Resend: on the human capacity for evil.

A weary world, not rejoicing.

I sent this particular newsletter out last year, when a mass shooting occurred and I was feeling a bit helpless. I do not feel helpless. But I do feel sad. I wanted to unlock this post + resend to all subscribers, as our list has grown quite a bit since then, as well as encourage you to donate to Daystar Counseling Ministries, which is providing free or low-cost counseling to those affected by the Nashville shooting. Be at peace.

When the Colorado nightclub shooting happened a couple of weeks ago, I was hit with a familiar wave of emotion.

Shock. Not-shock. Horror. Wariness at instant media narratives. Annoyance at the defensiveness of conservatives, desperate to defend firearms before the bodies were cold. Reading every article about it. Logging out of all social media. Logging back in to hate-check people who I knew who aggravate me.

I tried to do things a little differently, this time around. (I hate—hate—that I’m saying this time around as if mass groups of people being killed is just this totally normal thing). I prayed real, on-my-knees prayers. I texted a couple of friends that I knew could potentially be struggling with the news for a variety of reasons that I was thinking of them. I didn’t read 18 think pieces.

Guns are a topic a la abortion—they come with emotion. They come with histories and baggage. They come with passionate pro-and-con lists, they come with accusations of being a child murderer if you don’t think they should all be outlawed, they come with accusations of being a pro-government lib if you don’t think you should be able to buy them at garage sales. They’re one of those topics full of nuance that people prefer to flatten. It’s easier and more retweetable.

I was told, as I eventually peeked my head back out onto Instagram, the usual things: that prayers don’t matter as much as policy, and that the Catholic Church was to blame with a dash of Fox News. I was also told this time that I had to specifically state that I was an affirming ally or I was personally killing children. That was a new one.

Post-shooting social media is the worst social media. It’s sadness with nowhere to go, which nearly always turns into anger. It’s good intentions with sinful actions.

It’s a bunch of people who are confused and scared, screaming into a microphone, reaching into a void.

Mass shootings flock to the headlines because the horror is acute and easy to summarize; I went to journalism school and mass shootings are what we’d call a man-bites-dog story (vs. dog-bites-man, a story that happens frequently and is thus less interesting/clickable for the general public).

Some dog-bites-man stories that get looked over: almost 1 in 4 women in the United States experience physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner, and over half of all intimate partner homicides take place with a firearm. Every single month, about 70 women in the US alone are shot at by current or former intimate partners.

I come from Wisconsin, where dead deer on the back of a truck is a regular site this time of year. My son loves venison jerky. My dad’s office is wallpapered of photos with him and dead animals. Hunting is one of the most humane ways to produce meat for human consumption and is also much better for the environment than the Tyson chicken nuggets your kids scarf down. My husband likes to trap and skeet shoot with friends. One of our earliest dates was to one of those virtual shooting ranges at Cabela’s. Bam.

I say all of this as some kind of inner-club virtue signaling: I’m not one of those people who cheered when Beto said they were coming for our guns. I have Eastern European family; I’ve heard many, many times that one of the first things the shadowy government figures do is take your guns. I don’t say this sarcastically, I say it because it’s true. Even ISIS rounded up the guns in every town they’d take.

There are things we need to do about guns. In particular, making it harder for them to be purchased by perpetrators of violent crimes or those who have any indication they might commit a violent crime. I understand the fears of a slippery slope, especially when you’ve got Robert Francis O’Rourke walking around insisting on snatching your grandpa’s hunting rifle out of your hand, but we don’t say speed limits and seat belts are a bad idea because some idiot might make them all 10 MPH. Very few people are gun absolutists; many of us realize the wisdom of not having guns in high schools or allowing those who have been convicted of domestic partner violence to own a gun. It’s all about where the line is. And I think it needs to be a little further. Not even because of mass shootings, which are horrific and nightmare-inducing, but also because of those statistics I named above, and the shootings down the road from me in Milwaukee happening on a weekly basis.

Catholics have a rich history of being involved in social issues and politics. Look at the nuns who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., the writings of Servant of God Thea Bowman on justice, the breathless poetry written in support of the Civil Rights movement by Thomas Merton, the legacy of the Catholic Worker. I read The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby a couple of years ago and was won over by his argument that Christians of good faith must participate in civic life; it’s our duty to care for the marginalized among us and policy is an incredibly important part of that.

When I think of gun laws, I’m not only thinking of the innocent lives taken at the Colorado nightclub, a place many people considered a safe harbor. I actually find it kind of intriguing that that’s when we all shove guns into the headlines, even though a high schooler’s odds of being shot are so dramatically lower than a prostitute’s, or an unhoused woman’s. (Not that intriguing, though—”good victims” vs “problematic victims” is a dichotomy as old as time). Although semi-automatic rifles get the most news attention, the vast majority of firearm homicides take place with handguns, and one in 5 people purchased a gun during the pandemic. Interestingly, black women are the fastest growing population of gun owners.

America, for many reasons, is uniquely positioned when it comes to mass killings. We have a constitution that cements the right to own a firearm. We have an incredibly diverse population in terms of values, income levels, backgrounds, attitudes towards violence, etc. We, like the rest of the world, have mental health problems, but we also have a healthcare system that makes it difficult for the average person to get mental health care. (I can’t go into this here or this letter will be 19,000 words, but I can address it in a future level if there’s interest. I would much, much rather be depressed in Sweden than here). (Again, I would like to point you to Daystar Counseling as a giving option).

And yet, other places do have mass violence. Cars, knives, bombs, hangings in the town square. So while one question is, “What can we do about the high amount of gun violence in the US?” another question might be, “What can we do about violence?”

In other words…what can we do about the human condition?

I was recently listening to a podcast that talked about the human brain’s desire to make sense of the world, and how we’ll reorganize things so that we live in a just place. The example the psychologist gave was that when you hear someone got mugged, you might quickly ask where they were. If your friend tells you they were in a shady part of town, you almost breathe a sigh of relief—oh, that’s why. People only get mugged in dangerous areas. Girls only get assaulted if they’re wearing revealing clothing. Cars only get broken into if you leave a purse on the front seat.

But none of that is true. You can get mugged in any part of town. Girls can get assaulted while wearing grubby sweats. And cars get broken into whether the front seat is empty or holding a Louis Vuitton. This doesn’t mean you should just walk around in crime-ridden corners at 3 AM or leave your wallet on the dashboard. It just means that evil has some logic, but it’s not its only component.

So as much as I do believe in stronger gun laws, there lies a murky truth we must acknowledge: that in the world God created, sin blossoms in nearly every corner, and there’s an unknown combustion of the human spirit and the devil’s dictation every single day.

We’re looking for a world where we never have to fear violence at the hands of another person, and that world is not going to happen. Not that we shouldn’t aim for it. But speaking with an insistence that this law or that one will end violence is absurd.

Me saying exactly the words you’re looking for me to say on Instagram aren’t going to bring back anyone’s lives. Me voting for the “right” person is not going to eliminate a human’s capacity for violence. Me following the social justice trends of 2022 might limit the number of people who own guns, or it might not—and it definitely isn’t going to make less evil exist.

The only way to do those things is to as St. Padre Pio said: to pray, hope, and don’t worry. Disciple your children. Help your neighbor. Donate to organizations that provide mental health resources for the underprivileged. Sure, vote for gun ownership to be more difficult for abuse perpetrators and for stronger red flag laws. Go to your school board meetings and ask about metal detectors. But start with your very own kids, and your very own friends, in your very own corner of the world.