Statistically, this makes over 80 of these incidents to have taken place in that country in the last twenty years. In a nation like the United States, where guns are just a normal factor of everyday life, and where one state is bigger than the whole country that we in the UK live in, it becomes difficult to make direct comparisons. Guns have not been commonplace in the UK for many years. In 1996, when Thomas Hamilton broke into Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and shot dead sixteen children and one teacher, the government moved swiftly to ban the private ownership of functioning handguns altogether. The move is seen by man gun enthusiasts as heavy-handed, yet it cannot be denied that there have been no more school shootings in the UK since that day, so one can argue that the changes had the desired effect, and then easily point to the US and ask why they don't see the sense and do similar.
But there is one very key difference between Dunblane and the majority of the 'school shootings' that take place in America (and it's a depressing enough indictment of the situation that the shorthand phrase 'school shooting' is now common parlance). The majority of these incidents in the United States involve children. The first quote that instantly struck me reading about this latest horror was from the cousin of Jaylen Ray Fryberg, the 14 year old shooter, who said this:
“He was heartbroken and didn’t know what to do. Jaylen wasn’t a bad kid, he just made a mistake,”
Apparently, the incident related to a 'dispute over Jaylen's girlfriend'. The minutiae of this dispute need not detain us. The hearts of teenagers are young and inexperienced. They feel love, hatred and every other emotion in a pure and unalloyed form, untempered by the bitter experience that comes with the advancement of years. They are not able to sit and reflect on past experience of feelings of affection, betrayal or anything similar. They are packed full of hormones and feeling dozens of new and often conflicting emotions each and every day. When a teenager cries that the adults around them 'do not understand' then they are both literally and figuratively absolutely correct. Adults all too soon forget that crazy whirlwind of feelings and thoughts that is the teenage years. Puberty is not a kind or gentle process, and many the unkind word or thoughtless deed is done by one under its thrall. Most of us are lucky enough to live to regret these outbursts, going to family and friends in later life and if not actually apologising then at least making right with them. Jaylen Ray Fryberg no longer has that luxury, thanks to the way that the gun laws of the US operate.
Honestly, you can dress it up any which way that you like. You can say that it is the constitutional right of US citizens to bear arms and you would be correct, except that you must also realise that this document was drafted at a time when large parts of the US were relatively uncharted wilderness. A time when pioneering families tried to carve their living out of a landscape full of wild animals, the displaced and angry native peoples, and lawless bands of rogues. A gun WAS a necessary right if you were one of the white people busily establishing your 'new world'. The constitution was also trhe same document that in its original form allowed for slavery amongst other things. It is, at base, a piece of paper from a different era, and to tell me that because it says you must all have guns this is a sacrosanct right is to tell me that we should also be stoning unfaithful women to death in the street - you know, the way that you are saying is unacceptable in all those countries that you go to war against?
You might instead try the argument that if we ban or attempt to restrict the ownership of guns then we are stripping you of your ability to defend yourself against armed criminals. Couple of things here. First, there is the concept of 'escalation', poetically expressed by Sean Connery in The Untouchables:
"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."
Or more appropriately to the current context, if all the criminals are aware that you're all packing pistols, then they will pack semi automatics. If you upgrade to semi automatics, they will go full auto, and so on and so forth.
My second issue with the defence argument is that it fails to take account of the fact that if guns are harder to get hold of then surely LESS criminals will have them rather than more. If it's as easy as opening a bank account to pick up a semi automatic rifle, then surely there will be more people who have them for less than honorable intentions than if it's a strict, vetted process requiring appropriate licensing, testing and proof of adequate storage? I mean, it just stands to statistical reason - if it is harder to get guns, then it is harder for EVERYONE to get guns?
All of this is sort of window dressing that fails to address the main problem though. If it is so commonplace to have guns lying around in people's houses, then it becomes incredibly easy for children to get hold of them. School shootings are so common in the US because of this one fact. Regular adults do not solve their issues with people by shooting them. Crimes of passion happen, sure. Men and women are driven by the anger or terror of loss to do stupid things, usually to the person who is the object of their affection/ire and/or person/s important to them. What they do not generally do is walk into crowded areas and start shooting. What they do not usually do is walk into a school and shoot people because someone broke up with them, or someone picked on them for a long time.
Teenagers who perform these acts are generally characterised as 'loners' or people who don't quite fit in. The two boys responsible for the Columbine shooting, which seems to have started this horrible new phase in US history, were characterised as outsiders who didn't fit in with their peers. They wore different clothes and listened to alternative music. A whole generation of metal fans and people who wore other than Abercrombie and Fitch and GAP fashions came to be viewed with suspicion, in a similar though less extreme fashion to how anyone dressed in middle eastern garb came to be viewed after 9/11. But the only thing that truly unites all of these people is their youth. Their relative lack of experience and of the strength and wisdom that age brings. Do not misunderstand me - I do not mean to patronise youth, nor to imply that there are no young people who are wise and sensible. But the fact remains that caught midst the whirlpool of emotion and change that is puberty, teenagers are more prone to react impulsively, driven by emotion more than by rationality. I know that was my experience, and I know that it was many years and much experience before I was able to temper that.
So forget about your constitutional right to bear arms America. Forget about the scaremongering that if your guns are properly regulated, then scary gunmen (presumably of some 'ethnic' origin who 'hate freedom') will all come to your house and shoot you full of holes before raping your daughters/wives and taking all your stuff. Forget about the rhetoric that tells you the nasty aggressive government just wants to take all your shiny, shiny guns away so that they can more effectively control you. Just ask yourselves some very simple questions:
Would you not prefer that your children could live to regret that stupid thing that they did or said in the heat of their inflamed passions?
Would you not rather that stupid thing was a silly rant, or throwing some mud, or even a bit of a fist fight?
Would it not be easier for them to bear that humiliation, and for you to be there to comfort them and see them through it?
Isn't it preferable to be helping them get through that difficult outburst than to be putting flowers on their grave?
And how would you feel, if your child wasn't the gunman, but the victim? What kind of nerve would it strike within you if it was your son or daughter who made a simple teenaged mistake and received a bullet for it? Or worse still, if they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire of a youthful spat made a million times worse by the use of a firearm?
"Jaylen wasn't a bad kid. He just made a mistake." These are not the words that should form an epitaph. They are the words that should explain a minor misdemeanour. Some childish infraction in the heat of the moment that can be rectified and made right.
Kids who aren't bad are able to make these kinds of terminal and horrific mistakes because the state of gun law in America enables them to easily lay hands to lethal weapons. It takes a second to pull a trigger. One heated, unthinking second. It can leave damage that lasts generations.
As a human being and a citizen of the world, I am begging you America - think about what is really important, and do the right thing.
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