Chekhov’s gun control and Ted Cruz’s ‘ridiculous theater’

If you say in the first chapter that there are 393 million guns in a country, then in that country there will be a continuous miserable drumbeat of those guns going off.

If you say in the first chapter that the Republicans in Congress are indifferent to this, that they are going to draw absurd analogies to cars and call any desire for gun control “theater,” then they will continue going off.

If you say at the beginning that the National Rifle Association exists, even if you specify in the stage directions that it squanders millions of dollars on unrelated yacht experiences, guns will continue going off.

If you say in the first chapter that no matter how often they go off and how many people are hurt or killed by them, Republicans in Congress will never even make an attempt to pass gun control of any kind, then in the second or third chapter, they will continue going off.

If you say in the first chapter that there are other countries where this does not regularly happen, everyone will admit that is true while changing nothing.

If you say, gun control might prevent this from happening every day, why don’t we try that, and the audience rises to its feet and shouts for it, they will still go off.

If you announce at the beginning of the play that this time gun control is most certainly coming, at the end of the play the characters will still be sitting there waiting for gun control.

But if you say in the first chapter that the gun show loophole closed, and there was a three-day waiting period, and the play started before the three days ended, there might not be a gun on the wall at all. Even if you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle — but it is in a safe, not on the wall, and it is finger-print-locked, and it doesn’t have a bump stock, and it was not purchased through some unfixed exception — then, at last, it might not go off.

But then the play would not be a tragedy.

Read more: