‘Merchants of Death’ still hold sway
Fifty years ago, 7 June 1968, I walked down the main street of a small central California valley town called Merced — population 60,000 — with several former senator Robert F Kennedy supporters, collecting signatures to put controls on the manufacture, distribution and ownership of guns throughout the USA.
It was a relatively new effort on our part since the issue of gun control was not a major issue across the US in 1968. This effort on our part resulted from the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in LA on the 5th of June, 1968 by a lone gun man with a revolver.
For the most part we were not welcome by the local population. We were seen as ‘Pinkos’ or anti-second amendment rights.
We gathered approximately 75 signatures and contacted the local and state media and several politicians for coverage and assistance on our efforts.
None was forthcoming. What we did not realise at the time was that the arms manufacturers, ‘The merchants of death’, across the nation and the National Rifle Association, founded in New York in 1871, were as powerful as they actually were at that time.
We had not listened to Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s (a former five-star general.) farewell speech to the American nation in January 1961 when he warned about “the ever-growing military industrial complex”.
We did not realise that out of the 435 congressional districts in the US, approximately 430 of those districts were significantly dependent on the presence of powerful military installations, arms manufacturers and so called “sports hunting” organisations.
With the result that a large majority of members of the House of Representatives and all of the US senators were dependent on votes from those heavily involved in the manufacture, sale and use of arms.
What we did not further realise was that when those warehouses were filled with weaponry of all kinds they had to be emptied so that US employment would not be negatively impacted and the arms manufacturers’ profits would grow or stay stable by keeping the warehouses full. Thus the need to sell weapons and military hardware to other countries, including third world countries.
It is my understanding that the Irish Government recently increased the budget of our armed forces by, as I understand it, €4m a year bringing the total amount to approximately €905m or 5% of GDP.
Today, 2.2% of the world’s total GDP is spent on military expenditure —$1.68tn a year — while worldwide a significant number of babies will not see their second birthday due to malnutrition or disease. While the US spends $611bn a year on armaments, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2017 Fact Sheet for 2016, Ireland, a “neutral country”, spends close to €1bn.
Wars, acts of terrorism, and lone killers will not cease until such time as we heed Eisenhower’s warning about the “military industrial complex.”
