Emergency personnel gather at Brown University on Saturday after a shooting in a lecture hall that killed at least two students. Mark Stockwell/AP
A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
Every school shooting is horrific—a reminder of the worst form of American exceptionalism and one more infuriating occasion to question why so many of our neighbors and citizens accept this perverse violence and choose not to cry out for measures that might counter or diminish the mass murders that plague our land. When Donald Trump responds with the usual tut-tutting—“It’s a shame; just pray”—it’s a sign that doing nothing is just fine. Which is especially aggravating when gun violence devastates your own community.
I am a graduate of Brown University. As an alum, I have organized and held panels there. I know professors, administrators, and recent students. And many times, I have walked past or near the site of the Barus and Holley building where a gunman on Saturday burst into a lecture hall and shot 11 students, killing two of them. I mourn the lives lost, ache for the families of the dead, hope the best for the survivors, and grieve for the community, concerned for how this will impact the university’s students, teachers, and workers, and the people of Providence. We have all become too accustomed to such tragedies. They can seem faraway occurrences; that’s obviously a survival mechanism. It’s different when it’s close.
As my blood boiled in the aftermath of this horror, the usual context kicked in: In this level of gun violence, the United States stands alone among Western democracies. And the math is simple: We have more guns than other nations—500 million total firearms or so, by some estimates—and few restrictions on guns. Thus, more gun deaths. There’s nothing incomprehensible here.
One of the most aggravating elements of the so-called debate over gun violence is the despicable falsehood pushed by Republicans and conservatives: They are coming to confiscate your guns.
Nor are the politics difficult to understand. In the 1970s, as Republicans searched for cultural wedge issues with which they could coax white working class and ethnic voters from the Democrats, they landed on abortion, race, religion, and guns. Democrats might be fighting for workers’ rights and protections, better pay, the expansion of civil rights and personal liberties, and fewer handouts to the wealthy—but, hey, the Ds favor gun control. So they must be defeated. And for the Republicans—backed by the NRA—this strategy worked.
Shootings like this one are political inconveniences for them. They prompt the usual denunciations of Republicans’ do-nothingism and scorn for their hollow thoughts-and-prayers offerings. Republicans, though, only need to wait out the storm, and then they can get back to blocking and thwarting gun safety measures, deploying their silly arguments against any and all gun control. And one of the most aggravating elements of the so-called debate over gun violence is the despicable falsehood pushed by Republicans and conservatives: They are coming to confiscate your guns.
For years, this has been the mantra for the GOP: It’s not that Democrats merely champion restrictions on guns and assorted safeguards; they also want the government to forcibly take your weapons away. Certainly, gun safety advocates have proposed numerous ideas that would impose limitations and regulations, such as licensing guns, banning specific weapons and ammo, implementing waiting periods for buying a gun, tracking gun sales, passing red flag laws, restricting certain types of purchases, and so on. Yet right-wing and Republican foes of gun safety measures routinely claim that all of this is a prelude to total confiscation—that the ultimate objective is prying all guns from your cold live hands.
During a 2019 speech to a NRA gathering, Trump said, “Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns.”
This has been the Big Lie of the NRA and the Republican Party for decades. In a 1975 commentary in Guns & Ammo, Ronald Reagan warned against handing government “the power to confiscate our arms.” Half a century later, during last year’s election, Trump repeatedly assailed Vice President Kamala Harris with this charge. “She supports mandatory gun confiscation,” he declared at a campaign rally in Atlanta on August 3. He added sarcastically, “Would anybody mind if they came into your house and took away your gun?…She’s for taking away all of your guns.” Five days later, at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump exclaimed, “She wants to take away your guns.” Later in the campaign, during a speech, Trump bellowed, “They’re going to take away your guns, you saw that, they’re going to take away your guns. She’s going to take away your guns.” Fact-checkers noted these were false assertions.
This was not new rhetoric for Trump. During a 2019 speech to a NRA gathering, he said, “Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns.”
Confiscation has become the standard line for the Republican Party and the right. Some examples:
Marco Rubio, then a senator running for president, in 2016: “I am convinced that if [President Obama] could confiscate every gun in America, he would.”
Ben Shapiro, right-wing commentator, in 2016: “Of course Hillary Clinton is coming after our guns. There’s a reason she has consistently over and over again cited gun confiscation in England and Australia as her.”
Sen. Josh Hawley in 2021: “[Gun control] is really about confiscating weapons…ultimately to take away firearms from law-abiding citizens.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, then a congressional candidate, in 2020: “All this talk about gun confiscation has me thinking…no one is taking my guns away!”
Cars are registered. Can they be confiscated by the government?
Then–NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre in a 2023 fundraising email: “NOTICE OF GUN CONFISCATION…You’ll soon face the threat of having your guns confiscated with your right to self-defense.”
I’m sure there are some Democrats who, if they could snap their fingers and make all guns disappear, would do so. But confiscation is not on the agenda. This notion that gun restrictions are a steep slippery slope to confiscation is paranoid bunk. Cars are registered. Can they be confiscated by the government?
The goal of the pro-gunners is to discredit all discussion of gun safety proposals. And with this rhetoric, they sidestep any serious policy debates (does limiting the sale of assault weapons make us safer?) and delegitimize their political foes. As Trump presents it, his opponents are not only radical, communist lunatics; they are also gun grabbers who want to round up all guns so they can impose tyranny on the American people.
During the nightmare at Brown, a student texted her mother: “Mom, there’s a live shooting on campus. I’m going to run. I love you.” It’s stunning—or maybe the better word is “disgusting”— that an entire political party is willing to live with this.
As I write this, there are no details publicly known about the Brown University shooter. There’s no telling what, if any, possible gun laws might have prevented this terrible crime. But the passage of gun safety laws—and reforms in mental health care—would likely decrease the number of such horrors. And the fewer school shootings there are, the less encouragement there’ll be for the next one.
During the nightmare at Brown, a student texted her mother: “Mom, there’s a live shooting on campus. I’m going to run. I love you.” It’s stunning—or maybe the better word is “disgusting”— that an entire political party is willing to live with this and, worse, exploits sincere efforts to prevent gun violence in order to demonize political rivals and hang on to power. They fuel their political campaigns with the blood of innocents and disregard the fear created by our guns-over-all culture, including, most troubling, that experienced by our children.
The reasonable among us know the thoughts-and-prayer routine is bullshit. But the Big Lie—gun safety means confiscation—ought to also be deflated. The cynical deployment of this canard protects a status quo of violence and death. And that’s the goal of Republicans and MAGA. They will tolerate the killing of our fellow citizens and our children. For them, it’s good politics. And power is more important than blood.