In 1800<\/a>, the urban population of the United States was 6%; 94% was rural. According to the 2010 census<\/a>, 81% of Americans live in urban areas; only 19% in rural areas.<\/p>\n

When I was growing up in the 1960s, 60%<\/a> of the population lived in urban areas. What did I know about the Second Amendment? Virtually nothing. I\u2019m sure that I read it as we studied our constitution, but it was an outlier, having virtually nothing to do with my life or the rights that I wanted to protect. Guns were something that we saw in westerns or World War II movies. I knew of the N.R.A., but only because their \u201cseal of approval\u201d was on some of the paraphernalia that we used at summer camp for very tepid riflery shooting.<\/p>\n

As the statistics above show, I was growing up at a time when America was becoming more and more urbanized. One of the challenges that our country faced was how we as a society could better adapt to more condensed living. Violence in our streets was becoming more of an issue, particularly in those inner-city neighborhoods with high levels of minorities who were poor. Riots broke out in Harlem in 1964, in Los Angeles (Watts) in 1965, and scores of other major cities by 1968.<\/p>\n

While many of us believed that better policing would be helpful, the main lessons to be learned was that we were a racially divided nation and poverty was far more endemic among those with darker skin. \u00a0The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, was released almost fifty years ago to this very day. Among its recommendations<\/a> were:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue.<\/p>\n

Providing employment for the swelling Negro ghetto population will require …opening suburban residential areas to Negroes and encouraging them to move closer to industrial centers…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are suggestions of reason, of compassion, of common sense. They reflect a vision of America in which non-violent steps are taken to address the existing problems of violence. Nowhere<\/a> in the Kerner Report is the Second Amendment mentioned. That, truly, would have been an outlier.<\/p>\n

Fifty years later, we are hearing from more social observers that as a country, we have regressed over those fifty years. Respect for our government, mainstream media, and many other institutions has eroded. Kurt Anderson has written about this in Fantasyland<\/a>, and more recently Robert Reich in his just-released The Common Good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t need the words of intellectuals to tell us what has happened. That portion of American people who voted in our last presidential election spoke loudly when they almost gave a popular majority to the least intellectual president in this country\u2019s history. The social and economic programs for minorities that the Kerner Commission suggested have been replaced by venom and gun-right rhetoric coming from many disenfranchised non-minority members of our society.<\/p>\n

And then came 2018 St. Valentine\u2019s Massacre at Marjory Douglas Stoneman in Parkland, FL. Yes, it was not an isolated incident. It followed a series of horrific mass murders by guns, mostly with automatic weapons. But what was different was the chorus of voices, mostly student voices, that came to the fore. They spoke of reason and compassion. Many spoke of a world in which gun rights are superfluous to the major tasks of learning and living.<\/p>\n

It is worthwhile to hear some of the most cogent of those voices. Here is Delaney Tarr<\/strong>:<\/p>\n