Mass shootings are such a commonplace now that you may only have a dim recollection of the one that took place just three months ago in Paris, at a club called the Bataclan, during an Eagles of Death Metal show on November 13 of last year.
On Tuesday, the band returned to Paris to play its first show there since the night of the massacre. CNN reported that the Olympia Theater (the Bataclan is still closed) was "packed with some 2,800 fans, including 900 survivors and relatives of those killed at the Bataclan."
A NY Times review called it "surprisingly electrifying rock ’n’ roll," as well as "an opportunity for some of those present when the attack occurred to try to exorcise a bit of the darkness of that experience. And perhaps aware of how eager many people were to throw off the sadness, Mr. Hughes did not dwell on what happened. He asked for a moment of silence, and after 10 seconds, the music began."
If anything marred the return of EoDM to France it was this interview with French television in advance of the show, in which Jesse Hughes, when asked about gun control, took a fairly passionate position against it:
“Did your French gun control stop a single fucking person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms. I know people will disagree with me, but it just seems like God made men and women, and that night guns made them equal. And I hate it that it’s that way. I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe that until nobody has guns everybody has to have them.“
It's easy to be bummed out by these remarks. The will to impose a narrative on events like this is strong, and the desire for Hughes to come out in favor of peace, love, and understanding runs deep—especially after seeing the naked emotion with which he described the attack in his initial interview with Vice.
Nonetheless, the pro-gun stance is utterly in keeping with Hughes's ideological history.
As depicted in the documentary The Redemption of the Devil and this excellent piece by Jen Yamato, Hughes is a devout Christian member of the NRA who wants Donald Trump to be president and defines the left as "anyone who does not love Ronald Reagan and does not accept without a doubt the Second Amendment." (He is apparently also a birther, a speed enthusiast, loves George W. Bush, and thinks that the theory of evolution can more or less be reduced to “magical talking monkeys.”)
Though it's unclear how much of this persona is showbiz and how much is conviction, it's plain that Hughes is eager to set himself apart from the standard issue indifferent-to-right-on end of the pop musician spectrum. Being the right-wingiest redneck gun nut in indie rock is not, let's face it, the tallest order of all time.
Yamato described a scene from the film:
“Everything’s fucked. Honestly, if we lost guns in America it would be the linchpin of disaster, it really would,” he declares. NRA booklets litter his coffee table. Later, Hughes and another pal stand outside his garage in the daylight, shooting at a Chinese flag. Their right to bear arms in hipster-fied Atwater Village is merely “good old-fashioned American fun,” Hughes insists. “Let’s put another round into China,” he says, hoisting his rifle into the air. But Hughes’s commitment to the Second Amendment is fundamentally rooted in a traditional Constitutional basis. “I’ll do anything, including give up my own life, to protect my liberty. I’m willing to do anything for freedom,” Hughes says.
The more I think about the disjunction between what I wanted to hear Hughes say and think about Paris and what he actually did say and think about it—which is basically to say the difference between who I expected him to be and who he is—the more I'm struck by an uncomfortable thought:
Despite my distaste for guns—to say nothing of all religious faith, redneck chic, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and above all Ronald fucking Reagan (I like Eagles of Death Metal though, and, you know, who doesn't enjoy a little speed now and then?)—and despite my certainty that increased gun control is long overdue in America, I also can't really find a means to dispute the case Hughes asserts in his TV interview.
Though stringent gun control may have made it somewhat more difficult for the forces of the so-called Islamic State (a term that insults both Islam and statehood) to obtain the firearms and hand grenades they used to kill 89 people at the Bataclan, it clearly didn't prevent them from doing so. (To be fair, I also don't believe the presence of a handgun or two in the Parisian audience that night would have made any major difference.)
This is not to say I draw the same conclusion that Hughes does, only to say that his experience makes it harder to laugh off or otherwise dismiss the need he feels to remain armed. A lot of what we laughingly call the debate over gun control is 100% theoretical on both sides. Hughes's position is grounded in grisly experience, and that matters.
Since I first heard about the massacre, I haven't gone more than a few days without imagining what it must have been like to be on that stage when the shots started to ring out. I can't imagine it, but I can't help imagining it, and the result is that in my own could-anything-matter-less way, I respectfully defer to Jesse Hughes's response.
I get why he thinks everyone should have guns. I disagree, but I get it.
The accounts I've heard from friends and family who've traveled to Paris in the past three months—check out the end of Shana Cleveland's fantastic piece here—make it sound like a military junta has occupied the city. They also say that French people don't seem to mind very much, presumably because French people prefer a domestic police state to the alternative for reasons that should be obvious.
Does this obviate the need for the French to get real about their fathomless cultural bigotry or reflective about the consequences of their government's colonial/imperial actions in Africa and Asia? No.
Does it not fly in the face of liberté, égalité, AND fraternité? Mais, si! Bien sûr! All powerful nations have disgraceful histories.
But it's not hard to understand why it might make some of them feel better. For a while.
