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The Georgia shooting exposes the tragic hypocrisy of America today

The news that two students and two teachers were killed and nine people were injured in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday should arouse all of our anger.

“What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now become another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” President Joe Biden said in a press release that day. “Students across the country are learning to duck and take cover instead of learning to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”

But it Is normal, in America. It is normal. And the system was intentionally designed so that this – the lack of gun regulation, in the name of “freedom” – remains the norm. Congress has been largely unwilling and, one might even argue, resistant to passing gun control laws since the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which President George W. Bush allowed to expire in 2004. The first major gun control law since that ban was the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in 2022, which established background checks for gun purchases under 21 and banned the trafficking of illegal firearms.

Even more outrageous is the fact that books must be classified as dangerous and banned, while guns are strictly protected. And therein lies the tragic reality of America today.

Rather than banning guns as a federal public safety measure, this political negligence (thanks in large part to a powerful gun lobby) has forced school administrators and teachers to change curricula and school environments based on the credible threat of gun violence, for example by conducting traumatizing school shooting drills and installing prison devices such as metal detectors, fences, and locked doors.

But such restrictions are not enough to create a safe learning environment or one conducive to learning, a delicate experience that requires the freedom of known safety. Children like the 14-year-old Apalachee shooter can still get their hands on a firearm or five, especially when guns permeate our culture. The nonprofit The Trace estimates that there are more than 378 million firearms in circulation in the United States, not including 3D-printed or homemade firearms. That's more guns than people. More guns designed to kill than people to kill.

There is a logic behind the priority of book bans over gun control: Conservative ideology seeks to preserve the societal status quo in order to maintain society's sexist and racist power structures. Education, as a key indicator of social mobility and a determinant of health in America, is therefore a constant battleground. Ignorance is bliss, the saying goes, but it is also a necessity for conservatives who do not want traditions and traditional ways of life to be tested or overturned.

Books, and all the potential they hold to inspire curiosity and encourage deep and critical thinking, have therefore become political targets for conservatives. They are means of liberation, of opening the mind, of penetrating unexplored corners of thought. And they are being banned more often than ever before. According to a 2024 report by PEN America, 4,239 books were banned in the fall semester of 2023 – more than in the entire previous academic year (3,362).

As I wrote in my book Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Struggle for Freedom:

Guns are weapons that kill or maim. Books are published to educate and enlighten. Some are a barrier between the self and the world, representing aggression, intimidation, and violence that are misconstrued as “protection.” Others are a conduit between the self and the world, connecting the reader to people different from themselves and encouraging critical thinking and a self-awareness that comes from empathic connection. Yet U.S. lawmakers and a vocal minority of the public would rather have a teacher armed with a gun than teach a book that features a gay character. That guns – not books – are valued as symbols of American freedom tells us all about the meaning of freedom in this country. The prevailing understanding of freedom in America—a definition that stretches back to the nation's founding in slavery and genocide—is what both historian Tyler Stovall and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates have called “white freedom.” Entitlement without responsibility, either personal or structural. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates described white freedom in The Atlantic as “freedom without consequences, freedom without criticism, the freedom to be proud and ignorant; the freedom to benefit from a people one moment and abandon them the next; a stand-your-ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without harsh memories; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom.”

Guns kill. Books liberate. So why are books banned but guns are not? The fact that guns are more valuable than books in our society reflects the devastating reality that the United States is hostile to our collective freedom.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com.

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