I’m really quite perplexed by the U. S. and A.
In many ways it feels like home. Over the past 18 years or so I have visited the country dozens of times. I’ve worked there, and can well imagine living there permanently. Some of my closest and dearest friends are US citizens, from various parts of the political and religious scene, or none. A few years back I spent a sabbatical at UCLA, and whenever I visit LA it feels cosily familiar, almost like coming home, and much homelier than – say – France. I have just returned from a very enjoyable few days at a conference in Salt Lake City. I submit that in no other country will one find a warmer or more sincere welcome. But for a love of Marmite and Gardeners’ Question Time, I could easily imagine becoming a US citizen. Gosh darn it, I LOVE America.
And yet, sometimes, the U. S. and A. seems like something dreamed up by Lewis Carroll, channeling Goya. The recent shooting in Tucson of Ms Gabrielle Giffords, an elected politician doing her job, and a number of people stood watching, is a case in point.
What surprises at least one commentator in Britain is how the issue became so speedily and so bitterly politicised.
The Left blames the gung-ho, gun-totin’ Right, which tends to cast political battles in terms of the OK Corral – a strategy which is either romantic, paranoid or bathetic, depending on your point of view (I think it’s all three, but hey, that’s just me). It may or may not be significant that Ms Sarah Palin, a right-wing politician who in notoriety and eye-furniture reminds one of Deirdre Barlow, had had campaign literature in which a number of her opponents – including the politician so violently assaulted -were allegedly depicted as targets, in gunsights (I say ‘allegedly’ as I haven’t seen the billets-doux with mes own yeux).
Ms Palin's Hit List. Mes yeux remain unimpressed.
The Right, for its part, says that the incident was very much an isolated case – that the assailant was mentally disturbed – and has sought to distance itself from the whole affair.
From my limited and distant perspective, however, the problem is clear: the easy availability in the U. S. and A. of gnus guns.
A gnu, recently.
Now, there is an emporium here in Cromer where you can buy potentially lethal weapons such as airguns and crossbows.
In America, they do things bigger.
I learn from Dr. A. E. of Manchester that you can go into sports shops and find guns on display, as if they were just so many tennis racquets or golf clubs. And my friend and colleague Dr A. W. of Oklahoma informs me that you can pick up a gun in the supermarket, who knows, between the kitty litter and the sun-dried tomatoes. Maybe you can get them on special offer: this week only! Buy two Glocks and get a free Magnum – make our day!
Call me naive, but the problem is in plain sight. Guns, guns and more guns. Not just the occasional twelve-bore for potting the odd caribou caught nibbling the croquet hoops, but serious military hardware – Uzis, assault rifles, guns designed to kill not bunnies, or even caribou – but people.
To me, the case is clear. Get rid of the gnus guns. Yet when I point this out to American friends, even the quite normal ones, they sigh, roll their eyes skywards and give me a long lecture about the US Constitution and how guns are, for good or ill, an indissoluble (yea, even inalienable) part of American life (I call this ‘gunsplaining’). My friend Mr J. C. of Tennessee said that were one to try to part Americans from their guns, there’d be a revolution. I’m afraid that my response was flippant: Americans who insisted on keeping their guns should be sent to Afghanistan, where they’d get on famously with the heavily armed religious zealots of that country – or to Alaska, where I hear they’d get a rousing welcome.
Such flippancy has a serious side, though, for zealotry has no greater enemy than laughter. To which end I recall that wince-inducing exhibit of the cinematic art, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in which Borat goes into a gun shop and asks the proprietor about ‘best gun to defend from a Jew’ – in response to which the proprietor recommends Borat a ’9mm or a 45′. Now, it hardly matters whether this was a setup or was scripted: for if any oddball can go into a shop and buy a gun, it’s not surprising that people will get shot.
