In light of the recent tragedy in Connecticut, I feel the need to do something a bit different. I want to talk about gun control, mainly as a way to reason through for myself why things like this continue to happen.
School shootings are, of course, nothing new. What makes this shooting different is the age of many of the victims - elementary school children. The question is whether this extra layer will have any impact whatsoever on gun control laws in the USA. I suspect the answer is no.
Let me explain that rather pessimistic point of view. It can be summed up in three letters: NRA. A group of individuals, ones with a great deal of money behind them, willing to allow children to die in order to protect their right to carry around a death stick. Of course, they won't admit to this fact. They delude themselves with the fantasy that these tragedies are inevitable, are a product of the arts (film, videogames etc). They look to other scapegoats. They offer other solutions. They say, yes, this is tragic, but it could have been prevented if only one of those five-year-old had been packing.
Of course they aren't really suggesting that toddlers should be carrying assault rifles. Instead they say we should have armed guards at all schools. Brilliant! Fill the schools with more guns. Turn our educational institutions into battlegrounds. That makes much more sense than putting in place legislation intended to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people.
I would like to now link you to a column written in 2007, weeks after the Virginia Tech tragedy, by Sandy Froman, a past president of the NRA. She has also been on the board of the organisation for a very long time. In an ideologically corrupt, sickening diatribe, she argues for the second amendment. Her arguments display a moral pessimism that are the heart of why I don't believe that even this tragedy will have the impact necessary to make long lasting change.
She has three reasons for protecting people's 'right' to bear arms: giving people the ability to defend themselves against a criminal; creating an army out of the American population; and giving the people the power to overthrow their government. The intrinsic ideology and fear-mongering in each of these prevents serious discussion of gun control.
Let's start with protecting oneself against a criminal - if you have a right to own a gun, so do they. I suggest that it is more important to prevent dangerous people from being able to kill with ease than have a reactionary measure that may or may not be of any assistance. Also, although guns aren't prohibitively expensive, by linking one's right to defend oneself with a marketable product, personal safety is turned into a consumer commodity. In a stunning display of capitalistic bastardry, Froman is suggesting that those who are able to afford more powerful, user-friendly guns have more of a right to protect themselves than those who are unable to afford a firearm.
With regards to having the American population as a possible army... I hope the stupidity of this is obvious, but I guess I will have to spell it out. The second amendment was enacted in 1791, when the difference between one gun and another was not huge. When war actually consisted of people shooting at one another until one side fell over. Nowadays armies consist of drones, smartbombs and war fighters, none of which a consumer firearm will do much against.
The final reason Froman gives is that citizens need the ability to overthrow their government. I agree. People need to have the ability to remove a government that no longer represents them. However, it is extremely depressing that the only option Froman gives is a violent insurrection. Her suggestion that people will need guns in order to enact any kind of revolutionary action sidelines all the incredible peaceful activism that occurs. She is irresponsible in promoting violent revolution over peace.
I think that this idea that brute force is the only defence is somehow ingrained in the American (and possibly other) psyches. As tragic as all of these shootings are, they are not going to shake these ideologies, and this is how we can see crime after crime of this magnitude with not even the hint of legislative change.
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