This Great Tweetstorm Lays out Why There Is No Single Solution to America’s Gun Epidemic

America is in the grips of a renewed debate on our scourge of gun violence, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon.

Still going strong. Something is different this time. pic.twitter.com/feqC4tCkEq

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 22, 2018

Gun control is the most obvious fix. The fact that we have to debate whether civilians should own weapons of war provides a window into how sick the American mind has become on this topic. Getting rid of them would certainly reduce the fatalities in these mass shootings, but it’s not a complete and total cure-all. If we are to reduce the number of gun deaths to zero in this country, it will take a full court press on a litany of topics.

Ari Schulman is the editor of The New Atlantis, and he has written extensively on the topic of gun violence in America. He published a thread on Twitter six days ago that is still going viral as we speak. This is the kind of nuance that our gun debate requires.

The problem with almost every narrative that mass shootings are “actually an X problem” is that X is usually so broad it’s like saying the real problem with asteroid impacts is that the Earth is so big.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Some, like the Virginia Tech shooter, had serious diagnosed or diagnosable mental illness like psychopathy or major depression. But the large majority don’t. And the vast majority of people with strong mental illness aren’t violent.

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— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

“This is really about America’s love of guns” or “It’s just the most visible edge of our gun violence problem”: Again, important partial truths. But it doesn’t go that far in explaining mass shootings, which have moved opposite to gun ownership and overall gun homicide trends: pic.twitter.com/9UYLbr2g1r

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Or take this popular chart, from a sloppy NYT piece. I don’t find it meaningful. Mass US gun ownership didn’t start in 1966. In 1965 this chart would still have shown the US a world leader in guns, with 89 million, but mass shooters at ~0. pic.twitter.com/BXlgWaBd7T

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Mass shootings are a white (or Asian) problem? I’ve never seen this argument made in good faith, but it’s bunk. The racial distribution of mass shooters is basically the same as the general population. https://t.co/KnWhEP6Vcj

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Mass shootings do have something to do with all of these factors (except race). But weakly. Saying they’re “actually about” any one thing misses the singular nature of this violence. It doesn’t go anywhere, rhetorically or practically or politically.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Strategies with a chance of doing anything must, like past efforts to stop hijacking, terrorism, and assassinations, understand mass shootings as a distinct form of self-perpetuating violence, and strategically target them as such. https://t.co/gbnrvTtEPZ

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

What’s failing, exactly? I wonder if, like intel agencies pre-9/11, mass shooting threats are lumped in to a vastly broader pool, responsibility spread across many agencies federal and local, so no single force is in charge, dedicated to spotting them.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Dedicated local task forces like the ones described here strike me as having a great deal of potential. We should be thinking and talking about them more. https://t.co/hoWIBmnUVepic.twitter.com/RWBab8lNXq

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

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This may also offer a way to think more clearly about security reforms and the like — Not arming teachers or lightly trained, bored rent-a-cops, but increasing both random and occasionally intel-based patrols by trained police who are specifically there to deter shooters.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

And finally, there is more reason than ever to believe we could slow the spread of mass shootings by reducing the contagion effect and the incentives for infamy.

(Fin, will reply to @’s in a bit.) https://t.co/Hky9IDN91N

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

I meant to include a tweet here about domestic violence. A similar point holds: A lot of mass shooters have a prior history — I’ve seen no comprehensive stats, but my anecdotal sense is clearly at a higher rate than the general population — but again the large majority don’t.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) February 16, 2018

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.