Americans Aren’t Traumatized Enough by Gun Violence |
Photo by Maria Lysenko
The December 14 mass shooting in Sydney, Australia, aimed at the Jewish community during Hanukkah celebrations on Bondi Beach, stunned the world. Fifteen people were killed, including a 10-year-old child. Instead of tackling antisemitism and more strictly regulating guns, right-wing and liberalpundits immediately politicized the incident by blaming pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide activism for fueling the shooting, ignoring the problem of guns altogether.
A similar script unfurled when an Afghan asylee was arrested for the November 26 shooting of National Guard members in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration extrapolated the actions of one suspect to an entire group of people, while ignoring the easy availability of guns.
But for white men, who, relative to their population, commit disproportionately more mass shootings in the United States, there is neither extrapolation to their entire demographic (nor, of course, policy prescriptions to reduce the availability of guns)—only “thoughts and prayers.”
So untouchable is gun control in the United States that some even double down, saying restricting firearms would lead to more violence because victims wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against perpetrators, never mind that in the case of the Bondi Beach massacre, an unarmed man tackled the gunman with his bare hands, ensuring more lives would not be endangered. If guns truly made people safer, the U.S., which has more guns than people, would have among the lowest rates of gun violence in the world.
But the opposite is true. In 2023, the latest year for which statistics are available, more than 45,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives as a result of gun violence, which is also the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. Every day, an average of 125 people are killed in the U.S. because of the easy availability of guns, their blood and bodies swept under the rug, hidden from view.
But perhaps we need to see the bodies in order to end our love affair with guns.
Gun violence is so appallingly prevalent in the U.S. that it is akin to a nation “experiencing active conflict.” There were 392 mass shootings in 2025 alone, one of the most recent taking place on the campus of Brown University on........