Soul searching and knee-jerk responses won’t prevent gun massacres
Certainly, the blogosphere was immediately full of accusations that the American right had created a climate of hatred where this could happen. Sarah Palin, in particular, has been fingered. Congresswoman Giffords had been one of 20 names on a “hit list” issued by Palin, complete with graphics of a rifle-like telescopic sight.
Palin meant, of course, nothing more than that Giffords was to be targeted by voters in the mid-term elections but the congresswoman herself had warned of the danger posed by the website.
A more moderate, less emotional discourse is required for sure. Consider this statement from a political rally in Philadelphia in 2008: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl.” No, it wasn’t some Tea Party crazy but none other than Barack Obama on the campaign trail. It cuts both ways.
Even those not prepared to claim political rhetoric pulls triggers, however, have been demanding urgent action to tackle the United States’ gun culture and not all of them could be accused of sneering anti-Americanism.
The term “gun culture” first emerged in an article in 1970 bemoaning America’s love of the gun. It has since been embraced by both sides. The difficulty with the term is that it fetishises the gun. The notion of gun culture bestows magical powers on guns to either transform people into killers or to pacify an entire nation. In truth, there is a great deal of mythology on both sides of the debate. Before communism was deemed a threat, most ordinary Europeans — or European men, at least — kept firearms just as Americans did.
Another oft-repeated myth is that the sole purpose of a gun is to kill people. This is simply not true. There are between 100 million and 140 million guns in the United States, a third of them handguns but well over 99% of them have never been used in any crime. Why a 22-year-old with mental health problems should be allowed to buy a Glock 19 handgun is not an unreasonable question, of course, but the anti-gun lobby tends to ignore other factors known to be associated with crime, such as poverty — although Loughner himself had a middle-class upbringing. True, murders specifically from firearms are bound to go up where they are readily available, but may well be nothing more than a substitute for the stabbings, poisonings and batterings that might otherwise occur.
So, let us be clear: Jared Lee Loughner — not civilisation, not the local community, not video games, not legal laxity — murdered six people in cold blood, including a nine-year-old girl. It was an evil act.
But gun massacres are not confined to the US. Have we forgotten the horrific tragedy in southwest Germany in March 2009, where 15 people died at the hands of 17-year-old gunman Tim Kretschmer, before he died in a shootout with police?
Two responses emerged. The first, rather knee-jerk response was to ask why the German authorities don’t control the estimated 10 million legally held guns. The second was a call for more psychological risk-profiling in order to spot potential killers. Yet the shootings demonstrated the pointlessness of both responses.
First, Germany has some of the most onerous gun controls of any country in the world. A total ban on gun ownership would be an option but anyone with a little bit of time and planning could make a weapon capable of killing many more people. The blunt truth, on both sides of the Atlantic, is that no law can prevent a shooting spree. Loughner sounds like a bit of an oddball but Tim Kretschmer fitted none of the existing profiles and appears to have been entirely unremarkable.
Perhaps the US massacres just stick in the mind more because all of us can understand what the eyewitnesses are saying. On April 16, 2007, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho walked into the lecture rooms of Virginia Tech with a gun and opened fire. He shot 32 people dead and wounded 25 others. But we will never really know why Seung-Hui decided to transform himself into a mass murderer. The emotional note he left behind denounced “rich kids”, “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans” — all rather different from Loughner’s preoccupying fantasies about an overbearing government.
Yes, we often hear that such-and-such was “a loner” but if that were cause enough, we would be living in a real-life horror movie rather than a world where six people being killed dominates the world’s headlines precisely because, mercifully, such events are very rare. Likewise, self-loathing has been around for a long time. There have always been individuals who have acted on feelings of disgust for themselves and for others. Sadly, the search for answers often turns into an advocacy free-for-all. Those who loathe violent computer games assert that this latest massacre may be the action of a deranged young man who was addicted to blowing away targets on-screen or online. Some point to the other usual media suspects — violent films and TV shows — and claim that they can incite acts of violence. And others blame Sarah Palin.
ISN’T the reality that someone who is not put off by the prospect of a life sentence or the death sentence for firing hot metal into other human beings is hardly likely to be dissuaded by the idea of a few years’ imprisonment for merely carrying a weapon, legal or otherwise?
Banning guns won’t stop such attacks from happening. If someone is truly determined to kill other people there are easier ways. Besides, evidence shows gun bans could be counterproductive. Estimates of gun-related crimes in which the weapons involved are legally owned are around 1%-2% and once unemployment rate, population density and public spending are accounted for, the crime rate stays more or less flat with increasing numbers of permits.
There is no simple link between the availability of guns and homicide. Societies with wide ownership of guns like Norway have lower homicide rates than Ireland. Russia has stiff firearms laws but it also has five times the murder rate of the US. What does seem to be a major factor behind crime is a previous record and illicit drug use. The hindsight demands that something more should have been done to prevent the Tucson massacre from unfolding reveals much about today’s precautionary mindset. We seem to believe that every unfortunate incident can and, therefore, should be stopped, if only we were more willing to introduce tougher security measures. However, some things, sadly, cannot be prevented. We must simply trust that individuals who carry out massacres are few and far between.
A mature society can accept the fact that, occasionally, human beings do very destructive things. A confident society does not have to search for special meaning in every act of humans being beastly.
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