With the worst blizzard to strike Chicago in twenty years, I sat in the living room of a shared apartment at the University of Chicago watching the news. The news coverage sent chills deep down to my bones and my stomach was knotted. It was April 20, 1999. My eyes glued to the television, I saw the horror in front of me. It was taking place at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Children were jumping out of windows, running and fleeing, just trying to save themselves. Two white male students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed twelve students and one teacher before killing themselves. They used semi-automatic weapons that dispensed bullets quickly and they had also planted bombs (which did not detonate). It was horrific to see this violence, that too in the supposed safe and intimate space of the high school. Seeing the trauma, fear, and anxiety on the faces of the children was horrifying.
The country had not seen such senseless violence like this before. The fact that this took place at a school and that the perpetrators were young people was frightening and unbelievable. It seemed like an illusion, a nightmare. I struggled to sleep for days with the horror I saw on the faces of the children, teachers, and parents who were interviewed. The overall conclusion was that such a horrific, inhumane act was a break from normal life. We were told that this likely would not happen again. It should and would not happen again. I went to sleep hoping that what happened in Columbine would never happen again. I also knew that the middle-class white background of the students at Columbine High School opened a door to empathy that could make this something that never happens again.[i] I was 24 years old when it happened. I did not think it would happen again in my lifetime.
How short lived that hope was. How naïve was my conception of gun violence. Mass shootings and gun violence are rampant in the United States of America. With the sheer scale of the pain, trauma, and fear in 1999, I thought US society would move towards gun control, gun safety, and reduction of gun violence. Instead of taking Columbine as a turning point, it has become an escalation point. Instead of lowering the rates of gun violence after Columbine, each year the number of gun violence deaths and mass shootings have only continued to increase. The rate of mass shootings has increased that is a daily practice now. As of May 2023, there were 13,900 people killed in the US by gun violence. 13,900 people killed before we even got halfway through a year!
With Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s murderous rampage, there has been a pattern over the last twenty plus years of white men with semi-automatic weapons involved in mass shootings. With greater economic insecurity, poverty, opioid crisis, mental health crisis, and the defunding of the social welfare net, gun use and mass shootings have become the solution to social ills and personal issues. White toxic masculinity. Domestic terrorism. With mass shootings and gun violence as so commonplace, we have morally bankrupted political actors like Florida governor Ron DeSantis destroying the classroom as a site to address violence in our world. More mass shootings led by white men. White men.
White man, in 2012, kills many in a Sikh gurdwara in Milwaukee
White supremacist 2015 mass shooting in a Black church in Charleston, SC
White man gunning down so many people at a 2017 concert in Las Vegas killing 59 and wounding more than 400 people
A white man shoots and kills people in a Pittsburgh synagogue Mass shooting in 2021 in a FedEx facility
On April 2023, a young white man shot and killed people in a bank
While white toxic masculinity plays out with mass shootings, we can no longer see this as something relegated to just white heterosexual men. Mass shootings and gun violence seeps into, slips in, and forms our subconsciousness, our principles, and our ways of being in the world. We are a nation whose morality, ethics, and solutions are governed by bullets and blood. Bloodshed is our motto. In the process, we as a nation are committed to ethics and principles that protect gun ownership instead of protecting human life. With the increase in gun shootings, our legislators and gun supporters ask us to protect ourselves from gun violence by purchasing more guns and securing semi-automatic weapons. Gun ownership and gun ownership is our apple pie. Nothing more American than mass shootings, semi-automatic weapons, and death. No whipped cream or ice cream necessary to swallow and digest this bloody reality.
Just when I thought toxic white masculinity was the site of the problem, we now see this unfold across so many communities. Everybody wants apple pie. Now for communities of color and women, gun ownership and gun use are emblems of American-ness and mass shootings are a claim to belonging within the nation. Carnage is the substantiation of American identity. Can we think and act otherwise? We have had horrific mass shootings orchestrated by men of color and a white woman. In Cleveland, Texas, a Latino neighbor shot and killed his neighbors. It is our cultural, moral, and emotional fabric. How dehumanizing. Nearly a decade ago, an Arab American man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub. Bullets, guns, and mass shootings are becoming the blood running through our veins, while draining us of that same blood. Earlier this year, a white woman went on a shooting rampage at a school in Nashville. The blood on the floor, on the streets, and on the pavement are the norm to everyday life in the United States. Guns are seen as foundational to our protection, our constitution, and our identity. Thus, gun violence is woven into our political fabric. Other aspects of our political and everyday lives disappear in the pools of blood. We no longer have a moral compass where lives, all lives, matter. Rather, our silence, our political silence, governing gun violence tells us that the drops of blood that day in Columbine has become a waterfall of blood.
The chances of witnessing a mass shooting increases every year. It is hard to find a place where a mass shooting will not take place. Mass shootings have become our national oxygen. Shootings happen everywhere. Colleges and universities. Elementary, middle, and high schools. Churches. Synagogues. Gurdwaras. Mosques. Bowling alley. Restaurant. Concert. Games. Bars. Clubs. On buses. Sporting events. No more spaces to find refuge from gun violence. We, as a country, live in and inhabit deeply the chambers of semi-automatic guns. We are now in a state of fear but never up for public discussion in transformative ways. Rather, the trauma continues to linger.
