I heard about it on the radio yesterday and I wasn’t quite sure I was understanding the Swedish correctly. They’ve been talking about it all day on the radio and of course Swedes and the resident Russian can’t understand why the U.S. doesn’t do something about its gun problem. And I can’t either, 15 years after the shooting on my own college campus.
I don’t really want to write any more about it, but Rooted Cosmopolitans have some words of wisdom.
My thoughts are with you, Hokies.
Edit: I guess I do want to write a little more about it. I’ve been avoiding reading too much news coverage because it can’t tell me anything I don’t already know. The particulars of the perpetrator are irrelevant, considering that this is a regularly recurring phenomenon in the U.S. I think I used to be much more into the “America is a sick society” explanation for these things, especially immediately after what happened to us at Simon’s Rock. After having travelled a bit, I think the “America is a sick society” explanation mostly applies to the gun lobby. People go off the deep end everywhere in this world, but the difference between whether a disturbed person stabs somebody or beats somebody up, or whether they manage to kill 32 people in a couple of hours has everything to do with the availability of firearms. Can we reduce violence in this world by working to create mentally healthier societies? To a certain extent. Can we reduce the amount of carnage people can create when they go nuts by making firearms difficult to get, as most of the civilized world has done? Absolutely. The American gun lobby is directly responsible for this horror.
Some organizations that are doing something about it:
Stop the NRA
Million Mom March
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Brady Campaign
11 comments
Comments feed for this article
18 April 2007 at 12:31 pm
looby
And AIUI independent surveys show that a majority of Americans would be in favour of stiffer gun laws.
It’s easy to gloat at times like this and I know the UK’s not perfect, but I’m so glad I was born a European.
18 April 2007 at 8:05 pm
Anonymous
The state of Virgina has some of the laxes laws regarding gun control in the US. According to the Brady Campaign website, Virgina’s report card is a C-. Sad, sad.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislation/state/viewstate.php?st=va
18 April 2007 at 8:14 pm
Anand "EhhTee" Trivedi
Thanks for thinking of me(us).
There is a lot of rumble here in Washington about gun laws this and gun laws that, but in the end it’ll be all for naught because nothing will actually be done. Yes, gun laws in America are a joke. However, what is worse is gun law enforcement.
18 April 2007 at 9:11 pm
jfaberuiuc
Hey Megan, I’ve got to agree with that update completely. Americans may have some strange psychological tendencies, but it’s hard to point out any massive differences between us and much of the rest of the world, especially among younger people (as we age, I suppose we interact more with work, the healthcare system, etc, where cultural differences play more of a role). In the end, a tiny number of people will snap, and if they live anywhere near a movie screen, they’ll have seen enough violence to possibly have dreams of emulating it. What much of the rest of the world lacks is instant access to weaponry to accomplish this task.
In some sense, this incident is particularly clarifying. It’s hard to name a specific law that would have stopped the crime, since gun culture is so pervasive that we need wholesale change as a society to really drive down the numbers. Until that point, widespread gun ownership will remain correlated with widescale gunshot deaths, as we’ve seen timeand time again.
21 April 2007 at 7:18 am
Anonymous
I’d like to throw a few flys in the milk to borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan. (have to add a little humor as the rest is kind of harsh)
At a time in the States when many civic liberties have been compromised in the name of the government keeping us safer, with laws such as the so called patriot act, along with its domestic surveillance program, I’m not sure gun control is going to have a leg to stand on even with the dems, although they will be faulted.
I guess there is a differing perception of violence, killing, and what makes you safer around the world. Europe has a history of ethnic cleansing, even recently. I’m not sure it is a model for peace just yet.
And yes I agree, the UK is not perfect. The conflict in Northern Ireland was long and ugly. Perhaps if they banned religion there would be less violence, but I think that has been tried other places. And yes, it is easy to gloat.
don
21 April 2007 at 10:36 am
Megan Case
Sorry, I don’t consider owning a weapon to be a civil liberty. It’s amazing that the Bush administration is wiling to erode any and all civil liberties except that one.
The point is, in countries which don’t allow ordinary citizens to own semiautomatic weapons, people don’t tend to shoot each other up for no apparent reason. Killing people for apparent reasons is no better of course, but the root causes are different.
