Like most Americans, my reality this week has consisted of either going to bed or waking up in the morning with a gun-related tragedy firmly in my thoughts. Three days of senseless, racially tinged shootings, of the kind that have become far too common to be considered outliers.  On Tuesday, video surfaced of Alton Sterling, a black man, being killed by the police in Louisiana. On Wednesday, the killing of another black man, Philando Castile, by police officers in Minnesota was live-streamed on Facebook. America literally watched two black men die – one of them live – from police-inflicted gunshot wounds this week.  Much of our society has been consumed with anger, frustration and disbelief, and as the tension built – especially between the black community and law enforcement – we all were bracing ourselves for the next tragedy. And then on Thursday, five police officers in Dallas were murdered and six others wounded following an ambush by at least one sniper.  All these atrocities were avoidable, yet sadly, how we choose to discuss them only makes further suffering more likely.  Already the front page of the New York Post reads “Civil War”. In no way does this headline present an accurate depiction of events that have unfurled this week, and it only leads people to imagine calamitous, all-consuming, racially motivated violence. It encourages Americans to adopt an us v them mentality. Soon people will start thinking about what side are they on, determining who they believe is attacking them.  People have already begun demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement as the supposed perpetrators of this latest attack. And as a result, the BLM movement has felt it necessary to release a statement expressing their well-known commitment to non-violence.  Absurd discussions about whether you are “pro-cop” or “pro-black” have begun. Soon we’ll have to listen to people explain how you can be both “pro-cop” and “pro-black”.  This will not help to address the real, complex problem at hand. We live in a society whose structures push us to express our worst selves, and on top of that, it’s far too easy to do so with a deadly weapon.  Long before the deaths of Sterling and Castile, and before those of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin – even before the civil rights era of the 1960s – African Americans have struggled to overcome the obstacles placed in their way by wider American society. Chattel slavery, Jim Crow, impediments to voting, education, employment and housing: these were never the foundations for building a healthy and prosperous community. Yet America has always found a way to argue for the justice of these injustices, and black people have been scapegoated and the fears of white Americans stoked. Such injustices have always been reinforced using law enforcement as a means to terrorize and imprison large swaths of the black community.  All societies need law enforcement. There’s no argument over that. As a result, the “pro-” or “anti-” cop argument is a distraction. The discussion needs to be about police reform – how the authorities can contribute to the safety of African Americans, rather than rob them of it.  Thursday’s tragedy, however, has nothing to do with police reform, and everything to do with gun control.  Americans are used to hearing news of death by firearm, and instinctively we want to find out who the killer’s associates were, what larger movement they might have been connected to. This storyline played out recently following the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Omar Mateen had to be more than a troubled person with easy access to deadly weapons. And in the case of Dallas, a disturbed individual or individuals able to get their hands on deadly weapons is seemingly not enough: it has to be something scarier than that. There has to be a “war”, where certain groups are intent on destroying white life and white civility.  In fact, the tragedies of this week represent two separate yet interconnected American problems. The abundance of guns in our society makes everyone unsafe. Both Sterling and Castile had guns on them, although possessing a gun did not necessarily put them in violation of the law at the time of their killings. However, civilians having guns makes it much harder for police officers to do their jobs. They have to determine in a split second whether that civilian with a gun may use it against them. And, as on Thursday, they may not even see the civilian’s weapon before it has taken their life.  Secondly, our lives are governed by imperfect structures that penalise people of color in particular. These structures need reform so that all citizens can live in a more equitable and peaceful environment. So long as we ignore this reality, inequity, injustice and violence will unfortunately remain the norm, just as they have for all our nation’s history.
This has been a week of avoidable tragedies. The causes are an abundance of deadly weapons and a society structured to disadvantage millions of citizens