The trauma is long lasting. It is very real. Friends and family of those killed in mass shootings are dealing with trauma and post-traumatic stress. The few cases of gun violence following Columbine must have been so painful and triggered the deep grief for those families who lost a loved one at columbine. Now, with mass shooting as a daily practice of American-ness, we live in an ever-expanding circle of trauma and grief. Everyday new families and individuals are pulled into the painful circuits of loss. In the process, they become part of the growing family of the traumatized. Each day, we increase the pain and grief for those who have already lost a love one by being triggered by new mass shootings. Every day, we have many people being brought back to the scene of the violence, loss, and bloodshed. With the frequency and commonplace of this sort of gun violence and mass shootings, we are turning into a nation where soon everyone will be triggered and suffering post-traumatic stress with every news coverage of mass shootings.
Yet, in our daily news, we have little to no conversation, in substantial and transformative ways, about gun violence. But, we do hear constantly about protecting our children. Our politicians, especially those fighting for the GOP presidential nomination, bring up the tremendous importance of protecting our (white) children. They want to protect our children. Yet, they are absolutely silent about gun violence. For example, our morally bankrupt Supreme Court voted to strike down Roe vs. Wade. The language used by the justices and by our politicians was the urgent need to protect our unborn children. Children who are not even born must be protected, but they say nothing about protecting our children who have been born and now are getting shot down in their classrooms, in bowling allies, at parties, at church, and at many more places.
We even use the language of protecting children with guns. Now guns are needed to protect us from guns. We are told we need guns to protect our children from guns. Yet, we continue to deny our children the protection, care, and resources they need to live full lives. In the sake of protecting children, we continue to attack children’s rights and remain silent on how gun violence impacts children’s lives. For example, even though LGBTQI youth have high rates of suicide, states are taking away life-affirming measures to save children while fighting to save gun rights. The metal, the bullets, the trigger, and handle must be protected, polished, kept clean, and ready to be used. Used frequently. Used often.
Instead of the mass shootings standing as a tragedy requiring changing our culture and our politics, we continue to remain silent, let the NRA continue its dominance as a lobby entity, and refuse to legislate gun safety. We now have “active shooter” training across high schools and colleges. Active shooter trainings but no legislation for gun safety. Rather, active shooter trainings will become our common curriculum and a life lesson on how to run and protect yourself in the midst of gun violence.
There is little to no public discourse about changes to our gun culture. Rather, with the attacks on trans children, Gender Studies, and Critical Race Theory, we have built a political chamber in our government that builds the blocks of national important news by refusing the toxicity of the present. In the process, they refuse their role and complicity in the present. Why is there no change in our culture? When the terrorists hijacked planes and crashed into building on September 11, 2001, there was great fear coupled with planning to prevent this from happening again. Thus, US airports went to great lengths to put in security devices, security requirements, and checkpoints to prevent another 9/11 from happening. With the increase in gun shootings, with thousands killed on a yearly basis, we lose more people in our country to gun killings than the deaths on 9/11. Yet, there has been no substantial action taken to prevent the preventable deaths that arise from mass shootings.
This idea that time makes everything better is simply not true. Look at the rounds of bullets at Columbine versus what we saw in Nashville or in Las Vegas. We are advancing to mass destruction and mass violence and death. Legislation must be passed to limit semi-automatic weapons. Semi-automatic weapons are weapons of mass destruction and death. I have family members and in-laws that have guns and are hunters. I respect them. I respect and treasure the hunters in my extended family. They are people who value life. As a matter of fact, none of the hunters I cherish own semi-automatic rifles. They do not hunt deer, duck, or turkey with a machine gun. These hunters respect life and respect the power of rifles. Yet, our legislators, the NRA, and our political system does not respect the power of guns. They, instead, relish and celebrate the power of guns.
As 2023 ends and 2024 begins, all other aspects of social life are depicted as problems to be handled. I am so angry and so frustrated. I am furious. My anger does not push me to gun ownership. The sheer paucity of gun safety laws and lack of legal constraints on semi-automatic weapons is not depicted as the problem. However, we have a serious problem. The problem is the easy availability of guns, especially semi-automatic rifles. The NRA and its pundits will claim that the problem is people and not guns. Yes, the problem is people and not accessibility to heroine. The problem is people and not accessibility to opioids. But guns do not have any purpose, use, or value without people. It has no life outside of its use. It is the use of guns that is the very danger. The serious gun problem must be addressed so that we can live.
We need to change systematically our culture before there are too few of us to pass along any tradition. Death is not a legacy. It is an endpoint. No legacies to pass on. The legacies of gun violence promise one thing: no future. Bullets and dried blood do not guarantee us a future, it harbors death. Gun Violence Archive shows us that we ended 2023 with over 42,000 gun deaths. 42,000!!! It is not a number, it is a sign of entire regions of our country being killed. We must stand up as the 42,000 cannot speak for themselves. We must disarm the NRA! We must have a national day of protest and mourning that calls for major gun safety laws and the end of semi-automatic weapon sales. Let us march forth on March 4th to call for systematic change to our gun policies and save our lives.
Stanley Thangaraj is the Inaugural James E. Hayden Chair and Professor for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice as well as the Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice at Stonehill College. His interests are at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. He studies immigrant and refugee communities in the U.S. South to understand how they manage the black-white racial logic through gender and the kinds of horizontal processes of race-making. His monograph Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity (NYU Press, 2015) looks at the relationship between race and gender in co-ethnic-only South Asian American sporting cultures. His newest research is on Kurdish America, which received the 2015 American Studies Association “Comparative Ethnic Studies” award and Association for Asian American Studies Social Caucus Faculty Article award.
[i] There was always silence concerning the gun violence in communities of color, especially Black communities. There was not the same type of media response or acts of empathy. Rather, Black and Brown communities were pathologized for the gun violence in their communities—what Lisa Cacho refers to as social death.