So I am sat here writing this while listening to the Celtic vs Zenit St Petersburg game. Honestly I only anticipated writing one thing today. The actions of yet another gunman in America are occupying my thoughts. Yesterday evening (UK time) news broke of a shooting taking place at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida . Information wasn't clear on how many were injured initially, we just knew there were injuries. Images flashed on the news of wounded students escaping, lines of school children filing out of the building, hands on heads, SWAT teams standing guard. Harrowing shot after harrowing shot played out on the news cycle. We were all left to dwell on a horrific attack by a man with a firearm in the US.
The reality is that this really shouldn't be as surprising or shocking as it is. This was the fifth incident where a gun was discharged and someone was killed or injured on a campus in the US since the first of January 2018. If that's not bad enough this was the 18th incident this year of a gun being discharged on campus. Just in case you're wondering that's an average of three gun related incidents a week in American schools. This is hardly a rare occurrence but it's truly alarming that it's such a regular occurrence. Schools are meant to be a place of learning. Of safety. Somewhere where the impending realities of adult life don't quite encroach. The last bastion of innocence. The reality is in the good old US of A that situations like these make us realise how that probably isn't the case.
After the shooting there was the classic useless platitudes of thoughts and prayers, lead by the chief tangerine tweeting toddler Donald Trump. Grand. Brilliant. But, and here's a thought, why not actually do something about the alarming regularity with which shootings in the US happen? Why not get serious on this issue? How about actually introducing a ban on fire arms? Or limit their availability and accessibility? Why not get tough on Gun Control?
Well here's the thing, it's kind of a two fold problem. The first is quite nicely underlined by a writer for Jimmy Kimmel called Bess Kalb. As more and more social media posts came from the American political sphere she started singling people out and highlighting the amount of money they received from the NRA. Ronna McDaniel, chairwomen of the GOP, received more than $17'000'000 from the NRA, yet tweets about how she was praying for those who were affected by the shooting. Congressman Ken Buck tweeted how he was "devastated", but had taken $800'554 from the NRA. As for Florida Governor Marco Rubio he took $3'303'355 from the NRA. The fact is while the NRA, and pro-gun lobbyists as a whole, have as much power as they do to influence policy via funding political campaigns then NOTHING will ever change. Now while you don't need the support of the NRA to get elected (Obama certainly didn't) it definitely helps. The NRA's backing means that swathes of their membership will vote for their preferred candidate, thus meaning that to stand against the NRA and pro-gun lobbies is to potentially give yourself an up hill struggle come election time. It brings to the forefront a very worrying trend in American Politics (although I admit this is almost certainly prevalent in other nations political set-ups, but maybe with not such as visible and regularly occurring issue), the obsession to gain or protect the power and control a party has at all costs. Even for the most savvy political operator it is a catch 22 of pragmatism vs idealism. Do you stand by the principles that you wish to be measured by during your election campaign but inevitably make your life more difficult by spurning such a powerful backer as the gun lobbies , or do you sell your soul to the devil to have a realistic shot at power?
Now the fact is despite this backing from the NRA and the hypocrisy displayed by those who accept the funding yet offer condolences, this is as much a matter of perception, and arguably indoctrination, as it is power-broking and pulling strings. The NRA portray themselves as the defenders of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. This in itself is dangerous, but to understand why you have to look at how the Second Amendment is viewed by the American public. It's viewed by most Americans as granting them their constitutional right to posses a firearm, giving them a guarantee of safety and protection from those who would look to threaten them and their families. A safeguard of their own personal freedom. A deterrent against government oppression. The fact is though in the context of current times this is not entirely accurate. When the Second Amendment was instigated in 1791 the United States of America was still in it's infancy, almost a toddler in terms of nation states. In the North still lay a realistic threat of falling back under the yoke of British Imperialism. Their own government was young and still not necessarily as well thought of as it could be. The need to protect ones self from the surrounding threats of oppression were realistic. However we no longer live in those times. The likelihood of the British invading America is non-existent. The nations and groups with which they find themselves in conflict now are thousands of miles away and either rely on small cells blending in with everyday people to instigate attacks via bomb, gun or other means, or have access to (or in the case of North Korea hope to) nuclear weapons, neither of which can be stopped by a bullet, or at least not in any meaningful way. The fact is that their government has openly been exposed for monitoring them and a sense of an oppressive divide has fallen across the States, yet the people do not rise up. The reality is a hand gun, a rifle, an uzi doesn't stand a chance against a tank or an airstrike. Yet this bullheaded belligerence and the indoctrination that a gun is the key to personal freedom will forever be a stumbling block in any attempt to convince the public that gun control is required.
And so it brings me to this thought, what will it actually take to stop this? How, when the deck is so stacked against it, do you go about tackling the issue of gun control and shootings in the US? While it is not impossible, a fundamental shift has to happen within the American publics perception. Allow me to leave you with this thought. After the Vegas shooting I found myself in discussion with someone who argued that a gun is a tool, and ultimately a tool only has as much destructive potential as the person who possess it. My counter is simply this, a spoon is also a tool but you never hear people discussing the banning and control of spoons. If a gun is a tool rather than a weapon then it is a tool crafted with one purpose in mind. Destruction and death. This is why sooner or later America will have to wake up to the reality of the situation. Regardless of what intentions, good or evil, may be behind the use of such a tool the fact of the matter is no citizen should be able to readily gain access to an item that grants them a level of control over life and death.
Jake
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