24 April 2007 at 4:34 am
don
I’ve been giving this some thought Megan. I don’t own any handguns BTW. I am from Montana and do own a couple of hunting rifles. One of them is my grandfathers saddle rifle, bla bla bla.
Civilians in the states are allowed to own handguns. So it is, pretty much a civil liberty, like it or not, despite what you consider it to be. I did see that you made a distinction for semi auto. I assume that you have no problem with revolvers. I won’t argue the difference. Although an insane shooter could come in with three or four six shooters and still raise hell, and there are very fast ways to re-load revolvers.
I guess my point was, (despite my reaction to the UK reader) gun ownership might be more of a corner stone of our society/ free society, than we would like to think, at a time when we can’t trust the judgement of our government to make good decisions on our behalf.
About Vonnegut. I’ve recently read a book about the bombing of Dresden. The author outlines the civil liberties that were removed by the nazis one by one. Gun ownership was one of the first. Dog ownership, of all things, by Jews was another. Left political parties. And in short order democracy fell to a wicked regime.
I enjoy your blog. I didn’t intend to offend anyone by my first comment. I just wanted to add a few flys to the milk. I thought the conversation needed it.
25 April 2007 at 8:10 am
Megan Case
Hey Don,
Well, I’m no fan of hunting, but I don’t really see hunting rifles as part of the problem at hand.
It’s true that as part of the bill of rights gun ownership is technically a civil liberty in the U.S. But I don’t think that it should be. As you allude to, the second amendment goes back to a time when the revolutionary war was more recent and the possibility of people taking up arms against an oppressive government made sense. But do you really think that could happen today? Do you really think that an armed rebellion could succeed in the U.S.? The FBI would be all over that before any group could really get started. So the second amendment is basically obsolete, and basically only serves to allow nutjobs to shoot other people up for no reason.
25 April 2007 at 4:55 pm
Anand "EhhTee" Trivedi
A fair number of gun enthusiast will always sight that it’s a given right to own guns because it’s in the constitution.
Every one knows the “right to… bear arms” part. Not everyone really stops to think about the amendment as a whole:
“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.”
It’s been a long time since we needed John or Jane Q. Smith to have a gun to protect his or her state. The well placed commas are always misinterpreted. The second amendment actually states: “A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed.”
Since the days of the Bill of Rights, we have formed something called the National Guard — a well regulated Militia. Because of this the stuff in the middle, the stuff about “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, is now obsolete.
The amendment was always about protecting the state… not owning guns.
26 April 2007 at 1:48 am
don
My response has two components.
I’m not commenting to debate the bill of rights or the second amendment. This isn’t about what I think on that issue or any one issue. I may not think that someone should be able to walk into a pawn shop and buy a handgun, but if “we” enter into that debate no doubt it would be polarized on political lines and nothing would be resolved.
I think there is a greater risk that faces us regarding the importance of an independent judiciary to decide these matters.
Recently, justices O’Connor and Breyer spoke out about the attacks on the judiciary. In brief, they pointed out the importance of an independent judiciary, and cited as one example, a law that was introduced in South Dakota, if I remember, that was called “Jail for Judges” in which a judge could be tried in court for an unpopular decision. They pointed out the risk of the executive and or ledgeslative branches of government interfering in the courts.
Scalia suggested that the greater danger to the courts is “evolving Constitution” being created by judges who combine the law and politics. The Justices did share their concern about the lack of understanding people have for the Constitution.
(My source for some of that is the Blog of the American Constitution Society, but I also heard O’Connor and Breyer in the media/ Radio and TV, speaking to this issue.)
Having said that, the second component to my repsonse is, that the legality of the issue, be it gun control or something else like abortion, is only as good as the system on which it is based. Lack of a change on an issue floating up and down in the political tides might represent a greater good. It might infact be counter-intuitive for our well being.
I’m more worried about the rule of law at this point than an armed rebellion.
28 April 2007 at 4:44 am
don
Hey! I think I might have gotten the last word in.
I’ll just point out to anand, that our National Guard is off stretched to its limit protecting the “state” in Iraq. Well regulated… And that’s just one last fly in the milk.