In The Wake Of Violence

The horrific attacks demand that we hold firm and recommit to fundamental principles.

Photo courtesy of AP

Over the weekend, there was death and tragedy at every turn. From students in classrooms at Brown University, to Jews murdered while celebrating the first day of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Australia, to the violent death of a beloved filmmaker and his wife at the apparent hands of their own son—it’s a lot to absorb and try to make any sense of.

I won’t try to do so today. The violence arose from seemingly intractable issues: the easy availability of high powered rifles in the U.S., the rise of violent antisemitism, and the deep trauma of drug addiction, even among the most privileged in our society.

But while we cannot solve these things easily, we can at least take a few lessons from these horrific events, including how and how not to react. Clear-headedness during such crises helps us focus on and address the problems that lit these fires, rather than expend time stomping out the flames fanned by others.

The urge to collectively blame and punish

Nowadays when we learn about a mass shooting, every minority community makes the same silent prayer: “I hope he wasn’t one of ours.” We’ve grown used to this because we understand what typically happens in the wake of a violent act committed by any brown or black skinned, immigrant, trans or Muslim individual: condemnation of every other member of that community.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) never misses a chance to do so. Following the Bondi Beach violence, he demanded, “How many more times is this going to happen until we wake up? Islam is not compatible with the West.”

The LGBTQ+ community endured the same leap to judgment and collective punishment when reports emerged that Charlie Kirk’s killer was in a romantic relationship with his trans roommate. The newfound power of the label “trans” as an unfounded link to violence quickly embedded itself in our culture—so much so that rumors spread quickly online that the Reiners’ son Nick, who sources claim killed both his parents last night, was not only a drug addict but was transitioning to being a woman—a completely baseless statement.

In the case of the Bondi Beach killings, it was another Muslim man, Ahmed al-Ahmed who, out of sheer bravery and thanks to his training and background in law enforcement, disarmed one of the killers, saving untold lives. Al-Ahmed is the son of refugees and a father of two; to counter the rank Islamophobia surrounding the attack, many are understandably uplifting his story and heroism as a counterexample.

While it’s important to recognize that there are heroes within a targeted community, too, it is a strange and likely fruitless point to argue with the haters. As one commentator aptly noted, “You’d think that a Muslim man on Bondi Beach committing one of the most heroic acts ever caught on camera might dispel some of the otherwise inevitable racist rhetoric. But it won’t.”

That’s because such examples are up against systemically ingrained beliefs. When a white mass shooter is taken down by a white officer or bystander, we never focus on their race or religion. This only happens with ethnic, religious or sexual minorities—because our brains are wired to accept that minority communities are somehow responsible for the acts of any one of them, while whites are always absolved of any guilt by association.

This requires a bit of unpacking. What it means is that society still views, and tacitly accepts, that minorities are “all the same” and capable of whatever any one of them has done, while whites in the majority are deserving of individualized consideration and justice and are innocent until proven guilty.

No one, not even most whites, believes this to be just or equitable. But we carry on as though it is. It is one of the most pernicious aspects of systemic bias and racism.

Nor does it help to point out actual statistics. Most mass shooters are straight, white, Christian, cisgender men. Most lean right or are far-right in their politics. But there are never calls for collective punishment of this group. To even suggest it is preposterous and only happens in ironic responses, not policy.

Alarmingly, however, collective punishment has now become official White House policy without very much pushback or protest. When two National Guard soldiers were shot, one fatally, in Washington, D.C. by a single Afghan refugee, the Trump regime responded by punishing the entire Afghan community.

As NPR recently reported, “The Trump administration indefinitely suspended the processing of immigration requests for Afghans, potentially setting back tens of thousands of Afghans seeking asylum or other paths to citizenship.” Per reports, “The crackdown started the week of Thanksgiving. That’s when an Afghan immigrant allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., killing one of them.”

To understand how absurd and unfair this is, imagine if an immigrant from Sweden had killed two U.S. soldiers, and the Obama administration had responded by cutting off all immigration from that country. It’s nonsensical in the extreme. It would simply never happen. Yet when it’s brown-skinned refugees, there’s no limit to how far the Trump regime will extend the acts of a few to tarnish all. Indeed, this kind of collective guilt and punishment is a hallmark of fascist regimes.

We must remain vigilant over and vocal about opposing calls for collective punishment that are steeped in animus and prejudice. Most people still don’t even realize what it is when it’s happening. That needs to change, or we will forever be in the land of “I hope he wasn’t one of ours.”

One example does not a policy case make

As with collective punishment over the acts of the few, opponents of gun regulation are apt to seize upon single examples to make broad and illogical statements in support of even more lax gun laws. Meanwhile, they downplay or ignore hundreds of counterexamples that don’t advance their preferred narratives, offering only prayers in response to preventable tragedies.

Thirty years ago, Australia as a nation responded decisively to a horrific mass shooting event in Tasmania by passing the National Firearm Restriction Act of 1996. Per the New York Times,

The authorities essentially banned assault rifles and many other semiautomatic rifles, as well as shotguns. They imposed mandatory gun buybacks that took as many as one in three privately held guns out of circulation, and, according to some estimates, melted down as many as one million guns. They also imposed new registration requirements and restrictions on gun purchases.

