It’s hard to look at what has happened in Newtown, Connecticut with any kind of dispassionate reason. There’s something that affects everyone at the most visceral level, when children and schools – places that are meant to be safe, places that are meant to be protected – are attacked, and young children and their teachers are killed. One needs only look at the way Barack Obama was visibly upset to realise that, once again, this tragedy has shook the US to the core.
Or has it? I mean, there has been an unfortunate regularity to these kinds of events. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, and this blog isn’t really a place for statistics, especially about something like this, but I can recall the massacre at Virginia Tech, and then, of course, there was Columbine. It’s difficult to understand the motivation about the location of these shootings, but perhaps it speaks, in a disturbing way, about the importance that educational institutions play in all our lives that these places are selected for these acts.
I asked a deliberately provocative question before – has this tragedy, this senseless act of violence really affected the US, and also the world? This question came to mind when I was watching the news this morning, and between filling in details of the massacre, the hosts of The Today Show were jovially tucking into Turducken – some kind of weird festive Frankenstein dish. Shortly after that, the posts started cluttering up Facebook – people asking people to repost images of stars that represented the people killed, and even worse, people spamming – already – saying that Twitter would donate money for every retweet.
And of course, everyone seems to dutifully click ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ and then considers their civic duty done. It’s pretty depressing. Thankfully, a few people on Facebook were demanding people getting in touch with their elected representatives, rather than simply clicking. I wonder how many will get in touch? Because it seems to me that we can all get outraged, and ‘up in arms’ (excuse the poor choice of words) about this latest outrage, and then we’ll forget about it, until the next one comes along. Where is the commitment to actual, meaningful change?
I think it’s sadly lacking. Certainly in America. There’s not much you can say that’s good about John Howard, but his decision about guns was a good one. I can’t see that happening in the US. Already, apologists for the NRA are out in force. I’ve even seen some people claiming that if the teachers or someone at the school had have been armed, the tragedy wouldn’t have taken place. Not sure about that, but it says something about the state of mind of gun supporters.
In their world, everyone is constantly under threat – and the only way to defend against that threat is to be armed yourself. It’s a scary vision that doesn’t make any sense to me. The idea that guns prevent crimes only makes sense in a society where everyone has access to weapons; it’s worth examining the facts regarding gun control, crime and shootings. Again, though, this is not the kind of data that is easy to understand; if you look at Canada, where there are lots of guns, gun crime is less than in the US. Equally, countries like Japan, where guns are much more difficult to get, have a much lower gun crime rate.
This is the basis for the argument that ‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’ Of course, people with guns kill people, but they’re right in some respects. It’s not actually just the guns – it’s the state of mind of the people with guns that’s important. There’s some research suggesting that people having guns actually lowers crime, but I think we need to look deeper here. While I support a ban on automatic weapons and stricter gun control laws – limiting access is an effective way of preventing gun crime, in much the same way as RBTs limit the number of people drink driving, it’s only part of the solution. Prevent people accessing the weapons, yes, but also include educative processes to alter the state of mind of citizens regarding their society.