Kristi Noem, Killing Dogs, and the Right's Selective Gun Violence Outrage

They say every dog has its day…

There’s been a rare bipartisan outpouring of outrage in response to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s revelations in a forthcoming book, of her shooting and killing a 14-month old hunting dog: an act that she not only deemed innocuous enough to include, but one she actually manages to use as an example of her willing to do “unpleasant jobs.” In the terrifying world inside her head, Noem (a speculated Trump VP candidate) sees this as a noble act, something to engender kudos and hat tips from her rank-and-file. This isn’t surprising coming from someone who is in lock step with the NRA, both loudly supportive of it and generous funded by it.

As I gratefully watched Conservatives stepping outside of the usual lines of political tribalism to condemn Noem’s defiant, almost proud brutality against a defenseless animal—I couldn’t help but wonder why so many of them seem unable to be as emotionally burdened by the gun-related killings of so many innocent sentient human beings.

The cognitive dissonance required to rightly rail against the assassination of a puppy, while simultaneously ignoring or explaining away the nearly daily mass shootings of mothers, spouses, brothers, children, and best friends here is a sick marvel to behold. In this case, far fewer Conservatives are rushing to blame the dog or to rationalize the reasons Noem was just defending herself or suffering from mental illness or somehow not culpable for her actions.

The sad irony, is that partisan Right media and Republican rhetoric have enabled their base to dehumanize another person to the point that their deaths resonate less than that of an animal.

Don’t get me wrong: I'm glad so many Republicans are rightly outraged by someone shooting a perfectly healthy dog. They should be. That gives me some small hope for our collective humanity in times when it is hard to come by.

Now, if they only could find the same visceral response to someone shooting
perfectly healthy school children, mall shoppers, worshippers, parade attendees, factory workers, and people just walking down the street.

Imagine the nation we could have.

Imagine how much safer we could be, how different our daily news might become, how many people’s lives would not be cut so tragically short.

It’s beautiful aspiration to become a place where killing with guns is universally grieved; to live in a nation where one of the greatest threats to young people is not our own collective apathy.

We could have such a place to call home.

We don’t have to live with this kind of sickeningly selective empathy.

We don’t have to live in a nation where an animal’s death is trending news but a dozen people’s murders barely get our attention.

We don’t have to be so inundated with and desensitized by mass shootings that we lose the ability to be appropriately devastated by the wasteful loss of life here.

We can do something to course correct America’s disgraceful legacy of gun violence.

All we need to do is to figure out how to make Conservative’s hearts break for human beings as much as dogs.