Gun Violence is an Assault on Community Life

Mass shootings are uniquely destructive to America’s public places

There has not been a single week in the United States this year without a mass shooting. In only four and a half months, over 226 mass shootings have occurred. Each attack is uniquely horrific. Both the motives of the shooters and the fates of the victims vary in each attack. What they have in common is the human wreckage they leave behind. Mass shootings destroy individual lives, families, and communities.  

That gun violence is uniquely destructive to American community life is not a new idea, but one that is seldom considered as we tally the mounting costs of inaction. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols laments the loss of solidarity that comes from sharing and enjoying public places:  

In the first few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I traveled to London and New York. That’s when I realized that the terrorists had succeeded in making an ordinary citizen—me—think about terrorism constantly. I wondered, on my first trips back to those cities and during almost every visit to any metropolis for…