This commentary is by Lance Coy, a resident of Burlington.
In the seven years since moving to Vermont from southwest Ohio, and living through the most tumultuous presidential term in history, I feel as though I have gained some measure of insight on how certain fringe groups and their allies manage to recruit people, including how to read between the lines on how these groups word their rhetoric.
For example: Mass Shootings. Every time some edgelord gets hold of a gun and takes out his hatred of the world on innocent people, there is always the same line of “sending thoughts and prayers” to the victims from conservatives.
We as a country, but especially conservatives, have a bad habit of sticking to the status quo. Refusing to rock the boat in a country born out of tea being thrown from one. So much so that conservatives refuse to even consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, a gun law written when firearms consisted entirely of one-shot, front-loading rifles and flintlocks might be a bit outdated in a time when you can fire six to12 shots from a simple handgun, or order military-grade equipment with little to no oversight. But I digress.
The “thoughts and prayers” line that continues to pervade every conversation about mass shootings seem to have given way to a more insidious line of thinking in certain circles. No “thoughts and prayers” were extended to victims of a mass shooting at an LGBTQ club in recent memory. Instead, we had churches and other conservative thinkers saying they were glad that queer people were brutally murdered.
With regard to Tennessee specifically, we had far-right think tanks speculating that the shooter might have been a trans woman, fomenting at the chance to justify their views about “trans women” being evil, inherently violent monsters. And when it was revealed that the shooter was a trans man, they still jumped at the opportunity, with folks like Matt Walsh peddling scientifically disproven statements about “testosterone making the emotional women violent.” (In reality, these trans men often become calmer as their transition progresses.)
Never mind the gaping hole these statements blow into these arguments that imply, by their own logic, that estrogen should make trans women more frail and more docile, as opposed to the hypersexual violent predators they’re made out to be.
I say all of that to say this: All of the gun debate that occurs every time someone goes on a killing spree, reignited by the Nashville shooting, inevitably became tainted by groups ready and willing to use a tragedy to justify the eradication of a minority group. (And yes, I do mean “eradication.” A quick Google search of the term “trans elimination” will show what I mean.)
And this is to say nothing of an idea I’ve seen floated: “red flag” laws. Laws designed to “stop violence before it happens,” by allowing people to call the police on individuals the caller “believes may commit a violent crime.”
Dear reader, given my earlier statements on the readiness of fringe groups using tragedy to justify hate of minorities, what do you think will happen if some of these people gain the ability to call down the law on people they percieve as dangerous?
We’ve seen the proliferation of “swatting” as a tactic for unscrupulous parties to scare and intimidate people they don’t like. It happens to video game streamers on Twitch and YouTube, and we’ve seen it happen to schools and colleges here in Vermont.
So let me ask again: What happens when prospective swatters with a disdain toward those not like themselves suddenly have a justification to swat others with impunity, and a means to actually detain the swatted victims via these suggested “red flag” laws?
I’ll spell out one of two worst-case scenarios: Mass incarceration of minorities.
These groups and people within these groups often consider the following peoples as dangerous, predatory, and/or violent: gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals, trans people, Black people, Muslims, Hispanics, the mentally ill, and, in certain cases, Jewish people.
The use of tragedy to justify hate, and the proposed ideas that stem from it, is a slippery slope that will lead to fascism. You’ve seen the poem. “First they came for the Communists” — you get the idea.
In conclusion: It’s well past time that this country stops entertaining the idea of giving up the safety of its most vulnerable citizens over the idea of regulating weapons. Because if this trend continues, I’d wager that the next authoritarian regime that rises may well be taking place on our own soil.
