After yet another mass shooting, same old routine

Another mass shooting. Another near dozen or more dead bodies strewn across a square mile. Another crazed gunman, and, oh, don’t forget, yet another now obligatory policy tit-for-tat over whether we need more gun laws or not.

As tiring as the instinctively very human reaction when watching mass shootings unfold is watching reruns of the gun rights vs. gun control debate about it. So, now, it’s not just the typical reaction to the mass shooting. It’s the typical outrage at the typical reaction to a mass shooting. The president is just raising his hands and shrugging at this point. The “mass shooting reflex” is a social dance as outdated as the Macarena or the Cupid Shuffle or the Cha Cha Slide: annoying and epically doltish, yet we can’t stop ourselves. We keep doing it.

{mosads}We’ve reached the point where we’re the folks sitting down gritting on the folks on the dance floor. Commentators complain about the reaction to nowhere. Reactions never translate into votes. Gun control laws get little play beyond press conferences in Washington, and gun rights laws get more clout in state capitols than laws of restraint. If you live in states with large or dominant rural constituencies, move if you have an allergy to firearms. Farmers won’t let those shotguns go; your local hunting enthusiasts will still cherish weekends on the lake blasting defenseless fowl.

Reaction games are a political industry. If they wanted, presidents can have speechwriters on ready with several different template statements of remorse. Probably should, since there have been 142 school shootings since Sandy Hook. Democrats have their mass shooting talking points pretty much memorized; Republicans pull theirs from a crate of the National Rifle Association’s greatest hits. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat, seemed to crash right through it, just “kept it 100”: “It’s a complicated area. But that’s my understanding — not that it’s particularly relevant right at the moment.” Pollsters stand ready to survey within a moment of a shooting’s notice, and we’re likely to get yet another poll like this one: 55 percent of Americans, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll, say they want “stricter gun laws.” But, 39 percent say they want no change to existing gun laws or keep them less strict. Within a week of this shooting, brace for new polling to say the same thing.

Funny how that math above works. Only 36.6 percent of voting eligible Americans participated in last year’s congressional midterms. Naturally, Republicans retook the Senate and actually expanded their majority in the House. If anything, the folks screaming that they want tighter gun laws aren’t voting when it counts, compared to the gun lobby Second Amendment bona fides who do vote.

A frustrated President Obama attempting to rattle or guilt-trip the collective American psyche into political action does little to change that game. He calls us out on our numbness and indifference, contradicting himself into a state of disbelief when on one hand, he says that we’ve slumped into “routine,” while on the other, he says that “we can actually do something about it.”

Dead bodies piling up from back-to-back mass shootings, obviously, aren’t changing anything. It’s not like anyone is mobilized into action. Sandy Hook happened and a much-hyped legislative push on Capitol Hill went flat. Aurora, Colo., happened and that shooter survived it untouched, at a time when police officers can’t seem to keep their triggers off unarmed black men. Charleston, S.C. happened and all we got out of that, to the gun lobby’s delight, was a fairly distracting conversation on rebel flags.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) can throw all the money he wants at it, but — with what little money any of us have in comparison — one can wage that he is completely stumped by the lack of progress. No one has quite figured it out: the formula for a countermovement to the gun rights movement. Relying on real-time grisly scenes of carnage and grief nudges the needle as far as nonvoting cries for help will take it.

So, who knows, maybe it’s time for a fresh approach. A different way of tackling it.

An “un-gun” movement to the gun rights movement. You know, since angry presidents and funerals don’t cut it politically. Maybe gun control supporters should offer something voters can touch or have, just like gun owners. Gun enthusiasts have their toys. Perhaps it’s time to think of things to motivate fellow gun control enthusiasts since shooting victims aren’t pushing the right buttons. If gun hobbyists get gun licenses, maybe committed gun control activists should get “no gun” licenses, card-carrying pledges at 18 to never own or use a firearm. Maybe laws mandating that state governments purchase bulletproof vests for every citizen, since the cost can’t be any more expensive than the combined $229 billion we spend due to mass shootings, which includes the public safety response and social and economic costs. The Aurora shooting ended up costing more than $100 million. And if gun violence costs every American, on average, $564 in 2010, what’s wrong with governments handing out vouchers for $300 vests?

Whatever the cause, gun control proponents are faced with a dilemma, and they’re going to need something a lot stronger than dead bodies. Because, to the voters who don’t show up, it’s just another prime-time sob story to move on from. They’re just not that into it.

Ellison is a veteran political strategist and contributing editor to The Root. He is also Washington correspondent to The Philadelphia Tribune, a contributor to The Hill and the “Sunday Washington Insider” for WDAS-FM in Philadelphia. He can be reached @ellisonreport.