If humor doesn’t work, try this. The youngest victim of the Tucson shooting was a nine-year-old girl, Christina Taylor Green, who was born on – get this – 11 September 2001. Now, how much more emotive a signal does a nation need to stop gunsplaining and realise that it is eating its own children? Lewis Carroll might have baulked. But Goya would have understood.
In Phoenix a while I saw guns in the supermarket myself. I tried to discuss this with a local (son of a family of cops) and got total incomprehension at this obvious truth.
Any population will include a number of people with violent dispositions, lack of empathy, self-importance and all the other contributions to such acts. You cannot change the population structure (unless you appoint a Eugenicist General), so much better to regulate and limit access to guns. Even police ought not to have guns by right – a weapon in a civil society is a privilege and something that brings duties with it, not an absolute right. It is clear that the second amendment was based on a frontier’s mentality and one that clearly no longer applies, so why this faux belief that a weapon is an absolute human right? Only in a broken society is that the case.
Like you I love the US; apart from its over-the-top legalism and bureacracy. But this is a no-brainer, as they taught us all to say.
I agree, the American love affair with guns, sometimes seemingly over almost anything else (and why love an instrument of death so deeply?!?), is a root of the problem, and the easy availability of such hardware. But also one has to be careful about blaming this on the right. He seems to be more of a severely looney form of lefty: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/09/jared-loughner-details-on_n_806406.html So far left, perhaps, he is almost indistinguishable from an extreme righty.
Well said, Henry. This constitutional aspect of the right to bear arms is something we have real trouble with understanding over here. I was rapped on the knuckles by a US friend for asking if this meant a potential change to the attitude to guns, because, she said, no good comes from messing with the constitution.
However, this was a document written in the 18th century – can we really say that back then they got everything right for today? Presumably the original constitution had no problem with slavery – but does that mean it’s appropriate for the 21st century?
So, what would be a reasonable argument for keeping the right to bear arms? What proof would you accept that letting the citizens have such weapons is the least bad alternative?
I’ve not long returned from a trip to America and was also amazed at the apparent ease of obtaining firearms. What i think got me most was the sight of a smallish baby pink .22 carbine in Walmart marketed something along the lines of “for the younger shooter”.
I am also shocked at how divisive the constitution is. Maybe i am too much of a pragmatist but it seems to me trying to interpret old pieces of paper leads to a lot of problems around the world.
I believe that the text of the Second Amendment reads:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
In one country I know of, I believe all able-bodied and mentally-competent males within a certain age range are REQUIRED to keep at home at least one gun in working order. Mind you, it is supposed to be stored securely until required for use in “a well regulated militia” – or at least for training with said “militia”. The country is, of course, Switzerland.
Could this apply to the USA? (Please don’t laugh too loud)
If you talk with pro-gun people, they seem to think that more guns are the solution, so that the “good guys” can shoot down the “bad guys”. Apart from the simplity of the argument, what is shocking is that they apparently really believe they could do such a thing.
Thanks to a (now deceased) National Front card-carrying gun-nut grandfather, I got to shoot quite a range of weapons, including at a gun club for a while. Shooting targets/cans is fun, and quite a lot of people can achieve this to quite a high degree of proficiency. However, consider how many of us fail to deliver a presentation without our voice trembling, or we forget our name at an interview, or cannot parallel park as soon as the examiner sits in the car, even though we could perform these things flawlessly just minutes before the pressure was on.
Now imagine that the pressure is a nutter with a gun that shoots at you, in a crowded place with screaming, blood and general mayhem. How likely is it you will hit your target now? Highly trained policemen and soldiers routinely miss, what makes you think you won’t, eh? And if you don’t hit your mark first time, square centre, what happens to your bullet? It doesn’t care who it hits, and will hit something or someone eventually.
It would be interesting to get reliable stats for gun injuries and compare the US with Switzerland, probably the only developed country with the US to have such easy access to high-powered weapons, but really gun control is still probably the best option.
Unfortunately it seems the debate has got even more polarized since “Bowling for Columbine”, I honestly don’t expect a turn-about any time soon.
