EDITOR’S NOTE
AMENDMENT II to the US Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and was adopted 227 years ago as part of the Bill of Rights.
Early English settlers viewed this right to bear arms as crucial to enable people to, among others, participate in law enforcement, safeguard against a tyrannical government, repel an invasion, suppress insurrection, including slave revolts, and to facilitate a natural right of self-defence.
But few, if any, realised when the Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791 what a scourge privately held arms would wreak upon the country’s psyché and safety of its citizens.
In the last 50 years, more Americans have died in firearm-related incidents than in all wars in US history. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.5 million US citizens have died as a result of guns since 1968. The NBC has reported that around 1.2 million Americans have been killed in conflicts in US history, quoting data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
And the relentless slaughter of the innocent continues. No venue – including places of worship – is off limits.
Last week, another community was left reeling from a mass shooting, with 12 dead after a gunman opened fire at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California. The shooting, in the Borderline Bar & Grill, sent people diving under pool tables when gunman Ian David Long – dressed in black – sowed mayhem.
The shooting took place a few days after 11 worshippers were gunned down at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Last November, Devin Patrick Kelley killed 26 people and injured 20 others in a mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Before then, a supremacist killed nine black worshippers at the AME church in Charleston, North Carolina.
Who can forget the slaughter in Las Vegas that left 59 dead and hundreds injured after gunman Stephen Paddock fired rounds from modified automatic weapons into crowds at a music festival. Paddock, sprayed bullets into a 22 000-strong crowd of concert-goers from his room on the 32rd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel before killing himself. This attack was the deadliest mass shooting on US soil in modern history.
Last year’s shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which left 49 people dead, is the second deadliest. The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 26 people, most of whom were children, also dare not be forgotten.
These shootings have once against renewed the debate over gun control in the US, where the National Rifle Association remains one of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington DC and enjoys the enthusiastic support of President Trump.
According to date from the Pew Research Centre, a large proportion of Americans either own a gun themselves or live in a household with guns – around four in 10 people. A recent study estimated that there are 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the US, a rate of 120.5 guns for every 100 residents, making the country’s firearms-ownership rate twice that of the second highest nation, Yemen.
For most gun owners, owning a firearm is linked to their sense of personal freedom. But this sense of freedom is manifesting itself in a destructive way. Why do we not see the same mindless madness in Switzerland, one of the most heavily privately armed nations? The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a population of 8.3 million people with an overall murder rate of near zero.
In response to the latest mass shooting, President Trump ordered federal flags flown at half-staff. At this rate, and unless they do something about the easy availability of firearms, no sooner have the flags been restored to full mast than they will have to be lowered again. It’s all so sad – and unnecessary.