Connecticut State Police officers search outside St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Connecticut, on Sunday, December 16, after a threat prompted authorities to evacuate the building. Investigators found nothing to substantiate the reported threat, a police official said, declining to provide additional details. The church held Sunday services following last week's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
Editor's note: Ethan Zuckerman directs the Center for Civic Media, based at MIT's Media Lab. He lives in Lanesboro, Massachusetts, and blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog
(CNN) -- I logged onto Facebook this afternoon, terrified of what I would read.
I grew up near Newtown, Connecticut, and went to high school in Danbury, Connecticut. A close friend spent her childhood at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the school where a shooter killed at least 26 people today, police said, most of them children.
Police reports are still coming in, and we are only beginning to grasp the scale of this tragedy. Friends are describing their panic as they try to reach their children in schools that are on lockdown. One of my high school classmates is trying to support her best friend, whose daughter was one of the children killed.
My Facebook timeline is filled with expressions of relief for those who escaped the violence, sorrow for those lost, and prayers for recovery. It's also filled with friends demanding that America take action on gun control. Their calls are answered by others who protest that this is a time to mourn, not a time for politics.
A tragedy like today's shooting demands we both mourn and take action.
In April of this year, One L. Goh shot 10 nursing students at Oikos University in Oakland, California. In July, James Holmes shot 70 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. In August, Wade Michael Page shot 10 people in a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. With today's tragedy, 2012 is likely to be the worst year for mass gun violence in U.S. history. It follows a year in which a mass shooting killed six and critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. And on Tuesday two people killed when a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall in Oregon.
Outside of these mass shooting incidents covered by the media, 2012 is likely to be a bad one in terms of "ordinary" shootings. The CDC reports that 30,759 were treated in hospitals for gunshot wounds in 2011, a 47% increase over 2001. Homicide rates in the U.S. are going down while incidences of shootings are increasing, because doctors are now so experienced at treating gunshot wounds that they are saving more lives.
Yet conventional wisdom argues that the U.S. is too polarized and divided for any meaningful changes to our broken and inadequate gun laws. The National Rifle Association and other lobbying groups are too well-funded and powerful for politicians to stand behind even modest gun control measures, like Sen. Frank Lautenberg's proposed ban on high-capacity magazines, which lapsed in 2004.
Americans who follow the gun-control debate have stopped expecting change in the wake of events like today's shooting for the simple reason of precedent: If Aurora, Oak Creek, Tuscon and Columbine haven't changed the politics of gun control, why should we believe the tragedy in Newtown will have a different outcome?
The NRA's most powerful weapon against gun control isn't postcard campaigns, primary battles or political advertising. It's silence. So long as we assume gun control is impossible, we don't talk about gun control. So long as we don't talk about gun control, gun control is impossible.
The NRA fights any attempts to control firearms, no matter how common-sensical, because their greatest fear is public debate over any controls over guns. Once we begin discussing whether it's reasonable for civilians to be able to buy unlimited amounts of ammunition without a background check, we've moved gun control from the realm of the unthinkable into the possible.
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It sounds reasonable and compassionate when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie responded to the Aurora shootings by demanding, "This is just not the appropriate time to be grandstanding about gun laws. Can we at least get through the initial grief and tragedy for these families?"
Christie, and my friends on Facebook who demand we mourn apolitically, have the best of intentions, but they are missing a simple truth. Moments like today's tragedy in Newtown remind us that the U.S. suffers from an epidemic of gun violence, a pattern that does not exist in other highly developed nations.
Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity. There was less popular interest in gun control, as measured by Google searches, after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and the Aurora killings than after Virginia Tech.
There were almost no spikes of popular interest in gun control after "smaller" mass shootings, like that in Oak Creek. To have any chance of combating the NRA's campaign of silence, gun control groups have to seize moments of media attention to push for change.
When the story about the Newtown shooter comes out, it is likely that we will hear about a disturbed and deranged shooter and about "senseless violence," as if to distinguish it from more sensible gun violence. This language turns mass shootings into natural disasters, as unpredictable and preventable as hurricanes and tornados.
Human behavior is unpredictable, but gun violence is not. In Chengping, Henan, China today, a deranged man slashed 22 schoolchildren with a knife. None died. School shootings in America are a product both of mad people and bad laws.
As we learn more about the young children killed in Newtown today, we will hear calls not to "politicize" their deaths. I urge you to ignore those calls. There is no better way to mourn these senseless deaths than to demand we change our laws and our culture so that the killing of innocent children truly becomes unthinkable.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ethan Zuckerman.
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Connecticut State Police officers walk out of St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church after the Newtown church received a threat December 16.
Firefighters attach black bunting to a fire truck as a memorial at the fire station down the street from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Saturday, December 15.
Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II talks to the media about the elementary school shooting during a press conference at Treadwell Memorial Park on December 15.
Zulma Sein is hugged by a family member outside of the entrance to the Sandy Hook School on Saturday.
Police officers keep guard at the entrance to the street leading to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Saturday, December 15.
Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance addresses the press on December 15.
Police officers stand at the entrance to the street leading to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 15.
Corinne McLaughlin, a student at the University of Hartford, bows her head during a candlelight vigil at Hartford, Connecticut's Bushnell Park on Friday, December 14, honoring the students and teachers who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in nearby Newtown earlier in the day.
Distraught people leave the fire station after hearing news of their loved ones from officials on Friday.
Emergency workers stand in front of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
A child and her mother leave a staging area outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14.
Members of the media converge on December 14 in front of an apartment at 1313 Grand Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. The apartment is believed to be connected to the Connecticut elementary school shooting.
Faisal Ali, right, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, joins other people outside the White House on December 14 to participate in a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance, center, briefs the media on the elementary school shootings during a press conference at Treadwell Memorial Park on December 14 in Newtown.
People weep and embrace near Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14.
A woman leans on a man as she weeps near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
President Barack Obama wipes a tear as he speaks about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School during a press briefing at the White House on December 14.
A woman weeps near the site of a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
A woman weeps near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
People comfort each other near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
A man takes in the scene near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
A young girl is given a blanket after being evacuated from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
State police personnel lead children from the school.
Children wait outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after the shooting.
A boy weeps at Reed Intermediate School after getting news of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
FBI SWAT team members walk along Dickinson Drive near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
An aerial view of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14.
Connecticut State Troopers arrive on the scene outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
A Connecticut State Police officer runs with a shotgun at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on December 14.
Police patrol the streets around Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
People try to deal with the shock of the attack outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
Connecticut State Police secure the scene of the shooting on December 14.
People embrace outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
A man escorts his son away from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
People take in the news outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
People line up to enter Newtown Methodist Church near the the scene of the shooting on December 14.
A woman speaks with a Connecticut state trooper outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
The streets around Sandy Hook Elementary are packed with first responders and other vehicles.
A view of the scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School after the shooting.
A young boy is comforted outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
People embrace each other on December 14.
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