The latest mass shooting in a school in Uvalde, Texas, has shaken the world’s conscience, not just that of the United States. The shooter was a teen who shot his grandmother in the face with his AR-15 assault rifle before heading to an elementary school where he shot a class of little fourth graders taking a total of 21 lives, 19 of whom were children. According to the Gun Violence Archive, this is the 27th school shooting and the 212th mass shooting overall just five months into 2022.
While the Texas school shooting has heated up the unending political battle between Republicans and Democrats over gun control laws, they fail to recognise that this is a problem endemic to the United States and calls for urgent action in the interest of the vulnerable, especially the school-going children who are at risk of being massacred by some or other type of armed lunatic. This is a human rights calamity that warrants immediate social and political cohesion as opposed to the war of words that politicians have been engaging in.
There are obvious obstacles to arriving at a solution in this case— Guns, including heavy assault weapons, are easily accessible to prospective buyers whereas licensing is loosely practised depending on state laws rather than a country-wide licensing law. In some states, there is no license required at all. The political left in the US seeks tighter gun control laws, federal licensing, stronger background checks and even the identification of ‘high risk’ individuals and confiscation. The political right, on the other hand, supports the right to bear arms for individual gun owners. Ideally, these would be law-abiding citizens that keep guns for self-defence or hunting, and therefore the right is against confiscation or tightening of gun control laws that would make handguns and rifles less accessible, and licensing more difficult. They also do not believe that mass shootings would stop even if gun regulations were tightened, arguing that breaking gun laws would be the last thing on a killer’s mind when the motive is mass murder.
Whenever a mass shooting takes place, politicians look to follow a certain playbook as they look for a way to politicise it and would prefer looking for political motives which could be tied like a noose around the necks of their opponents. If the shooter is a white supremacist, the left’s attack on the right will intensify and the right will cite mental health, bad parenting and other such issues to resist the pressure. If the shooter turns out to be a black nationalist or an Antifa sympathiser, the right will have a field day pointing at the hypocrisy of the left, which would indeed go underground on the matter until the issue falls off the news cycle.
This however is a travesty of the real, deeper issue at hand. The United States has a deeply embedded gun culture, with roots in the American Civil War, which has been clubbed by its proponents with freedom. The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right protected under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution which was ratified in 1791. Firearms have evolved ever since becoming more lethal than they ever were before. Access to firearms on the other hand has only grown, and the gun manufacturing industry has emerged as a powerful political donor. To top that, the National Rifle Association, a lobbying group in favour of gun rights has deep pockets and deep associations with politicians, especially on the Republican side. Gun manufacturers have a direct interest in nurturing this lobbying group which spends millions every year to advance its political influence. Owing to this political ecosystem, the American market is ripe for gun manufacturers. According to the Pew Research Centre, 30% of Americans own guns whereas another 36% see themselves owning a gun in the future. Contrast this with just approximately 5% of Indians being licensed gun owners, and no general interest to own guns in the Indian psyche.
The USA’s free gun culture has taken a toll on neighbouring Canada and Mexico as well, which have tighter gun control laws but struggle with gun smuggling through the US border. At the southern border, drugs move from Mexico to the US and firearms move from the US to Mexico to further fortify the position of drug cartels. Mexico has been protesting gun smuggling and has even sued some gun manufacturers in the US.
When it comes to gun ownership, the United States has some seriously abnormal statistics as opposed to the rest of the world. The fact that the legal and political system mostly shields this gun culture is enough to call for policy change to a certain sensible extent, in line with the demands of the Democrats. But while high gun ownership rates increase the probability of gun crimes, any policy change will show effects only in the long term and not immediately, which is where the need for well-armed and trained security personnel in places such as schools emerges. The Democrats have had over 16 months in office since 2021 but mass shootings have only prevailed including in schools which remain unfortified. Scoring a point over Republicans, in this case, may be politically viable and even necessary until a preferable consensus is achieved, but that does not relieve the Democrats of their responsibility to curb gun crimes and secure neighbourhoods and schools through decisions to expand security covers that even the American right-wing would support. For this reason, the Democrats must change their “all-or-nothing” strategy of seeking sweeping legislation that keeps hitting a deadlock and formulate a middle path instead. For a party that has been more occupied calling for defunding the police, and defending rising crime rates in blue states, the Democratic Party is not one with the clearest conscience in the room. It has its own share of introspection to do and must work towards sensible solutions that would unite the country.
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