Twenty-two thousand people went to a country music concert in Las Vegas and, as I write this, 59 people are dead, more than 500 are wounded and none of us can understand why this happened. A country music venue has got to be about as low risk a venue as you can imagine and yet, some psychopath took it as an opportunity to kill as many people as he could—people he did not know—for reasons that are yet unknown and unclear. He obviously had made careful preparations; he had an enormous arsenal and knew that this was a suicide mission. In time, they may discover a note, a video or something that sheds some light on the event. However, it’s even possible that we may never know.
The question we have to ask ourselves is: “How do we go on living in a world where we are surrounded by all sorts or risk, some about which we can make a rational choice and others where we have no choice?” For example, we have no control over North Korea and its nuclear ambitions, nor how our president will respond to them. Most people just respond fatalistically—“whatever will happen will happen”—and go on living their everyday life. It was like that in the 1950s, when Americans and Russians were deep in the Cold War. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) had bombers armed with nuclear weapons up in the air 24/7. I can remember them telling us in school how to crawl under our school desks in the case of a nuclear attack. Strangely, risks that you can’t do anything about (like nuclear war) seem to make people less anxious than smaller risks, where you get to make a choice.
What we perceive as very risky today no one gave a second thought about 60 years ago. I can remember, at age eight, going a couple of blocks to the Ave P park (that’s in Brooklyn, N.Y.), where we all played ball and then not coming back until I was 18. Sure, I came home every night but my parents barely knew who my friends were, who I hung out with, what we did, whether we played basketball or robbed banks, and when we were coming back. As long as I came back for supper, they didn’t worry. There was an adult world and there was a kid’s world; the worlds were totally separate. We took all sorts of risks—some stupid risks—but most of us survived and our parents didn’t worry all the time. I wasn’t unique because it was the same for all the kids I knew. I’d guess that bad things happened at the time, the way they do today, but no one seemed terribly afraid. What was very different then is that there were no guns.
I compare that to my son raising his children, making all the choices they make today and trying to evaluate all the risks. Parents are so deeply involved in their kids’ lives that it could drive you mad. My 6 and a half-year-old grandson is a good athlete and wants to play flag football. His dad agreed, but apprehensively. I also played flag football, except in those days it was called “two hand touch.” We never bothered with flags and occasionally someone would get hurt. But that was kind of expected and we learned to handle risk ourselves in the process. You learned not to block another kid who was bigger and 40 pounds heavier than you. You did the smart thing. As he went by, you hit him in the ear with your elbow. It was an early lesson in risk management.
There are decisions a parent has to make today; many of those are serious but not anywhere near as serious as what you would believe researching the Internet. There are entire industries out there in the business of scaring the hell out of you. Take vaccinations, for example. Vaccinating children against childhood diseases was a major breakthrough in public health. Childhood deaths dropped. Childhood health improved. But nothing in our world is 100 percent—there is an irreducible risk in everything including, I suspect, some childhood vaccinations. However, the risks are minuscule compared to the gains from widespread vaccination of children and to my mind, it’s absolutely foolish not to vaccinate your children.
But back to guns. I understand we live in a country where many, if not most, of the people in some regions have guns. We are a gun nation and it’s a constitutional right. If I had young children, I personally wouldn’t have a gun in the house. Despite what most parents like to believe, kids find everything in the house. They know where the guns are and they know where the ammunition is stored. Parents have to understand that guns are magical and because of that, kids are drawn to them. When you’re holding a gun in your hands, you are holding life and death and that is powerful magic. A gun is power to people who feel powerless, whether they are a kid or an adult psychopath, as appears to be the case in Las Vegas.
I don’t believe we can eliminate guns from our culture but we can certainly eliminate those that were intended for war and are designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest period. We have always had psychopaths and that will continue, but we have to get war weapons out of easy availability.