I’ve lost count of how many friends, colleagues, and students have insisted that I need to keep a gun in the house “for security”. One friend, an FBI agent and firearms instructor, offered to teach me how to handle and shoot a gun. She said, “Before we can try target practice, I’ll have to give you a 30-minute lecture on gun safety, cleaning, loading, etc.” I told her that it would take 30 minutes to convince me to touch the damn thing.
I noticed a new gun shoppe along one of the highways here – it’s called “Locked and Loaded”, or something like that. This being Texas, it’s probably a liquor store as well.
BTW, a Palin spokesperson was outraged that the cross-hairs map was used as evidence of inflammatory rhetoric, siding with a talk-show host who referred to the said crosshairs as “surveyor marks”. Oy. Surveyor marks that will land you in jail if you put them on a picture of the president, and hopefully soon any Federal employee.
In Canada, there is an almost equivalent per-capita gun ownership, but the laws are stricter, and thus (presumably) there are far fewer gun-related incidents. So no need to change the constitution or even its interpretation, but change the damned laws. Nobody needs to carry a concealed Glock without a permit (or even with a permit).
The current US Supreme Court, in the District of Columbia vs Heller (2008) and McDonald vs Chicago (2010) decisions, essentially struck down any attempt by individual states (or the federal govt) to have even vaguely restrictive gun laws as “unconstitutional”. Both were narrow 5-4 decisions. Earlier in the C20th, US courts had tended to be more sympathetic to the idea that the constitution’s wording bore some reference to more of a “Swiss model”. So individual ownership had been seen more as a necessary component of that, but not as per se a blanket permission to have absolutely any gun you liked in your home. Individual US states and even cities were thus able to place restrictions or conditions on gun ownership, which was why the gun laws varied widely from place to place.
The two decisions basically dumped much of that, and said that states could do little more than make people get a licence. They could not, for instance, say you had to have a trigger lock on guns in the home.
The five justices who voted for the decision are mostly “constitutional originalists” of various stripes. That is, they see any “re-contextualisation” of the constitution’s provisions as anathema/illegal, and feel that the original intent of the constitution’s framers (always assuming one can know what that was, which is another question) should stand for ever untouched, regardless of changing times and circumstances. It will probably surprise no-one that all these justices are Reagan or Bush appointees.
I can not help much because I don’t know the EEUU, only my father and some friends (and one who lives in Cromer).
My father and my mother lived two years in Iowa, always be telling me that is a wonderful nation with many opportunities for personal growth.
Henry, you’re right about the problem. Interestingly, I’d usually agree with what John said above, except, in this case the gun holder was actually doing what the US constitution intended.
I realise this may appear tasteless given the recent situation (I absolutely do not condone the use of firearms in this way whatsoever), but in those days, the Militia was the local equivalent to the British standing army – the enforcers of the Crown and British (and therefore Colonial) government of the time. As the US wasn’t quite founded as a nation at the time the constitution was drafted, they couldn’t have an organised army, therefore relied upon the less organised ‘militia’ to defend their ideals and fight for their freedom. In this sense, a militia is a group violently opposed to the current government regime.
Whether a lone gunman counts as a militia is debatable, as is whether this gunman had thought through the above reasoning. Most gun owners in the USA haven’t, and therefore should not be allowed access to guns. And given the organised (and allegedly free) political process that’s in place in the States now (something that was lacking when the constitution was being prepared: taxation ≠ representation), a militia should not be required to change things. Weapons of death are no longer required to change the political landscape.
Oh flip. I’ve just covered this subject in my weekly column in tomorrow’s Eastern Daily Press. I completely agree with everything you say, Henry. Unfortunately, I haven’t said it anywhere near as eloquently as you have. As the gun-toters would say – don’t miss it.
Thanks, everyone, for these thoughtful comments. One of the things I like about OT is the restrained and often very informative discourse. So, let’s dig in and see how we’re faring right now.
