Richard Hogan: Why does the USA choose weapons over people’s lives?
Richard Hogan: There have been 27 school shootings so far this year in the USA and we are only half way through 2022.
Yet another mass shooting in an American school. The horror, watching parents outside the school desperately attempting to get in to save their children while armed forces pushed them back, are some of the most disturbing scenes I have ever witnessed on television.
The thought that the police force, designed to protect civilians, would physically restrain parents while their children were being slaughtered inside the school is incomprehensible and utterly disturbing. I can’t actually get my head around the fact that they would protect the perimeter of the school, while a deranged teenager was inside on a murderous rampage. Unfathomable.
It is a uniquely American experience to worry about, when dropping your children to school, that those innocent children could be murdered by a gunman. There have been 27 school shootings so far this year and we are only half way through 2022. That is a staggering statistic but not as staggering as the fact that firearms have overtaken car crashes as the leading cause of death for American children.
Since January 2022, 83 people have been killed or injured in a school shooting in America. What does all this data tell us, that we should protect an amendment to a constitution or perhaps have limits on who can walk around with an AR-15? God forbid, we might actually say, those types of guns shouldn’t be in society. That is an "attack on our freedom."
But what about the freedom of all the children who have died over the years in, Buell Elementary School, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and now Uvalde, Texas. The list of carnage is so long it would take up the entire column to write out all the atrocities that have occurred and taken the lives of innocent American children. The terrible reality remains - not taking action, and politicising the issue is literally killing American children.
Ted Cruz, in his analysis has come to the rather impecunious conclusion that American schools have a door issue - not a wider societal gun issue. He said if the school only had one door and an armed police officer standing at that one door, the gunman would not have gained access to the school.
But there were armed police everywhere, and yet 19 innocent children and 2 teachers are now dead. How is it that an amendment in a constitution becomes sacrosanct and untouchable when all the evidence points to the need for stricter gun laws? Why does the NRA have such a hold over American politicians? Of course, I know everything comes back to money and influence. It is reported that the NRA have thrown nearly 15 million dollars at politicians and other lobbying groups in 2021 with Cruz being the biggest beneficiary in the ten years he has been in the Senate.
In an Irish context, there has been controversy over Irish politicians attending a night out, funded by gambling organisations. But that is about free food and drink and not, like in the NRA's case, receiving direct funding. Of course, if a group contributes a significant amount of money to a particular campaign, it expects a significant amount of support in return. That’s a no-brainer. These benefactors are not handing over their money because they like the politician; they’re handing it over because they know that the politician will protect their interests, which of course is to make money.
I guess children dying in schools is the cost of keeping businesses afloat. To paraphrase our great song writer and one of the great Irish protest songs, "we sacrifice our children to the worn out dreams of yesterday". How can people like Cruz and Abbott sleep at night? Why has there been so little response to every single atrocity that occurs in American schools? Why are politicians twisting themselves inside out to blame the issue on anything but the actual reason?
The answer has to be that politicians are in the pockets of the gun lobby groups. It’s the only explanation. It’s a door issue, it’s a mental health issue, it’s an evil issue, it's everything but a gun issue.
The reality remains that plenty of people have mental health issues, but they don’t have easy access to guns. We have to look at what happened in Scotland in the aftermath of the Dunblane massacre. The Government acted in the interest of its citizens and introduced laws that restricted and prohibited civilians from possessing large calibre handguns, like the ones used in the atrocity. Quite a simple solution. It is only difficult when your paid representatives put the needs of gun groups before the needs of society.
Legislation needs to be drafted to protect innocent children, whose only mistake is to go to school and learn. The twisted carnage that lies in the wake of loose gun laws has to be addressed, or more families will drop their children to school, and never see them again.
