An obsession that is killing a nation

No matter how many children die in mass shootings, the United States continues to protect its so-called right to bear arms.

THE United States is off my travel bucket list. I used to love visiting the country but I now put it on the same level as Yemen and Afghanistan. It’s too dangerous.

After all, you might get shot anytime, anywhere. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration.

Just last week, 19 young lives were lost when a teenage gunman went on a rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Two teachers were also killed and 17 others wounded.

And yet, America does nothing.

It is almost 10 years since my column titled “Free to shoot and kill in the land of the free” appeared in The Star on Dec 19, 2012 (online at bit.ly/star_shoot). I wrote it days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting massacre in Connecticut in which another young man, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot dead 20 children – aged six and seven – and six adults.

So far, half a year into 2022, there have been 27 shootings with injuries or deaths in US schools, according to EducationWeek, a site that has a school shooting tracker. (Shocking, isn’t it? I mean, does any other country have such a tracker?)

Like after every mass shooting, America convulses in agony and tries to ask why it happened, what motivated the shooter and gets no answers. The gunman, Salvador Ramos, like Lanza, was shot dead by police.

What they have found so far is that Ramos had left violent, threatening messages on social media and told of his plan to attack a school on Facebook.

And yet, he was able to legally buy two assault rifles and carry out his deadly deed.

National Public Radio, citing statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organisation, reported there have been 212 shootings in the United States so far this year. The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter.

And these shootings can take place anywhere.

In recent years, gunmen have fired at cinema audiences, supermarket shoppers, bus passengers, coffee shop patrons, temple worshippers and concertgoers.

But the favourite hunting grounds for these shooters seem to be schools. Perhaps they know their young prey will be the easiest and most vulnerable targets.

The Uvalde as well as the May 14 Buffalo grocery store shooting that left 10 people dead reminded me of what I wrote a decade ago: such tragedies are self-inflicted by a rich and powerful country.

As CNN.com opined: “Ramos’ personal background reveals a bullied loner with no criminal history and – like so many other mass shooters in America – an interest in and access to high-powered firearms and ammunition in a political system that prioritises gun rights.”

The US ended 2021 with 693 mass shootings, as recorded by the Gun Violence Archive. The year before the number was 611 and in 2019, it was 417. Perhaps Covid-19 got to Americans, but the pandemic got to the rest of humanity as well yet we didn’t take to guns to express our anger and frustration.

It is only in the US that ordinary citizens can buy military grade assault weapons with very poorly enforced checks and controls.

Despite many groups lobbying for more stringent gun control legislation, like the youth-led March For Our Lives and Everytown for Gun Safety, they cannot overpower the National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest gun owners’ organisation in the US that fights against gun control laws. Nothing seems to move the NRA or US lawmakers despite the fact that gun violence has overtaken motor accidents as the leading cause of death for American children and teens.

My siblings and I grew up with a gun in the house that belonged to our police officer father.

And we had a healthy respect for it because Dad drilled in us that a gun was not a toy. We never ever thought of playing with it and I am absolutely happy that Malaysia has harsh penalties for illegal gun possession.

Under the Firearms (Increased Penalties) Act 1971, just being in unlawful possession of a firearm can put you in jail for up to 14 years and get you at least six strokes of the rotan.

Discharging a firearm in the course of committing a crime like robbery or kidnapping can get you the death sentence.

Even just “exhibiting” a firearm that can induce fear of death in others is punishable with life imprisonment and six strokes of the rotan.

But in the US, a nation that is obsessed with its Constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms”, nearly 400 million guns are in private hands yet responsible gun ownership is not actively inculcated in its citizens, unlike in countries like Finland and Switzerland which also have high gun ownership rates.

It’s no surprise US law enforcement agencies like the police are equally trigger-happy. As the BBC reports, quoting Rashawn Ray, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland: “In most states people can carry guns either on their body or in their vehicles, so that escalates things for police – they instantly perceive that anyone can be a threat.”

The result is about 1,000 people a year are killed by police officers in the US. The BBC adds: “The majority of the world’s police forces carry firearms, but no developed nation uses them against their citizens as often as officers in the United States.”

American University Radio (wamu.org) reported on a dramatic shift in gun ownership behaviour over the last two decades: people used to buy rifles for hunting or sport shooting but now they buy handguns for self-defence.

Yet, a Harvard study found that in less than 1% of 14,000 crimes committed from 2007 to 2011 was a gun used in self-defence.

Instead, research shows that people who keep guns in the home are three times more likely to be a homicide victim than people who do not.

Against this backdrop of escalating gun violence insanity, earlier this year, US gun manufacturer WEE1 Tactical introduced the JR-15, a semi-automatic rifle for kids modelled on the AR-15 which has been used in many mass shootings.

While child-size handguns and rifles made in bright colours like pink and orange have been on the market for years, the JR-15, which is promoted as being “just like Mum and Dad’s gun”, is something else. It has been denounced by gun control advocates as the “most brazen example of marketing guns to kids” ever.

When I was a young mother, I steered clear of buying toy guns for my son even though they were just that, toys. I wasn’t too pleased when he started playing video games that required him to shoot zombies and terrorists but I had the comfort of knowing the firearms he was using were still just make believe.

But in the land where you can freely shoot and kill, children don’t have to pretend to go “bang-bang”. Not when their gun-loving parents can buy the real thing from firearms manufacturers who shamelessly market them to keep the gun culture alive and their profits up. God save America.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.