In what has become a depressingly normal affair, a deranged individual with a rifle has delivered yet another sacrifice to what writer Gary Mills refers to as ‘Our Moloch’, a reference to the old testament god to whom children were offered as tribute. An indeed, 17 children lie dead today, because one man with known mental health problems was allowed access to a device for which the singular purpose is to extinguish life. The blood of the fallen at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High cries out for justice and therefore a solution to this uniquely American malaise, as do their surviving classmates who bore witness to the horror.
Regrettably, the historical trend
to the present day shows no sign of bucking. Because as my erstwhile colleague pointed
out, the offer of genuine progress is supplanted by utterly useless meaningless,
and pathetic platitudes. ‘Thoughts and prayers’. I have spoken before of my disgust of this, in
that it reeks of insincerity, but also because its
proclamation can be doled out like a condolence card therefore avoiding having
to do anything productive. Think of the BBC series the Thick of it, in light of bad news, one civil servant asks another
to send a ‘cry-mail’ to the family of someone who has died due to the
incompetence of the government department itself; “we give a toss, sorry for
your loss.” That in a nutshell is what thoughts and prayers actually
constitute.
Alternatively, another response by those of who love guns too much
is that now is not the time to talk about this. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
is one such character, which naturally means that no time is ready
to talk. Because after the inevitable cool down in the coming weeks, the issue
will conveniently drop off the agenda, until the next time, upon which Paul
Ryan and his bunch of spineless acolytes will repeat what they said yesterday. Perhaps
though I am being disingenuous, some members the republican party have offered
a solution of sorts. One proposition is to arm
teachers in all schools, with the belief that they could stop an
assailant on a killing spree.
The problem of this of course is
that there is every risk that a teacher might snap and kill one or more of his
or her pupils with the loaded gun under their desk. The second is that
Americans arguably believe that they still live in the wild west, and that a
gunfight is a simple affair, where the good guy will triumph every time. And
yet a gun battle in the enclosed space of a classroom could easily kill
children cowering under their desks in terror. Indeed, the teacher has a
greater chance of missing a target than hitting it. Police statistics from 2006
found that over a series of
shootings against suspects, New York Police officers only hit their target 28.3%
of the time. A year earlier it was 17.4%. If trained law enforcement
officers only achieve at best just over a quarter of hits to misses, then what
could happen with even trained teachers? We can’t yet know because no information
really exists on the hit to miss ratio of teachers versus school shooters as
armed teachers aren’t common, whereas mass shootings are.
A second related point I would like to pose, is the price of gun ownership, and thus freedom in
many gun owners eyes, that children would have to attend militarised schools, in
lieu of them being murdered? As the aforementioned Gary Mills established,
slaughter of children appears acceptable when the alternative is dictatorship. But is it really a compromise to turn schools
into quasi military installations? This is to me an impinging on freedom of
others by those who own guns. Not the active freedom of being able to do
something, but the freedom of not having to do something, for instance, not
being murdered. One
person’s freedom should, to my mind, end when it negatively impacts the freedom
of another. And the laws and norms which give rise to these atrocities are a
perfect example of this. The vast majority of the guns used in various recently
gun massacres were acquired entirely legally, per constitutional and
legislative law, which leads to the consequence of violating others’ right to life.
The find some way of confronting
this, the law will have to change, and this brings me to a second possible
solution. One of the only ways to bring down the number of gun deaths is to
pass legislation that restricts access to guns. In some sense, it is simple as
that. There are the usual complaints that it would be confirmation of a tyrannical
government coming for people’s last line of defence, or that criminals will
still have access to guns and kill people, or that people should look at Nazi
Germany or Mexico as an example of where gun controls where implemented. (Which
I might add, in regards to the former, did not apply to German citizens). They happily
ignore two countries who suffered mass shootings and took quick action, the UK
and Australia, whose gun deaths today even adjusted to population size are
dwarfed by the US. They also forget the rest of Western Europe and most of Asia
too.
The problem with this attitude is
that it bleeds into legislation. Simply put, people vote for politicians who
will campaign against plans to tighten restrictions. The way to counter this is
for the democratic party to take over both Houses of Congress, followed by the
presidency in two years-time. If they can achieve this then step one will have been
achieved. I say ‘step one’ because comprehensively curing this malady will likely
take a long, long time.
Coupled with measures to restrict
access to guns and certain modifications, comprehensive educational and healthcare
reform is fundamental. The latter because someone mentally ill committed this
act as did his murderous forebears in their sprees. The former because as the
twice mentioned Gary Mills argues, this approach to gun deaths is met with a
stunning anti-intellectualism. Well-funded and well-rounded education grounded in
rationality to create informed and intelligent citizens of the republic would
be a positive step.
But I don’t think this can be
achieved. I do not believe the democrats have the courage to push through
legislation that could cost them seats in the future, which would prevent them from
making any positive change, and could be rolled back by republicans anyway.
They could propose massive increases in education spending before rolling out
any bills related to firearms. But this would mean raising taxes and also rolling back military
spending, which democrats themselves are reluctant to do. Indeed many voted for the $165 billion
increase in defence spending.
Republicans will of course do
nothing as we have discussed. Compounded by their backing of and by the NRA. Which
my colleague Jake has noted, provides
millions of dollars to republican candidates for office. Getting any of them
who are currently on board is a bluntly, a dead end. Further, there is no guarantee
that Trump will be defeated in 2020, so even if democrats gain the House of
Representatives and the Senate, any bills that are of a progressive bent in
sharp contrast to Trump’s current ideology will be dead-on-arrival.
In closing, nothing will change
unless the system drastically changes. But as demonstrated, the US is paralysed
in a feedback loop in which short term solutions are favoured over the long
term. The result is that long-term solutions being instantly discredited
because of the time-frame not helping them immediately. This inherently precludes
anything that might genuinely provide a cure to some societal ills. But they
are stuck in a trap that they cannot get out of, with politicians who mirror these
attitudes and thus only entrench it further.
Simon
Twitter: (@Fraser91A)
(This has been edited to correct grammar and syntax)
(This has been edited to correct grammar and syntax)
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