Gun-toting America

“Shoot first, ask questions later” is a derogatory expression that reflects the fact that Americans are guaranteed the right to ‘bear arms’. Drafted as the Second Amendment of a constitution drafted in 1789, it was intended to ensure that slave-owners could legally shoot runaway slaves.

The American Rifle Association, founded in 1871, a few years after the end of the Civil War, has made certain that Americans continue to believe that right applies to modern society. To achieve this, they donate huge amounts of money to each individual member of Congress, both representatives and senators.

There have been 30 mass shootings –defined as more than four people being killed –in the first month and a half of this year. In 2017, there were a total of 346, many of which occurred in schools. The most horrific school shooting happened in 2012, in an elementary school in the small town of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. That tragedy brought tears to President Obama’s eyes, however he failed to pressure Congress to pass stricter gun control laws. Connecticut senator Chris Murphy stood up in the chamber just recently to state forcefully that the United States is the only country in the world where these things are permitted to happen.

The one good thing to come out of the media’s relentless — and unique — negative attitude toward the current president is that it is daring to say what 94% of Americans think: that military style weapons that shoot many rounds a second must be banned from civilian life. A few newscasters are daring to repeat Senator Murphy’s forceful declaration that the US is the only country in the world where people are allowed to walk around with guns. However pro-gun personalities on news shows still go unchallenged, as the leader of the House of Representatives declares that depriving Americans of their ‘constitutionally protected’ right to carry a gun is not the solution!

While the President went on TV to say that America’s children should not be afraid because they will never be alone, governors and mayors can only repeat like a mantra that ‘we are going to figure this thing out’, which means they are going to try to square the circle: protect citizens from gun violence while protecting the gun industry, in return for the phenomenal sums contributed to their election campaigns by the NRA. The organization does not bill itself as a lobby, but as a ‘membership organization’, inviting all gun owners to join and receive, at poll time, the NRA’s grade for their candidates according to how supportive they are of guns in society. The latest figures reveal that there are between 270 and 310 million guns in the US for its roughly 320 million inhabitants.

The recent school massacre in Florida, that left 17 dead and scores injured, provoked the usual empty expressions of concerns from U.S. politicians, most of whom receive millions of dollars in donations from the National Rifle Association. Emma Gonzalez, a surviving student, expressed the feeling of millions of people around the country who don’t feel represented by their elected officials.

In her speech to her fellow students, their parents and school officials, Emma said, “Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and the President can do is sending thoughts and prayers; then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.”

“Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not.” The Second Amendment to the Constitution states: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Although opponents to gun control insist in the last part of that statement, they usually neglect to consider the first part, which states that “a well-regulated militia” as the holder of that entitlement.

The facility to buy guns in the U.S. surprises almost everybody coming from another culture. “In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.” While politicians in the U.S. continue to enact laws that make it easier for anybody to buy guns, even the mentally ill, other countries enact tougher laws that make these events less possible. As Emma says, “Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur and after the massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn’t had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here in America the people are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience.”

“If the President wants to come up to say that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling the people how nothing is going to be done about it, one should ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association….If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.”

In the 2016 election, the NRA spent over $31 million in the last presidential race. Presidential candidates, however, aren’t the only ones who benefit from the NRA’s donations. Representatives from both parties, although mostly from the Republican Party, receive tens of millions of dollars from the NRA. They will never bite the hand the feeds them!

In February of 2017, one year ago, President Trump and American lawmakers repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses. Thus, they made it easier for tragedies to occur.

Emma Gonzalez, a surviving student from the recent shooting in the United States, ended her speech saying, in a voice almost trembling with anger, “The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And we kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS. Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That we kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS. If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congressperson. Give them a piece of your mind.”

Emma and her fellow students showed to have more courage than a meretricious Congress.

Finally, how to replace ‘background checks’ for gun purchasers with a law that forbids civilians to carry a weapon in public, when the President’s base wants to “take back” their country to the time the second amendment was drafted. Currently, this involves informal militias who play war games and practice shooting in the woods on weekends, their wives watching over the food. The America they would recreate would differ in one important respect from that of colonial times: it would have a thousand military bases around the world — and they are ok with that. On the other hand, the FBI received several tips about erratic behavior on the part of the future killer, but did nothing, probably because there are so many Americans going off the deep end…..

That was from two articles written separately by Dr. Cesar Chelala who is an international public health consultant and Deena Stryker, an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years.

EA/ME