John W makes a very good case for not carrying weapons, one I hadn’t thought of and which transcends politics. I might call it the ‘fate makes our relations, but choice makes our friends’ argument. That is, we have a choice about whether to carry guns, but less choice about the mental states of some of our fellow citizens. Therefore, it benefits all of us to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of people who might use them to do damage. John H echoes this – the assailant seems to have been somewhat unbalanced. The question is, how unbalanced to you have to be to be absolved from all responsibility for the use of lethal force? One man’s raving loony is another man’s freedom fighter. Aguido asks, in this context,
to which I think that there is no reasonable argument for a right to bear arms in a well-ordered modern society – and that the proof lies in the much lower homicide statistics (by all methods) of nations outside the US. The US comes 24th in a list of murders per capita (0.043 per thousand), well above France (40th – 0.017) Canada (44th, 0.015), Chile (45th, 0.015) the UK (46th, 0.014 per thousand) and – interesting for what follows – Switzerland (56th, 0.009). So, Nico – your question is partially answered. You are almost five times less likely to be a murder victim in Switzerland as you are in the US, even though possession of arms in Switzerland is mandatory. Perhaps the problem is that in the US, those who bear arms are self-selected.
Brian – echoed later by Russell, Austin and Mike – take issue with the relevance of the US Constitution, and the problems of interpreting an ancient document written a long time ago when things were different. This is a problem with all written constitutions and similar codices (as a Jew, the whole business seems terribly familiar – the Jewish Bible is quite small, but the Talmud – the compendium of interpretations, and interpretations of interpretations on which Rabbis base their decisions, is about 5000 pages long). It’s at times like this that I bless the fact that the UK has no written Constitution – and the savvy of the British public in resisting attempts by various parties to introduce such things.
Others – Kristi, David, Benoit – look at how guns are regarded in different countries. I knew that the Swiss have a long tradition of militia-style defence, but not that every man has to keep a gun at home in working order. I suspect that the whole business of guns in the US is tied in with a history of conquest and settlement largely by rugged individualists who were trying to get away from settled government – which in turn used these individualists as instruments to enact the ‘manifest destiny’ of the continental US.
Steve – gi’s a job.
The illogic of the USA’s supreme justices on originalism of the constitution demonstrates it’s just another ideological position and not carefully reasoned because if original intent of the framers was important in interpreting the 2nd amendment then the only legal weapons would be muzzle-loading flint-locks.
Henry, my information on Schwyz may be out of date, but this is what I was told by a (male) Swiss citizen not many years ago.
@Phytofactor – sure! And thanks for the link.
@David – I doubt whether things will have changed recently.
Benoit – is that true about per capita gun ownership in Canada? Seems very unlikely but I’m willing to believe it (presuming that you’ve researched this, which I admittedly have not).
The difference though, would be in the *types* of guns (I’d guess long guns are much more common; handguns cannot be readily purchased here) and the availability (no guns in convenience stores in Canada, at least I hope not).
Henry – I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” yet, where in one memorable scene he obtains a rifle as part of a promotion at a bank. Open a new account, get a gun. Stunning.
I’m also a little surprised at the lack of comparisons with the shooting of James Brady as a bystander during the failed assassination of Ronald Reagan. Traumatic brain injury… and the apparent passing later of the “Brady bill” to try and stop this kind of thing.
As for the USA, I enjoy traveling there on occasion (particularly to, say, Florida, in, say, February) but I *never* feel comfortable. The cultural divide is much bigger than you might think, given that we share the world’s longest (officially) unprotected border.
Thinking about this is all so depressing that I’m going back to grant writing now, which tells you something. I think.
In Chile there are no arms control, I think the 70% that have not been registered, in general the marginal people illiterate and violent , trafficants, they are involved in murders with guns stolen.
