Pervasive gun culture means nothing will be done in wake of Las Vegas shooting
DOING A LITTLE CHANNEL surfing Sunday night, I came across Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a very enjoyable and very violent film that is emblematic of the gun culture that dominates Hollywood and the U.S. in general.
While such films can be entertaining, later that evening in Las Vegas, we saw the real downside of the American obsession with guns.
The motive remains unclear, but Stephen Paddock was, by accounts in the news, not someone who’d be on anyone’s radar for this kind of behaviour. More facts about the man are emerging in the wake of his shooting spree that left at least 59 people dead and more than 500 wounded in what is now the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Apparently, he didn’t have as much as a traffic violation in some of the places where he lived, let alone any criminal record or history of mental health issues, for instance. Just a 64-year-old retiree with money and real estate holdings, his history wasn’t exactly normal-ish given his high-stakes gambling and his assortment of guns. Scratch the latter, as such things are in fact somewhat normal in the States.
The shooting has sparked another round of the endless gun control debate there. It’s all rather academic, as nothing is going to change. If the gunning down of six-year-old children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut wasn’t enough to prompt change, nothing will.
There’s been an outpouring of public comments, as you’d expect, many calls for gun control and a whole bunch of comments from the gun-lobby-fuelled Second Amendment types. Nevada is an open carry state with few checks on gun ownership. There may have been a few people with guns– or more than a few – in the vicinity, but the “good guy with a gun” scenario of NRA fable was not relevant. What good would it have done against a determined shooter on the 32nd floor of a building hundreds of yards away? Much less good than keeping so many guns out of so many hands.
In fact, can you imagine the pandemonium of all kinds of people waving guns around, each not knowing who the shooter is? Chaos incarnate.
Politicians clearly in the thrall of the gun lobby are trotting out the usual pabulum about how it’s time to mourn – is there anything more useless and disingenuous than “thoughts and prayers”? – rather than talk about gun control.
The goings on demonstrate yet again one of the major points of difference between our country and that to the south. Guns are a big part of the culture in the U.S. Here, that’s not the case.
A seemingly endless stream of mass shootings have done nothing to boost gun control measures. With every incident, some people call for further restrictions on gun ownership. On the other side of the argument, gun advocates argue for greater access to guns, saying armed civilians could have gunned down such criminals before their killing sprees continued.
The latter arguments are commonplace in the U.S., where Second Amendment – the right to keep and bear arms – issues abound. In Canada, the notion seems ridiculous: having more guns at hand increases the risk. It would be far more likely for someone to see red, snap and use a readily available gun than it would be for someone to be faced with a murderer on a shooting rampage.
A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gunrelated deaths per 100,000 people — more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied.
Japan, on the other hand, had only 0.6 guns per 100 people and 0.06 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people, making it the country with both the fewest guns per capita and the fewest gun-related deaths. Canada’s numbers were 30.8 and 2.4. respectively.
Those kind of statistics depict a major difference between our neighbouring cultures.
Not, of course, that we’re immune from such tragedies.
Still, we operate under a different mindset than do those in the States, where politicians must be progun, or at least not come out in favour of gun control. That kind of thinking would not fly here: even the gun registry debate was more about waste, graft and rightwing ideology than about the guns themselves.
U.S. ownership accounts for almost a third of all the guns in the world. American guns don’t just kill Americans – they fuel the illegal gun trade and gun violence worldwide. At least half of the illegal handguns recovered in Canada and 80 per cent of crime guns in Mexico had their origin in the U.S.
Much of the discussion around this latest shooting involves coming up with an explanation, a “why?” for the shooter’s behaviour. Given that the man took his own life, there may be only speculation. Details remain sketchy – 23 guns found in his hotel room, 19 more at this Nevada home, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition and some explosive materials, but no notes, manifestos or the like.
His acquisition over the years of so many guns didn’t set off any bells – access is too easy and perhaps uncoordinated to track. He didn’t have any flags attached to his name when buying guns legally. No one did anything wrong ... up until Paddock opened fire on the crowd at a country music festival.
And therein lies the rub with making guns readily available to the typical law-abiding citizen/hobbyist/enthusiast of NRA lore – every criminal is just a law-abiding citizen until the first time he or she is not. For these kind of mass shootings, that first time comes with consequences to innocent people.
Reversing course on the U.S. gun culture is going to take more than some tightened restrictions on firearms sales, however. In the grips of crumbling mili-
tary empire and a growing police state, Americans have violence at the core of much of what they do. A climate of fear and loathing does not encourage disarming. Mass shootings – four or more victims – is a daily occurrence with no end in sight.