Henry Cooke

Politics should not be kept away from tragedies. The terror attack in Christchurch was a deeply political act that requires a political response. In the immediate term, that has been gun law reform, calls for social media to step up, and the slow start of what will hopefully be a wide reckoning with racism in our country.

This political response need not be confined to New Zealand. It is clear that the alleged killer saw our country as a staging ground – proof that nowhere is safe – and that he targeted a very specific community.

But while this tragedy deserves a global political response, it does not deserve to be used as a cudgel in the eternal United States gun debate.

This began in the minutes and hours after the shooting. Within four hours, National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch had tweeted an inaccurate early report about Abdul Aziz, who hurled an eftpos machine at the gunman and then attempted to fire one of the shooter’s empty weapons.

Loesch described Aziz as a ‘‘good guy with a gun’’ – a long-running legend amongst the American Right which assumes the only thing that can stop a ‘‘bad guy with a gun’’ is thousands of ‘‘good guys with guns’’.

The next day Attorney General David Parker got his wires crossed and told a rally the Government was banning all semi-automatic weapons. At that time no such thing had been announced – and the eventual law change will not, in fact, see all automatic weapons banned.

But that didn’t stop Twitter and US news websites picking it up as an example of an enlightened democracy moving quickly to halt gun violence, while the US is confined to ‘‘thoughts and prayers’’. Kiwis also bragged about our country’s ability to react quickly to events – despite the fact we’ve had these solutions sitting on the shelf for decades, ignored by politicians.

The frustration gun law reformers in the US feel is understandable, as they have endured countless mass shootings without ever seeing real change. But change to gun laws in the US will not come from people pointing elsewhere in the world – if that worked the US would have a public healthcare system.

Already the NRA has offered its support to the local gun lobby, and is rumoured to be sending people over to fight the changes. The NRA will know that they will have no real influence here, but in the everlasting media war will want to be a part of the narrative.

People who have no interest in our country will rush to use this tragedy for popular tweets and Facebook updates. The world’s media in Christchurch are already desperately trying to get the Prime Minister to say some kind of momentous words to chasten Trump and draw out a reaction from him. (Kiwi media, myself included, can hardly be excluded from occasionally trying this.)

The tragedy should not just be fodder for a few news cycles in the US circus. Trumpism is not going to be defeated by a Prime Minister half a world away. We have avoided the worst excesses of mainstream political discourse in the US, despite attempts by some to import it.

Let’s hope that dam holds up in the weeks to come.

People who have no interest in our country will rush to use this tragedy for popular tweets and Facebook updates.