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America Is an Unserious Country Filled With Unserious People
Stories about revealed preferences and who we really are.
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1. Bondi Beach
On April 28, 1996, an Australian man took two semiautomatic rifles to the seaside town of Port Arthur and killed 35 people. Twelve days later the Australian government passed the National Firearms Agreement.
Twelve days.
Prior to the passage of the NFA, Australia had millions of guns. The NFA established a national gun registry, a 28-day waiting period for buying a gun, strict gun-licensing rules, and other provisions.¹ The result was that gun-related murders declined and mass shootings more or less disappeared. This account is from a 2016 assessment of the NFA’s effects:
The risk of an Australian dying by gunshot remains less than half what it was before Port Arthur. Research shows that murderers did not move to other methods.
But although Australia hasn’t seen a public mass shooting since 1996, we have no shortage of firearm-related crime. Gun owners who know each other well – be they family members or gang members – have always been the ones to kill each other most frequently.
Then there’s the killer already in the room. About 80% of gun deaths in Australia have nothing to do with crime. Instead, they’re suicides and unintentional shootings.
So:
People in Australia still own guns.
The NFA did not stop all gun violence.
But it seriously curbed the kind of random gun violence that is most preventable. And it all but eliminated mass shootings.
Translation:
A country can do something about gun violence and mass shootings. If it wants to.
Oh, and one other note: The prime minister who pushed the NFA through so quickly after the Port Arthur massacre was John Howard, who was a pretty conservative figure in Australian politics.
A serious country populated by serious people is not helpless to solve its problems.
Americans preen and posture as if they want to do something about random gun violence and mass shootings. But we do not.
A majority of Americans have decided that active shooter drills and school massacres are an acceptable price for preserving our gun regime.
What makes us unserious is that practically no one in this majority is willing to state this revealed preference openly.
And to think that some of us were surprised that Americans could elect Donald Trump. Twice.
2. Rob Reiner
Speaking of unserious people, America’s president took to Truth Social this morning to offer his thoughts on the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner.
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What an amazing statement:
The Reiners were not murdered; they “passed away.”
They died because of “the anger they caused others.”
Because they suffered from the “mind crippling disease” of not liking Donald Trump.
Ah-ha. Ha ha ha. Yes. How droll.
I can already hear Trump’s defenders:
That’s just how he talks; he’s not a regular politician.
You have to take him seriously, not literally.
He’s only doing what some libs on Bluesky did after Charlie Kirk was murdered.
Someone, somewhere, said something worse about Trump.
But he fights!
Certainly his mean tweets are regrettable, but look at all the e