In the wake of Florida, myth and reality fuse together at the heart of the US’s love affair with guns
THERE really is no point in getting even slightly worked up with Donald Trump and his latest wheeze in the aftermath of the Florida mass-shooting that school teachers in the US should be armed.
Anybody on this side of the world who wants to understand America and its love affair with the gun might be better off looking at a few old Clint Eastwood movies.
Clint played some especially hard-shootin’ heroes in a pantheon of cowboy films. It was all escapist entertainment for the masses, but this genre from the Hollywood dream factory found expression for feelings rooted in the American psyche.
The abiding hallmark of Eastwood’s screen persona is that of rugged individualism. Above all else, he had to have the wherewithal to look after himself – no matter who was trying to gun him down.
Critical to bumping off all those bad guys was his trusty Smith & Wesson six-shooter. And he most likely would also have a Winchester ’73 rifle as back-up.
Clint rode through many a prairie, in and out of many a town, with his Stetson silhouetted against the majesty of an American skyline.
Overhead, the odd cloud drifted towards a far horizon. It all provided its own canvas and stimulus for the imagination. For some, such images still capture what it really means to be an American.
It is somewhat ironic that in real life, given the especially high level of violence in his movies, Eastwood flirted with the ideology of the all-powerful US gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.
Meanwhile, the tallest standing cowpoke of them all, John Wayne, another hero of many a Western, was a noted enthusiast for what is described as “the right to bear arms”.
And Ronald Reagan, a B-movie star who more than once shot his way out of trouble riding the range on the silver screen, made it all the way to the White House. His politics were old-school conservative.
In the run to be president and during his time in office, he was a hugely popular figure in the gun lobby. In 1983, Reagan, the victim of a would-be assassin two years earlier, singled out the NRA for special praise.
He promised to “never disarm any American who seeks to protect his or her family from fear and harm”.
Another movie actor, Charlton Heston, was an unequivocal supporter of the NRA, famously popularising an oftrepeated catch-cry lauded by countless firearms enthusiasts. My gun will have to be prised “from my cold dead hands” if it is to be ever taken away from me, he intoned over the years.
It is this meshing of myth and reality which lies at the heart of this love affair with guns. The reality is it is shared by millions of people in this vast continent.
So it is little wonder the NRA, which claims a membership of five million, can spend €30m a year bending politicians such as Donald Trump to its will.
For good or ill, its members represent Middle America to its very core. They are part of vintage Trump support base territory. No wonder the gun lobby backed him so enthusiastically in his pitch for the White House.
The result is the president and the NRA are symbiotic – “trendies” living in the likes of Washington, New York and San Francisco simply don’t understand a basic freedom America should offer all its citizens.
They also share with Trump a visceral distaste for “fake news”. “Coastal, socialist media elites hate our guys so much,” wailed one of the more virulent NRA supporters on the organisation’s online video channel.
Reports clearly show the organisation has become much more aggressive in confronting its opponents since its man made it to the White House.
One of the more remarkable TV images of the week was the appearance of NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch on CNN.
She was confronted by mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers linked to those who died in school shootings. But despite the inevitably charged atmosphere, she remained unflinching.
Subjected to a barrage of criticism from heartbroken next of kin, she conceded little of substance other than a few platitudes.
The Loesch message was simple. What she termed “responsible” people must have the right to carry a gun.
Her solution to random school shootings is that all those with suspected “mental health issues” should be rounded up by the authorities. Then, she assured us, there would be no problem.
She insists America is divided between “coastals” and “flyovers”. She dismissed the coastals – those who live in the big cities on the east and west coasts – as out of touch because of all the fake news they consume.
Flyovers – looked down on by the elite – are part of the real world residing in places like the American mid-west. She reminds us flyover families often give their 13-year-old a birthday present of a rifle to shoot deer.
LOESCH’S pugilistic approach is reflective of a super-confident and powerful US gun lobby. “Many in the legacy media love mass shootings. I am saying you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are gold to you and many in the legacy media,” she charged the likes of her CNN inquisitors.
And she has been steadfast in her defence of those who voted for Trump. “We are witnessing the most ruthless attack on a president and the people who voted for him – and the free system that allowed it to happen – in American history,” she claimed.
It is against this backdrop that the latest proposal to confront random school shootings must be judged.
Suggesting teachers carry a gun is incomprehensible to us. But it is being put forward as an American solution to an American problem.
This is despite the obvious risk that additional weaponry in the presence of children and teenagers will prompt even more outbursts of pointless carnage.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre offered by way of consolation this week.
Whatever his private thoughts on the matter, this is also the stated view of Donald Trump. While he is in the White House, gun-toting America will continue as before.
It is little wonder the NRA spends ¤30m a year bending politicians such as Trump to its will