Mass Violence in America

by Glenn N. Holliman




The following appeared in the Washington Post, and it is a devastating commentary on American culture.  Opinions on this topic welcome. -  GNH

By Fareed Zakaria July 30, 2015

 

Since 9/11, the United States has responded aggressively to the danger of terrorism, taking extraordinary measures, invading two countries, launching military operations in many others, and spending more than $800 billion on homeland security. Americans have accepted an unprecedented expansion of government powers and invasions of their privacy to prevent such attacks. Since 9/11, 74 people have been killed in the United States by terrorists, according to the think tank New America. In that same period, more than 150,000 Americans have been killed in gun homicides, and we have done . . . nothing. 

Our attitude seems to be one of fatalism. Another day, another mass shooting. Which is almost literally true. The Web site shootingtracker.com documents that in the first 207 days of 2015, the nation had 207 mass shootings. After one of these takes place now, everyone goes through a ritual of shock and horror, and then moves on, aware that nothing will change, accepting that this is just one of those quirks of American life. But it is 150,000 deaths. Almost three Vietnams.

 

After last week’s incident in Lafayette, La., the governor of the state and Republican presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, pointed his finger at what has now become the standard explanation for these events: “Look, every time this happens, it seems like the person has a history of mental illness.” 

But it makes little sense to focus on mental health. The United States has a gun homicide rate that is at least a dozen times higher than those of most other industrialized countries. It is 50 times higher than Germany’s, for instance. We don’t have 50 times as many mentally disturbed people as Germany does — but we do have many, many more guns. 

At least we have stopped blaming gun violence on video games. Perhaps someone noticed that other countries have lots of violence in their pop culture but don’t have this tsunami of gun deaths. Japan, for example, is consumed by macabre video games and other forms of gory entertainment. In 2008, Japan had just 11 gun homicides. Eleven. Why? Hint: It has very tough gun-control laws.

Jindal at least suggested that states follow or even strengthen laws to make sure that mentally unstable people can’t buy guns, but this has placed him beyond the pale for the gun lobby. Former Texas governor Rick Perry’s solution is to loosen the few restrictions on guns that do exist so that, in the Lafayette movie theater, other patrons could have been armed and would have shot the gunman. 

The notion that the solution — in dark, crowded movie theaters — is a mass shoot-out is so dangerous that it should rule out Perry as a serious Republican presidential candidate. When asked about such proposals after the mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., William Bratton, who has now been police chief in three major U.S. cities, dismissed the idea. To him the solution is obvious. “[We need] some sanity in our gun control laws. . . . Gun control can reduce these numbers of incidents,” he told CNN. 

We have become so inured to the catastrophic levels of violence in our cities that we gloss over them. People often ask me if I think it’s safe for them to travel to countries such as Egypt or Morocco. The reality is that many major U.S. cities have homicide rates that are many times higher than those in places such as Cairo or Casablanca. (And it’s worth noting that non-Islamic terrorists — as in Charleston, S.C. — have killed almost twice as many people as jihadis have in the United States since 9/11.) 

In the wake of this ongoing tragedy, we have actually loosened restraints on the ability and ease with which people can buy, own and carry guns. This is partly because in June 2008, the Supreme Court broke with 200 years of precedent and — in a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia — created an individual right to gun ownership that has made common-sense regulation of guns much harder.

In his powerful dissent in that case (District of Columbia v. Heller), Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that Scalia’s opinion was an act of extreme judicial activism — that for two centuries, federal courts had recognized that the government had the power to regulate the sale of firearms, and that the Supreme Court in particular had for at least seven decades consistently affirmed that interpretation. 

It is not an act of fate that has caused 150,000 Americans to die over the past 14 years. It is a product of laws, court decisions, lobbying and pandering politicians. We can change it.

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Comments on this on going violence in the USA? 

 

From a Pennsylvania barrister:

 

Glenn, thanks.  To some extent the problem of gun violence in the United States is a problem involving both mental health issues  and  the availability of guns, but anyone who seriously delves into this problem must recognize that the history of the United States required the availability of guns. 

The territorial expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific required meeting hostile forces with weapons.  Manifest Destiny and westward expansion required arming those who moved west.  That cultural history can not be ignored.  As well intentioned as they are, those who want stricter gun control must come to terms with that historical reality.


From an Englishman summering in France:

Dear Glenn

As ever, one despairs at your nation's fascination   - nay fetish - with guns. I note your Pennsylvania barrister's apologia referring to ".... the history of the United States REQUIRED the availability of guns ..."  and in his second paragraph "... westward expansion REQUIRED arming ....". Notice the use of the perfect tense. He seems to be condemning you all to living in the past.

Overcoming the Nazis in the 1940s REQUIRED conscription and severe food rationing in the UK, but we don't have it now, a mere 70 years later.

I wish that I could remember exactly to which PM and US President the following conversation refers - I seem to recall that it was Harold Macmillan - no doubt your better historical knowledge would confirm or deny - but the matter went along the lines of:

President: "Why, Prime Minister, do you insist on not arming your police forces?"

PM: "Why, Mr President, do you insist on arming your people?"

Beautifully warm and sunny here in Provence.

From our literary goddess down under....

My first and last reaction to your Pennsylvanian barrister is exactly the same as your Englishman summering in France. The history which required guns in America is just that – HISTORY. PAST TENSE.

Australia brought in a much needed restriction on automatic weapons, and I felt very proud of our leader who flew in the face of those typical gun crazies who maintained that just as many weapons would come in through the back door. Of course some will always find a way to the baddies in our society, but no mass murders to my knowledge have occurred in Oz since one nutter used an automatic weapon and killed many people in Tasmania some years before John Howard PM brought in the reform.

America simply must wake up to its present unacceptable reality, but it seems from where I stand in relatively safe Australia, until the majority of anti-automatic weapon people match the obstinacy and money of the pro-automatic weapon people, and say ‘enough is enough’, this appalling mass homicide will continue to happen. Poor Barak O can whistle Dixie, but nought will change.

End of Oz rant.

 From a member of the judiciary in the Eastern United States....
 Do you know if the "homicides" included "suicides"?

Culture of devaluing human life doesn't help either.

There will always be guns, like it or not. Some in the past liked a substantially unarmed citizenry very much. Some still do and insist on it.

As far as I know the Swiss still take their militia automatic weapons home from the armory.  Maybe they don't anymore. But the guys from the north didn't visit when they went everywhere else. This was a few years ago. The guys from the southeast are coming now--in peace and love, of course. Maybe not to Switzerland, but in some numbers elsewhere.

Lots of bad, but good, too. depends on your point of view, unless you are a groundhog in my garden and then you are for very strict control.