

– Written in December 2012, just after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting Many people look with a regretful and an all too familiar tearful eye at a murderous rampage involving guns in America and label it as just ‘another tragedy’. Such occurrences have blighted one of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world for so long and yet still, despite outrageous acts of mindless violence, nothing is done in order to prevent another devastating attack on the lives of innocent people.

America may well be proud of their Constitution, and their Second Amendment Right to ‘bear arms’, but can they really claim pride in the damning consequences of this right? Can they really claim pride in the fact that the central tenet of their Declaration of Independence for “certain unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is being brutally fired at by ignorance to the danger of the Second Amendment? Can they really claim pride in the fact that this Second Amendment has claimed the lives of 20 primary school children whose tragic lives will never be lived to the full? Where are their rights to life, where are their rights to liberty? Where are their rights to their pursuit of happiness?

Gone. Dead. Destroyed are those children’s rights, as well as those of so many others who have fallen victim to the astonishing availability of firearms in the United States before the Newtown massacre on the 14th December 2012. Surely it is now time for the Second Amendment to follow the same fate? At the very least, it must surely be expected for action to be taken in order to push for tighter gun control in a country in which, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2009 suffered a 66.9% rate of homicides perpetrated using firearms. Where is the sense in doing nothing?

The American documentary maker Michael Moore has been a strong advocate of gun control and in 2002 was the creator of the famous documentary film “Bowling for Columbine” in which he explored the possible causes for the then most notorious recent school shooting of 1999, the Columbine high school massacre. Moore can be seen walking into a bank in the State of Michigan and opening an account which rewards customers with a selection of free firearms which the customer can walk out with the very same day. It shows Moore casually purchasing bullets in a barbershop and interviewing a number of incredibly paranoid, confused and very patriotic Americans who seem completely oblivious to the danger of guns and the causes of gun crime. It draws attention to the fact that there is an astoundingly strong streak of paranoia powerfully pulsating through the veins of modern America, where many seem to value their personal rights to bear arms far higher than other people’s rights to life.

However, it seems that perhaps, finally, after years of tragedy after tragedy, with disastrous amounts of blood spilt and countless lives lost, America may finally be coming to their senses. The traditionally conservative political commentator for Fox News and a self-confessed “second amendment guy”, Bill O’Reilly has said something uncharacteristically sensible. Citing the success of Australian gun control, O’Reilly argued: “In Australia they did ban semi-automatic weapons, and the crime rate plummeted there. I am a Second Amendment guy, and I know what the founding fathers’ intent was.

“They wanted Americans to be able to defend themselves. There isn’t any question about it. But I think we can tighten it up a little bit.” If even O’Reilly believes that gun laws should tighten up “a little bit”, then there really must be something seriously wrong in America in terms of gun violence. Indeed, Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary listed the roughly calculated average number of people who die every year from gun crime in certain countries. France has 255, Canada; 165, the United Kingdom; 68, Australia; 65, Japan; 39, and America? 11,127. But why? Well, can anything be more obvious?

Apparently though, the reasons are not so obvious to some Americans. Republican Representative for Kansas, Tim Huelskamp has stated in response to the Newport massacre that “It’s not a gun problem, it’s a people problem,” going on to claim that this sort of violence is down to video games. Tom Ridge, the former U.S. Homeland Security Director also sees guns as the innocent party here; claiming that it is down to the “corrosive influence of a violent oriented world of TV and video games.”

Now, this is an argument which is brought up so many times by the pro-gun Americans who see no fault in their beloved firearms. They claim that it must be video games, music, television, entertainment, society and possibly even Satan that causes people to kill. Guns have nothing to do with it! What people like Huelskamp and Ridge do not seem to grasp is that across Europe and in Australia where the homicide rates involving guns is dramatically lower, video games are played. Television is watched. Music is listened to. The only overwhelming difference is that there are stricter gun control laws across Europe and in Australia.

A shooting in Australia in 1996 where 35 people were killed prompted immediate action by the Australian government to enforce very tight regulations on guns in which over a million firearms were collected and destroyed with large scale voluntary surrenders of guns by citizens. The results of such action has been a 50% drop of the risk of dying by gunshot and importantly, no mass shooting since the law was enforced. There was a time when America was founded over 200 years ago that firearms were essential to protect the citizens from tyranny; guns had a constructive, useful purpose. Now, the only use for ordinary citizens is to kill, and it is about time that Americans placed their pride, their patriotism and their paranoia to one side and end the deaths of innocent people, prevent the destruction of a society and agree to enforce tighter restrictions on the use and availability of firearms.