On March 25, 1911, shortly after 4:30 p.m., a fire roared through a building in New York City where the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. used three floors for a clothing factory.
To keep the workers from leaving their sewing machines, the owners had locked the doors that led to the exits. Those locked doors (and a collapsing fire escape) created one of the great industrial tragedies of American history–146 women died in less than 15 minutes. Triangle Shirtwaist became a popular shorthand for what was wrong with factory safety laws and unleashed a wave of reform.
Might the deaths at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., spark our consciences as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire sparked those of our forebears 88 years ago?
Perhaps that’s hoping for too much. Every time we face a violent incident in which kids are killed in schools, we have the same useless national argument.
One side says that the events prove the need for tougher gun laws. The other says the problem lies in “our culture,” or perhaps our family structure. People fill the time on the television talk shows until the story recedes in memory–and nothing happens.
The argument is useless because it is not designed to reach a result. You could even argue it’s designed to prevent a result.
Of course there are problems in our culture. We do need to ask why weird subcultures, white supremacist cults and violent, suicidal pop music have such reach with so many among the young.
You don’t have to be a member of the Christian Coalition to worry about what Bob Woodson of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise calls “the values vacuum.” Nor is it liberal “political correctness”–let’s abandon that tired, polemical term–to say that school authorities should keep a watchful eye over racist cliques.
But the culture-and-family argument is invoked most often as a dodge by opponents of all gun regulation. They want to evade discussing why our laws make it so easy for young people to put their hands on weapons.
“It’s not a gun-control problem,” insisted Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a National Rifle Association board member. “It’s a culture-control problem.” After a tragedy like this, Mr. Barr, could you please consider the possibility of examining our gun laws as well as our culture?
Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan denounced our “polluted and poisoned culture” and wondered about “the upbringing or education of these two boys.”
At the time he issued his statement, we knew very little about the upbringing of the boys at the center of the incident. But we did know they had access to lots of weaponry. About this, Buchanan said not a word.
The NRA graciously decided to cut short its convention next week, scheduled in Denver not far from the scene in Littleton. This is not a good time to stage a gun celebration.
But if NRA leaders are truly in solidarity with the dead and the mourning in Littleton, the organization might consider adding a day to its program devoted to rethinking its absolutist position on gun regulation.
Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and the author of “The Politics of Gun Control,” offers a formula that might move the gun debate off dead center. Think of it as a national peace agreement.
“People who want to have gun control need to acknowledge the legitimacy of the hunting and sporting tradition that involves 15 million to 18 million people–the legitimacy of the gun culture,” he said in an interview. “Gun control opponents have to acknowledge the legitimacy of some gun regulations, understanding that regulation in turn acknowledges people’s right to own guns.”
We ought to be able to agree that the heaviest regulation fall on the most dangerous weapons, he says, and be aimed at keeping guns out of the most dangerous hands, including those of children and teens.
Parents accept many sacrifices and inconveniences in the name of protecting their children. Certainly parents who are gun owners place an infinitely higher value on their kids’ lives than on their right to absolutely unfettered access to weapons.
If gun owners who have kids in school search their consciences and take the lead in our national debate, we might find our way to a safer, saner approach to gun control. And then we should discuss the state of our values and our culture. As long as values talk is used only as a ploy to prevent gun control, it won’t be taken seriously.
