Three Hundred Million

Offering condolences to everyone who suffered from the awful actions of that follower of bedlam, would seem a bit hollow in light of the NRA’s dogmatic belief that there’s nothing wrong with the second amendment! The assassin, legally, well mostly, amassed an armoury with undoubted horrendous intent.

Losing loved ones is a heavy price to pay for the right of others to arm themselves and blithely roll out the old chestnut, ‘it’s people who kill and not guns’. From this little corner, I offer my condolences. On tonight’s news there were pictures of those who will never come home – people making the best of their lives, enjoying a night out. Innocent. Not forgetting the injured, so many of them and there are the families, sad and tired families who to a greater or lesser extent will have to foot the bill for treatment, rehabilitation and for funerals. Wouldn’t it be appropriate for the NRA to foot those bills or at least make a contribution? Well that’s unlikely, instead their donations go towards political might that protects their bang-bang existence.

The idea of the second amendment, as far as I can make out was for personal protection – a hark-back to the Wild West. Well, because I was outraged when I saw those pictures, I checked some figures, the most recent, 2012. In 2012 there were apparently three hundred million (registered) firearms in the US. In that year there were 29,815 firearm-related fatalities. That means close to 1% of all firearms killed someone. (I found no stats about woundings but didn’t look too hard.) 8342 of the deaths were due to criminal activity. 20,666 were suicides – does that stagger you? 548 were accidental and for self-defence there were 259 killings. So, self-defence killings amounted to only 0.87% of all killings. Those figures don’t point to a strong case for the need of the second amendment.

What about the deterrent effect then? Certainly it’s not working with Pyongyang and nuclear arms! To counter ‘home protection’ all robbers and home invaders would need to do, is out-gun the people they are robbing or invading. And in the present environment, that’s very easy to do - simple mathematics!

Pretty much all that can be said has been said about the need for a constitutional law change, and granted, I’m no expert on such things, but it’s no use expecting the President to modify the constitution, it’s Congress that has the power to do that. So how does a democratically elected Congress not represent the electorate but instead represents lobby groups like the NRA – or does the whole country in fact enjoy having the second amendment? Well that’s not for me to say.

The second amendment was ratified December 1791 – I wonder what type of weapons those legislators had in mind? Even the smart, repeating, ‘Henry Rifle’, the Winchester .44 wasn’t produced until 1860 – they’re the ones John Wayne and Co rode the range with, and despite what might you have seen in the movies, they weren’t all that accurate nor did they fire very far. Since then firearm technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, but not so firearm legislation. It seems obvious to an outsider that unless lessons are learned, assassinations will continue – stark history tells us that. It also seems obvious that there is a link between easy access to firearms and assassinations. If you want to bring people into the equation, there may well be an element of competitiveness where the killer(s) want go down in history after causing the ultimate amount of damage.

Again, from an outsider’s point of view, there is something that can be done. But first, every person who owns a firearm has to look inward, soul-search and truly ask if they are indeed prepared to give up their weapon(s). If not, then the status quo will continue – end of story. But if there is a willingness, there is always the first amendment – freedom of speech. Isn’t the United States of America a democracy? Aren’t Congress put in place by the people? Aren’t they supposed to represent the wishes of the people? Every voter has the right to lobby his or her representative, so the answer is write letters, emails, tweets or whatever to your representative and promise that if something is not done, there will be no tick on the ballot paper for them next time. Imagine drafting an email to your Congressperson, and daily, resending it. It’s easy to do and powerful – the first amendment, the message just might get through.

It’s worth remembering: that tick on the ballot paper is arguably the only real power a citizen has. Make it count people!