Ricardipus> I do think that the “type” of weapon/gun might have more to do with it than “actual number”. My reasoning would be that Finland and Sweden, also being high on the top 10 countries with per capita gun ownership have a lot of hunters/hunting where it is common to have several rifles and maybe one short gun; whereas assault rifles and automatics are (afaik) are not regular or legal…
There is a link on the wikipedia and if that is correct, US has about 3 times as many per capita guns as “most of the top 12 countries after the first 3″
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership
Henry> In Tenneessee you don’t have to register your gun if you “only have it at the house”. If you are a citizen you can purchase it and go home. Then again, TN is part of the South and therefore more prone to historical reasons of feeling against the federal thinking as well as someone deciding over them and their rights.
You say: “I suspect that the whole business of guns in the US is tied in with a history of conquest and settlement largely by rugged individualists who were trying to get away from settled government – which in turn used these individualists as instruments to enact the ‘manifest destiny’ of the continental US.”
The rugged individualists were also persecuted by their former governments and in many cases not allowed to basic rights due to their religion… not that it’s an excuse to be gun-toting but I do think some of the ‘dilemma’ stems from that. And the opression and not having that much of a historical army/country feeling. Come to think of it, it would be interesting how Italy looks at guns since they consisted of several small entities up until 1900… right? (I’m a bit uncertain at the moment)
Henry,
Coming from different perspectives, I believe that we have come out with almost identical conclusions in “Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Picturesque Seaside Town of Cromer” and “Protecting educators and education”.
Great post and discussion Henry. Like you, I am very fond of the US – I worked there for two very happy years and my middle child was born there and is the proud holder of a US passport.
But the obsession with guns is at the root of a very serious problem that too few US politicians and, dare I say – citizens, are willing to face. We have been here before and will be again before they decide that it is up to them to re-write their constitution for the 21st century (which is not the jobs of the judiciary).
One spill-on effect for those of us north of The Longest Undefended Border (TM) is that said border is completely porous to firearms flowing north. Most of the handguns in Toronto originated in the US, I believe.
On the other hand, how’s London’s violent crime rate as compared with that of US cities? Fewer shootings, to be sure, but how about knifings and beatings? Just curious.
@Ricardipus: I second that. I love visiting the US, but I always feel a great sense of relief when I get back to Canada. I’m pretty sure I was fired at on my bike ride from Vancouver to Seattle this summer, for example.
Also: I’ve heard the same thing you have about the flow of guns into Canada. It’s actually one of the major pro-marijuana-legalisation arguments in BC (well, apart from it being our most lucrative – but untaxed – export!): smugglers currently swap BC bud for American guns and cocaine. Legalisation proponents argue that proper regulation of the drug trade in Canada would cut down on this kind of activity – but that’s a (complex) argument for another day.
Bowling for Columbine included several interesting comparisons between the US and Canada, including one on the nature of our news and political discourse. But I’ve heard numerous criticisms of Moore’s approach to that movie, including one that claimed the gun transaction within a bank was staged – the “open a new account and get a free gun” offer was genuine, but apparently it was Moore who insisted that he was given the gun in the actual branch; most customers were referred to a nearby gun shop. Then again, the branch management let it happen – on camera! Unbelievable.
I think one of the worst bits in Bowling for Columbine was when they showed the numbers of people killed with guns in different countries. The US was of course the highest, but that was rather meaningless when comparing it with the UK or France that have a fraction of the population. The numbers Henry mentioned above are much more useful. On the same website (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita) I found the firearm homicide rate per 100,000 pop. (most recent) by country, there the US scores #8 (3.6), but unfortunately data isn’t available for e.g. Switzerland.
I would take the Wikipedia page showing the list of countries by gun ownership with a big bag of salt. In my experience every household in Iraq has at least one firearm, often one AK-47 and a handgun. I would expect the same of countries like Yemen etc, but they are not really comparable with the US (understatement I know). I am not surprised to see France rating quite high, there is a large minority of hunters there and many have several guns. There is even a hunting political party (Chasse, pêche nature et tradition). Additionally, many people in the countryside keep a shotgun to scare off wild boars or shoot pigeons/foxes. And Cath, I have a friend that was shot at by a hunter for daring to cycle (on a public roaming path) in his line of fire.
