America's Most Pressing Issue That Harris-Trump Debate Missed – Guns

There are no “good” and “bad” guys. We cling to comforting myths, failing to recognise that guns are always lethal.

The only time “guns” came up during the 90-minute debate was when Donald Trump said that Kamala Harris, if elected, would confiscate people’s guns! She rejected the charge.

(Photo: AFP)

Some people were surprised that Kamala Harris, in her first and only debate with Donald Trump, was able to deliver a knockout. A commanding figure on the stage, she looked more presidential than the former president. Harris succeeded where others, including President Joe Biden, had failed. As a woman of colour, she was probably used to being underestimated, one commentator noted. The doubters seemed to have forgotten that Harris had been a hard-driving prosecutor for years.

Others may have been surprised that Trump, known for his overweening confidence and bluster, looked uncomfortable as he sparred with Harris. It was a disaster for him. Some wondered if Trump’s performance, which was unhinged even by his standards, indicated cognitive decline.

For me, though, the debate’s biggest surprise was something else. It had to do with the moderators, who failed to ask a single question about gun violence, which I believe is the most pressing issue facing the US. Indeed, just a week before the debate, there was a horrific school shooting in Georgia, causing four deaths and leaving nine people injured. Shockingly, the shooter, a student at the school, is 14 years old. Along with his father, who owned the AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre, the boy is being tried as an adult. It was another tragic and senseless incident, not just for the families but for the entire country.

The only time “guns” came up during the 90-minute debate was when Trump said that Harris, if elected, would confiscate people’s guns! She rejected the charge.

But make no mistake – it’s the Democrats who will tackle gun violence. Vice President Harris has championed gun control efforts, and her home state, California, where she was the Attorney General and which she represented in the US Senate, has the country’s strictest firearm laws.

Action, Not Joy, to Tackle Gun Violence

In August, at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), there was much talk of joy. But it was a sombre session on the last day that became the DNC’s highlight, if we leave out Harris’ acceptance speech. Survivors of shootings, gun control advocates, and relatives of victims spoke movingly about the trauma so many people continue to endure. They wanted tougher gun laws – and for them, Harris and Walz represented hope. Action, not joy, was their clarion call.

Contrast this with what happened at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, where America’s deadly gun culture, which had precipitated an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania just days earlier, got a pass.

Ironically, Pennsylvania, a swing state, was also the site of the debate. The moderators didn’t mention either incident, or any other shooting in the nation.

At the RNC in July, the focus was on the miracle that had spared former President Trump from death or serious injury. Divine intervention was mentioned many times, but there was no demand to tighten firearm laws and prevent the circulation of high-powered assault weapons. The real “American carnage” (to use a term favoured by the 45th president) is caused by these weapons.

There was no handwringing at the RNC over what US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called a public health crisis. The numbers are numbing. Last year in this country, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there were more than 43,000 gun-related deaths and 655 mass shootings. Of course, it would have been naïve to expect any reconsideration of gun laws from a party that’s so beholden to the National Rifle Association (NRA). 

However, in the media as well this time, the discussion – an important one, to be sure – was all about the security lapses that led to the assassination attempt, and how to prevent such incidents in the future. As for tightening gun laws, I thought we had lost our nerve. Exhaustion and despair seemed to have set in, leading to paralysis in this deeply polarised country.

I was wrong. Yes, the nation is awash in 400 million firearms, and there’s a lot of uncertainty regarding the November election, but as we saw at the convention in Chicago, there are a lot of determined people, including lawmakers, who remain passionate about gun control. And having suffered grievous losses over the years, they won’t rest until reforms are implemented.

How Gun Culture is Tied to Race

A few months ago, a friend texted that we should be thankful that the would-be assassin in Pennsylvania wasn’t a brown immigrant. So true! And I’d say the same about the school shooter in Georgia. If either of them had been an immigrant of colour, we’d have heard a lot more – and both Trump and JD Vance, given how they demonise migrants, would have exploited it to the hilt. That would have been one more reason to amp up the xenophobia.

Harris has long been known for her commitment to gun control. The NRA calls her “an existential threat to the Second Amendment.”

Her inspired selection of Tim Walz as the VP nominee – Walz, a hunter, was a gun enthusiast who became a gun control advocate – can’t but fill us with optimism. If they win the election, Harris, who heads the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, will most likely give the job to him. Walz would be the best person to win conservatives over to a cause that’s nothing less than a national emergency.

There are no “good” and “bad” guys when it comes to firearms. We cling to comforting myths, failing to recognise that guns are always lethal. Far from protecting the owners, firearms promote vigilantism, and they pose the most danger to family members.

Even in the 1960s, a government commission on gun violence found that the bedroom was the most dangerous room in America. Another study found that keeping guns in vehicles made the drivers more prone to road rage.

These details are from One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, a book published earlier this year. The author is Dominic Erdozain, an Oxbridge-trained historian who’s a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

In uncovering this story, Erdozain shows how the country’s gun culture is – inevitably – tied to race, both in the Deep South, where slavery thrived, and in the Old West, where pioneers and settlers encountered Native Americans. And it wasn’t just about racial fear; it was about dominance as well. “Rooted in nationalism and xenophobia, the gun creed was the militarisation of social policy – a militarism without the training,” he notes.

The American Frontier Wars, the Mexican American War, and the Civil War – not to mention immigration and institutions like the NRA and the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) – fed an appetite for firearms that hasn’t gone away. Speaking of the American Frontier, figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill played a role, too, in creating its mystique.

Here, I should mention how my youthful infatuation with what I called cowboy movies and pulp novels set in the Old West made guns “cool” for me. I cringe when I think of that phase.

In his book, Erdozain gives readers a compelling explanation of the Second Amendment and the distortions that followed, and he argues how the nation’s founders never intended it to guarantee an individual right to bear arms. In fact, the word “individual” doesn’t appear anywhere in the amendment, but the crucial words that do appear are “well regulated militia,” which had become important for the founders who were wary of having a permanent military on these shores.

The Supreme Court decision that “issued a blank check to the armed citizen,” as Erdozain points out, came not in some distant era, but in 2008 (District of Columbia v Heller). By enshrining the gun culture mythology – which features rugged individuals fighting Us versus Them battles – in the Constitution, it has turned the US into the Wild West.

“As I began to study the gun statistics, one thing became clear: anybody is capable of killing,” Erdozain writes. “Most gun fatalities are committed by law-abiding citizens, who become ‘criminals’ only when they pull the trigger.”

A bumper sticker reads: “Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People!” It’s an absurd sticker, and there are parodies of it. Yes, people kill people, but they do the killing with guns, not knives! Fortunately, just as there’s a gun culture in the US, there’s also an anti-gun culture – and it’s getting stronger and is much broader than the destructive cult it opposes. Given the alarming rise in firearm fatalities, the majority of Americans want restrictions on gun ownership.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz understand what’s at stake. But if we’re expecting them to pull us back from the brink of this abyss, we’ve to make sure they win the election in November.

(The article has been updated. The author is a writer and managing editor based in Atlanta, Georgia. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)