Shots in the dark
Once again, the United States is reeling in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, this time featuring an abundantly armed ‘loner’ causing battle-worthy casualties in matter of minutes with what might as well have been a fully automatic machine gun. Using an accessory that allows a semi-automatic rifle to perform like a fully automatic machine gun, one Stephen Paddock took it upon himself to attack a country-music festival, killing 58 people and injuring another 500 or so. And so it goes.
Sadly, the Las Vegas attack, which is being described as the greatest mass shooting‘(of white people) in the country’s history, is almost par for the course in modern America with the ‘greatest country in the world’ living through its 273rd mass shooting in 275 days. This time, however, the symbolism, though unclear, is powerful.
Country music is often seen as the cultural home base for Trump’s America. It is replete with songs about traditional values, the purity and freedom of rural life, and the goodness of the fading American dream. It glorifies pick-up trucks, dirt roads and cut-off jeans – not to mention ‘heroes’ – and without a doubt represents a large proportion of American gun owners, for whom a fetish-like devotion to instruments of death is almost a requirement of citizenship.
It is difficult to understand how American society has come to abhor even the slightest hint at government regulation of weapons, as historically speaking, it is a relatively new phenomenon. A half century ago, an ‘unlimited’ freedom to own and carry weapons would have been seen as ludicrous, even by the National Rifle Association, which once saw its mandate as the promotion of gun safety, awareness, and responsi- bility. It was a supporter of America’s early attempts at national regulation and, in 1934, its president, Karl Frederick, was able to state publicly, and without fear of disgrace, that "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. ... I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” Times, apparently, have changed.
Since the 1970s, the NRA has become entirely a lobbying arm of the arms industry, promoting the widespread and generalized use of weapons and has fumed irrepressibly against any suggestion that the government might have a role to play in curtailing gun violence. Instead, it has doubled down on its desire for a lethally armed America by opposing any legislation that might slow the sale of these weapons and has chosen to promote the inviolability of the second half of the Second Amendment, interpreting it to be absolute while suppressing any consideration of the first part, which qualifies the second. Arguments over the meaning of the Second Amendment have been going on for what seems to be an eternity and so far, nothing has really changed. After every horrific event, hands are wrung; thoughts and prayers distributed freely, and demands for action ring out loud and clear. In the meantime, calls for stricter controls are accompanied by record-setting intensity of gun and accessory sales. Everybody wants to stock up while they still can.
And they still can. The pattern for this kind of controversy has now become cliché: Lots of people die in senseless violence. If the perpetrator is white, then he is portrayed as a ‘mentally disturbed’ individual. If the perpetrator is brown or darker, then he or she becomes a representative of their ethnic background and its generally untrustworthy world view. In either case, laws against the free range of lethal weapons are out of the question as the ‘good guy with a gun’ needs to be prepared to defend himself and everybody else from violent attack. This almost never happens, of course, and in fact results in even more senseless gun violence. A second response is that such massacres are the ‘price we have to pay’ in order to defend ourselves from the evil tyranny that waits right around the corner.
Within days of each atrocity, political leaders – thoroughly in thrall to weapons manufacturer lobbyists and the NRA - step up to decry the tragedy and insist that this emotionally charged period is hardly the time to ‘leap to conclusions’ and to politicize gun rights. These are the same people, generally, who will gleefully lunge off to war at the slightest – or imaginary – provocation. After all war, like personal gun ownership, is good for the arms industry, just not so good for people.
Even more ironically, those proponents of wide-open gun regulations are often the same people who support eagerly the suppression of other rights guaranteed by their sacred’ Constitution, such as the rights to vote, privacy, equality, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, principles that have gone a lot farther in defining American ‘greatness’ than its deadly infatuation with guns, but regardless of this obvious fact, Americans remain doggedly devoted to their guns and are astonishingly reluctant to impose any kind of restrictions upon them, finding ways to ignore mass murder, tragic accidents, and suicide as \the price they have to pay.” It’s pathological.
It is also quintessentially American. Since the Second World War, Americans have taken their innate sense of superiority to absurd levels and have steadfastly refused to learn from social progress that has been demonstrated to work in other countries. America has its guns, but not its universal health care and neither situation is likely to change soon. A vast majority of Americans sup- port both accessible health care and gun regulations, but Americans, per se, are not the ones who make the rules. Those who do long ago sold out to the ‘special interests’ and are actively working to deny ‘the people’ what they clearly want. So ingrained is the mythology they’re selling, in fact, that even those who advocate for change have pretty much resigned themselves that ‘nothing can be one.’|
Something can be done, of course, but that doesn’t mean it will be. Once the stories of dead housewives and children have been told, and the appropriate outrage expressed, it will be back to business as usual and toddlers will continue to shoot each other, families will continue to be devastated and the great American public will go back to watching television shows where guns are always solving whatever problem might exist.
The Las Vegas massacre stands out not only for its violence and deadliness but for its perfect exemplary demonstration of America’s gun problems. The gunman used legally purchased weapons and ammunition, and modified his guns with legally purchased accessories. He had every legal right to possess his arsenal and only committed a crime when he chose to pull the trigger. Fifty-eight people died from his freedom to make that choice and hundreds of other lives were drastically changed as a result. Nothing prevented him from meticulously plotting his adventure and nothing could have stopped him once hi mind was made up. His mind was made up and nobody knows why. See how guns keep us safe?