Opinion: Guns Are Not the Problem

By Sidney Balman Jr., Skyline Advisor

ALPINE - There’s a common denominator to the pandemic of mass shootings in America, and it’s not guns - it’s mental health and radicalism. 

After Uvalde, Nashville, Louisville, and so many other mass shootings, we should continue to press hard for stricter gun controls. But let’s not fool ourselves. In our divided nation, it’s a dangerous illusion to imagine a bipartisan political consensus on regulations with enough bite to meaningfully restrict gun ownership without violating the way in which so many Americans interpret the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Banning AR-15s is not the answer when there are so many other potent weapons available across America. 

In my view, developed during many decades as a reporter covering violent radicalism and working with governments to mitigate it overseas as well as in the homeland, the public health approach is the only one with a prayer for domestic success. We must address the root causes of radicalism and insanity that transform an 18-year-old into a berserker rampaging with a gun through an elementary school, not symptoms of an ailing society such as loose gun laws or irresponsible leaders who stoke the fires of polarization for their own political gain. 

It was not so long ago that suicide bombings and mass murder were the domain of Hezbollah, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Shining Path and others. Not anymore. Those groups and the ‘new American terrorists,’ the cult of ‘Active Shooters,’ might not share a common ideology. But they have been infected by the same disease: radicalism, and have trod the well-worn emotional path to violent extremism. These are the disease vectors against which American communities must be immunized through effective prevention and rehabilitation programs.  

On behalf of several Western governments, I spent time working on these issues in the Balkans a few years ago. The maximum-security prison outside Pristina in the disputed nation of Kosovo might be considered ground zero for such an undertaking. The task fell to Rasim Selmani, the progressive warden at that gleaming new facility, and he graciously took his time explaining the difficulties of extremist rehabilitation.  

Kosovo and neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina were struggling to manage returning fighters from the Middle East, and family members of dead Jihadists who were flowing in from the Balkans, particularly women. The numbers were not huge –– no more than a few hundred in each nation –– and they were sentenced to prison terms of three to 15 years. As a result of sentencing guidelines, most returnees spent no more than three years in prison, and in many cases, Selmani  said, they considered it a rite of passage. To make matters even more complex, a survey at that time by the U.S. Justice Department’s International Criminal Investigative Training Program found that 60 percent of Bosnian communities rejected the reintegration of foreign fighters.  

Selmani and many experts view radicalization as a public health problem, with primary, secondary and tertiary symptoms that should be treated with primary, secondary and tertiary measures. It all starts with diagnosing community resiliency and identifying factors that might contribute to unrest among community members, which could eventually trigger violent acts in certain types of individuals. For example, an economically strapped neighborhood might express frustration with the lack of funding for youth sports programs in their area compared to those in more prosperous areas of a city. But if one digs below the surface –– employing opinion research techniques, social media sentiment analysis, heat mapping and other tools –– there may lurk seeds of larger problems stemming from feelings of disenfranchisement, disrespect, injustice and discrimination. Addressing the underlying problems with home-grown solutions that respond to these symptoms is the key to community health and mitigating violent extremism.  

These factors can be a toxic stimulant for individuals vulnerable to radicalization: loners who may have been bullied or suffer from some form of physical or emotional handicap and spend most of their free time on the Web playing violent shooter-survivor games, surfing porn sites and interacting with strangers in the dark corners of hidden chat rooms. They are sitting ducks for extremist recruiters, expert predators who prey on them with tried-and-true brainwashing techniques that eventually compel them to violence. Hoda Muthana, for example, a young woman who left a safe life in Alabama for the illusion of paradise amid the brutality of ISIS in war-torn Syria. Or the scores of radicalized Somali youth in Minneapolis, groomed by morally corrupt religious leaders or predators on the Web, who left America to fight, and die, in the Middle East and East Africa.    

Many consider October 1983, when Islamic Jihad killed 241 American and 58 French military personnel with truck bombs while they slept in their barracks, as the dawn of modern violent extremism. Since then, American presidents have largely relied on kinetic strategies to fight radical groups, the so-called bag ‘em and tag ‘em approach that relies on intelligence and force.  

The two notable exceptions were George W. Bush, who poured money into overseas humanitarian assistance in an effort to dilute extremism through economic development, and Barack Obama, who leaned into a public health approach to counter domestic threats from home-grown extremists. Both of these strategies showed some early promise, but they withered on the vine without sustained political and financial support. 

Working in those ways with potentially at-risk communities –– barring the slim chance of an informant or finding a needle in the haystack of the world wide web that prevents another Uvalde –– is a long-term proposition requiring public patience and a funding commitment from Washington that spans administrations.  

Programs to help mitigate violent extremism should be built from the ground up, incorporating people and institutions with track records of public service in at-risk communities. They have “street-cred” that will resonate, and they know how to deconstruct the negative narratives that can be built on twisted local lore. Law enforcement and the military have critical roles to play, but treating the plague of violent radicalism involves much more than first responders. 

Balman, a journalist and novelist, is the Writer in Residence and Professor at Sul Ross State University. Algorithms, the final installment in his Seventh Flag Trilogy, comes out in August.