Unacceptable?

Gun violence is never out of season in the United States. But some incidents grab the headlines and our attention, at least for a while. Like the recent assassination of political influencer Charlie Kirk. And the shooting that same day at a public school in Colorado. And the more recent killing of four people in a Latter-Day Saints worship service in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Following these more publicized acts of violence, politicians, particularly mayors and governors, and law enforcement officers, will say something like, “This act of violence is unacceptable.” If you are listening at all, you have heard political leaders say that such acts of violence are unacceptable over and over. After the next act of gun violence, they will say it again.

The raw truth is that these horrific acts are entirely acceptable in this nation. We verbally condemn them and then do little to stop them. Oh, many are working to stop them in ways such as tightening and increasing gun-ownership laws, increasing mental health services, and making public buildings more secure. But their efforts in gun control are usually stopped cold by Second Amendment advocates and the pro-gun lobby.

The unvarnished truth is that we accept these all too common and frequent acts of violence as the price for some of our rights. I quote Charlie Kirk: “I think it’s worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” I don’t think my God-given rights have been compromised by not owning guns. Mr. Kirk further said the way to reduce gun violence was simple: Put guns into the hands of more Americans.

Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, in the immediate wake of the killing of Kirk, was commendable in many ways. In his statements to the press and in an interview on “60 Minutes,” I found him credible and compelling. But one thing he said bothered me. He reminded us that Utah is a death penalty state. Does anyone really think the death penalty deters crime? There is no credible study that shows the death penalty deterring crime. When people commit acts of public violence they often kill themselves after killing others, making themselves the final victims of their violence. Do states that have the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states that don’t use the death penalty? Has any study anywhere shown that the death penalty does anything except execute more lives?

On March 15, 2019, there was an act of mass gun violence in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. Such acts are rare in New Zealand. But the government and the people found this act unacceptable. Within two weeks, they passed swift and sweeping reforms of gun laws, a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles, and a very successful government buyback program. Their decisive action highlights the continuing lack of action to tackle gun violence in the United States.

In the first nine months of this year, 2025, there have been over 500 acts of mass gun violence (at least four people shot) in the United States. Our government seems to find this acceptable. Even if legislators pompously say that these regular acts of mass gun violence are unacceptable, they do nothing to change the fact that there are more guns in this country than there are people. Does it strike anyone as acceptable for a nation to have more guns than people? If the widespread availability of guns made violence less likely to happen, we would be the safest nation on earth. We are decidedly and tragically not.

The sad truth is that as a nation we are accepting frequent acts of violence as normal and unexceptional. I pray that someday we as a nation will say that this continuing drumbeat of gun violence is unacceptable by acting to make it rare. But until then, the United States finds frequent acts of gun violence acceptable.

[Note: I am posting this on Monday, October 13. Over the weekend there were three acts of gun violence in Mississippi and one in South Carolina. These made the news, if fleetingly. I have no doubt that there were more that went unreported nationally.]