What’s interesting in the US is that they treat the constitution as a religious document, not a historical one. For the time it was written in it was progressive and modern, but that was 200 years ago, since then the US have moved from fighting against the most powerful empire on earth with a ragtag militia to being the most powerful
empirecountry on earth with the richest military! As long as the constitution is seen as inviolable, I don’t expect a change in attitudes to guns in the US. It is an attitude that puzzles me, partly because as Henry mentioned some countries manage perfectly fine without one, and others are quite happy updating it every now and then (France is on its fifth iteration, and there’s talk of moving to sixth).Alejandro – It is interesting, is it not, that despite the lack of arms control in Chile, you are much less likely to be murdered in Chile than in the USA? According to the statistics provided by chall, the US has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, whereas Chile doesn’t even feature on this list – although, as Nico says, this list (by its own admission) should be treatead with caution.
However, another list of firearms-related deaths by country puts the USA fourth (after Brazil, Estonia and Mexico), with Switzerland 8th, France 9th and Canada 10th. Chile comes well down the list, followed by Colombia. This is a marked contrast given that Colombia is the murder capital of the world.
This suggests to me that figures of likelihood of murder by country are distorted by the fact that some people are more likely to be murdered than others. Alejandro hints at this in his comment, and ricardipus also raises that question. I suspect that you are much more likely to be murdered in the US if you are a young black male in a city than a member of any other group. I went into this for ‘Science in California’, a feature I did back in 1993 for your favourite weekly science magazine beginning with N, and discovered that this distortion is so marked that black people in LA are moving back to the Deep South because it’s safer. In the UK, violent crime is relatively low overall, but tends to be more concentrated in cities, and particularly in the black community.
@Cath – I haven’t seen ‘Bowling for Columbine’, partly because I don’t like (what I’ve heard about) Moore’s style, in that it’s not always easy to know what’s unbiased documentary and what’s a set-up. The same is true for Borat, but that’s sold as a comedy, or perhaps a satire.
Henry> I wouldn’t believe the wikipage I linked to too much.. .but it gave some idea imho about the reports from western countries that I’ve read about in other reports (data got presented after those horrible school shootings; Scotland, Germany and latest Finland).
As for the “risk of getting shot/getting murdered” I would think that the picture is a lot different depending on who you are and where you are. As you mention, and as I have thought reading data about violence, Columbia, South Africa and northern Mexico (especially along the border to US) are very high in murder… although, all statistics/data should be viewed based on if you actually report these numbers. Some countries probably make them smaller (esp if they are trying to sell themselves off as tourist countries).
As for the risk of being shot in the US, breaking it down on state/socio-economics/ethnicity might help with the number since it is going to be very different. As for example infant death … (mentioning this since it is a huge difference btw states, and socio economics which makes the “average” number pretty useless imho).
Henry, I’d say that Columbine is still well worth watching, as long as you bear those caveats in mind
Chall, yeah, Vancouver has a fairly high gun crime rate on paper – but almost every single incident is linked to drugs and gangs. If you’re not involved in those activities, it’s a very safe city with hardly any random violence. So the stats can definitely be misleading.
Perhaps all those who advocate the general availability of guns should be made to live with the consequences. Dead people are … well … dead, and can be conveniently
buriedforgotten about. But for those maimed but still living, gunshot wounds have consequences. Whatever happens to the perpetrator, Gabrielle Giffords will be coming to terms with her injuries for the rest of her life. Perhaps people convicted of gun crime should be forced to visit and perhaps care for those they have so grievously maimed.Pingback: Gun-deaths and banker’s bonuses « Girl, Interrupting
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