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