According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Act led to the surrender of 660,000 newly restricted firearm models as part of an amnesty program as well as 60,000 non-restricted firearms.

Since passage of that Act, mass shootings in Australia have become extremely rare. As the Times noted, “For two decades after the 1996 attack, there were no mass shootings in Australia. In 2018, a man killed six members of his own family and then himself.”

Despite the apparent tremendous success of the Act, gun control opponents, both here in the U.S. and Australia, were quick to argue that the Bondi Beach shootings somehow prove gun regulations don’t work to prevent violence. Here’s just a smattering of right-wing responses by accounts with large followings:

“I was explicitly told things like Bondi Beach didn’t happen because of gun control. Hmmm.” — Shadz on Twitter

“Gun control doesn’t prevent gun violence.” — Clown World on Twitter

Some managed to combine both Islamophobia and NRA talking points. Wrote popular conservative commentator Eric Daugherty, in response to the Australian government’s plans to restrict guns even further in that country in the wake of the attack,

The Australian Prime Minister is now planning EVEN MORE gun control after the Islamic terror attack in Bondi Beach.

Australia has some of the world’s STRICTEST gun laws.

These politicians don’t seem to grasp the MUSLIMS were the problem in this case; NOT THE GUNS.

These hot takes may be long on resentment and anger, but they are short on facts and logic. As discussed above, the number of mass shootings in Australia grew vanishingly small following the enactment of firearm restrictions there. And just imagine how much worse the attacks would have been had the shooters carried now banned semi-automatic rifles instead of shotguns, which are still permitted if there are licensed owners.

All the evidence points to the fact Australia’s firearm restrictions actually work, and that we ought to be doing the same here in the U.S. But we currently lack the political will and an adaptive governing system to get it done.

The need for moral clarity

My final point is a broader one. The violence we saw this weekend is intertwined with our politics in a way that can lead to moral ambiguity instead of the clarity we need to see from civil and political leaders.

As a clear example of this, in response to the school shootings at Brown, Donald Trump shrugged, saying that Brown is one of the great schools in the world, but “Things can happen.”

We frequently let comments like that go these days because it’s just “Trump being Trump,” but we as a nation should never tell ourselves we “have to get over it” as Trump has urged before following mass shooting events, or simply accept that “Things can happen.” These mass shootings happen because we as a country have failed to take decisive action to stop them from happening.

Trump’s response to the news of the Reiners’ death was frankly beyond belief, with him managing to make it about himself.

Putting Trump aside, as we’d all like to do, we should all be able to agree that violence is unacceptable, particularly if it is religiously or politically driven. When Rob Reiner was asked about the murder of Charlie Kirk, he didn’t equivocate. His immediate, gut reaction to the news was, “Horror. Absolute horror.” He continued, “It’s beyond belief, what happened to him. And that should never happen to anybody.”

Palestinians have stepped forward to condemn this weekend’s terrorism, drawing a distinction between what the government of Israel has done to their people and attacks upon innocent people simply because they are Jews. Wrote one in a now viral post,

I am the Palestinian son of a Palestinian man from Jerusalem and a Palestinian woman from Nablus.

I am proud of my heritage and my people and our culture and our history.

I am unapologetic in my belief that Palestinians have the inseverable right to a free, safe, secure, and independent home.

As a proud Palestinian, I will say that nothing the Israeli government has ever done can justify violence against Jewish people for the mere fact of their Jewishness.

Not in my name, motherfuckers.

Our political leaders have an important role to play at such moments, too. While we shouldn’t expect Trump to fulfill this role, others rise to the moment and display the moral clarity we need. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, in the wake of the horrific shootings at Bondi Beach, issued both a clear condemnation and a call for unity and safety. It is worth reading in its entirety:

The attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney today was a vile act of antisemitic terror. I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers. May the memories of all those killed be a blessing.

While we are still waiting for all the facts to emerge, what we already know is devastating. At least 11 dead, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who held deep ties to Crown Heights. At least 29 injured. Another Jewish community plunged into mourning and loss, a holiday of light so painfully reduced to a day of darkness. This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world. Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside. What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too.

On Bondi Beach today, as men with long guns targeted innocents, another man ran towards the gunfire and disarmed a shooter. Tonight, as Jewish New Yorkers light menorahs and usher in a first night of Hanukkah clouded by grief, let us look to his example and confront hatred with the urgency and action it demands. When I am Mayor, I will work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe—on our streets, our subways, at shul, in every moment of every day. Let this be a purpose shared by every New Yorker, and let us banish this horrific violence to the past.

The kind of moral clarity we need begins from a few simple principles. Governments can and must do what they can to protect their people from the ravages of extreme gun violence. The actions of a few do not, and should not ever, condemn the many. The politics of a murder victim are irrelevant because no such violence should ever occur. And terrorist attacks upon innocent people are wrong and must be condemned without exception.

These principles often get lost in the complexity, anger and passion of the moment. But to move forward, we need to return to and reassert them consistently. Only by so doing, can we honor the legacy of those who tragically lost their lives by solemnly recommitting ourselves to a world with less horror, less hatred and less violence.