U.S. SPREE KILLING
HIGHLIGHTS SHOCKING
LAXITY IN FIREARMS
CONTROLS:
The devastating terrorist attack
by a lone gunman on a cinema audience in the city of Aurora, Colorado, last
Friday, 20/07/12, killing twelve innocent people and wounding 58 others has
once again spotlighted the failure of U.S. authorities to tackle the widespread
and easy availability of deadly weapons to the population at large which
results in the many incidents of this horrific nature which have occurred there
over recent years.
The incident has led to sharp
political debate in the media with the most notorious pro-gun lobby in the USA,
the National Rifle Association (NRA) immediately on the defensive with its “right
to bear arms” mantra with scant regard shown for the devastation caused by the
deaths and injuries in Aurora apart from a mealy mouthed PR statement of “regret”
that the incident happened.
In a presidential election year,
the leading contenders, incumbent Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and his
main opponent, Mitt Romney of the Republican Party both issued anodyne
statements of condolences for the victims but carefully avoided any mention of
the issue of gun control which neither wants to become an issue in the
election. However, most voters will be aware that Romney and the Republican
Party are stalwarts of the pro-gun lobby and will take no action but, President
Obama, if re-elected will be capable of taking some initiatives since he won’t
be looking for a third term in office. So, there is a clear political choice
for the voters even if it remains unstated.
Nevertheless, some politicians
are willing to speak out. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, the Long Island Congresswoman
who lost her husband and nearly lost her son at the hands of the deranged Long
Island Railroad killer, and has been the most stalwart crusader for protections
against gun violence, said, “The horrific nightmare of a mass shooting on
innocent civilians in a crowded public place has, sadly, come true once again.
I mourn alongside the people of Aurora for the many killed and injured and the
countless family and friends whose lives, as a result of the consequences of
this event, will be negatively affected for decades to come.
"The shooter should be
brought to justice and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But we as a
nation should also not continue to ignore avenues to prevent tragedies like
this from happening in the future.”
She is regularly targeted by the
NRA, which is spending a fortune to defeat her in the upcoming election.
New York State Assemblywoman
Michelle Schimel, the Assembly sponsor of microstamping legislation which would
make all semi-automatic handguns microstamp capable by 2013 (a measure which
has the support of 100 law enforcement agencies and elected officials), stated,
“I am deeply saddened once again by the tragedy that occurred in the Colorado
movie theatre. ....Elected officials on the State, local and Federal levels
must recognize that they are at a crossroad—gun violence is an epidemic in the
United States which is killing citizens in unprecedented numbers. I urge all
elected officials to come up with their plan on gun control once and for all to
protect our citizens.”
Statements also came from "Mayors
Against Illegal Guns": "Your heart shatters when you think of the family
members who were given the worst news imaginable, and we pray for the recovery
of the dozens who were injured, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,
co-chair, said in a statement "Now there will be many expressions of
support and condolences from politicians in the coming days, but maybe it's
time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up
and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a
problem across the country.
"There are so many murders
with guns every day – it's just got to stop. And instead of the two people –
President Obama and Governor Romney – talking in broad terms about what they
want to do to make the world a better place, okay, tell us how. And this is a
real problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter
where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely,
not just in generalities – specifically what are they going to do about guns? I
can tell you what we do here in New York. The State Legislature passed the
toughest gun laws – some other states may say no. That's okay, what do you want
to do? And maybe every Governor should stand up. But in the end, it is really
the leadership at a national level, which is whoever is going to be President
of the United States – what are they going to do about guns?
SCATHING
In a scathing attack on the
philosophy and tactics of Gun-Toters United, the NRA, Bill Moyers, managing
editor of the weekly current affairs TV “Moyers and Company”, said:
“You might think Wayne LaPierre,
Executive Vice President of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby,
the National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007,
at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, “Today,
there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure.” Two days later, a
young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students,
staff and teachers.
Just last week LaPierre showed up
at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and
spoke out against what he called “anti-freedom policies that disregard American
citizens’ right to self-defense.” Now at
least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down at a showing of the new
film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Batman movie filled with make-believe
violence. One of the guns the shooter reportedly used was an AK-47 type assault
weapon that was banned in 1994. The NRA pressured Congress to let the ban run
out in 2004.
Obviously, LaPierre’s timing
isn’t cosmic, just coincidental and unfortunate; as Shakespeare famously wrote,
“the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves”; in other words, people --
people with guns. There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in
four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. According to
the British newspaper The Guardian, over the last 30 years, “the number of
states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed
weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from
eight to 38.”
Every year there are 30,000 gun
deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm
violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated
with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
So why do we always act so
surprised? Violence is our alter ego,
wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer
shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in
Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span
quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in
2012.
We are a country which began with
the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on
arms against Native Americans for its westward expansion. In truth, more
settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted
gunshots wounds than Indian attacks – we were not only bloodthirsty but also
inept.
Nonetheless, we have become so
gun loving, so gun crazy, so blasé about home-grown violence that far more
Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our
wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords
shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic
pistol – doubled.
We are fooling ourselves. Fooling
ourselves that the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire
murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that
the Second Amendment’s guarantee of a “well-regulated militia” be construed as
a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you
like, a license for murder and mayhem. A great fraud has entered our history.
Maybe you remember a video you
can still see on YouTube. In it, Adam Gadahn, an American born member of al
Qaeda, the first US citizen charged with treason since 1952, urges terrorists
to carry out attacks on the United States.
Right before your eyes he says, “America is absolutely awash with easily
obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention
center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background
check, and most likely, without having to show an identification card. So what
are you waiting for?”
The gunman in Colorado waited
only for his opportunity. So there you have it – the arsenal of democracy has
been transformed into the arsenal of death. And the NRA? The NRA is the enabler
of death -- paranoid, delusional and as venomous as a scorpion. With the
weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has
turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel and deadly hoax”.
The discourse has widened with
academics and media analysts focussing on whether the particular film on show
at the Colorado theatre complex, the much hyped Warner Bros. production “The
Dark Knight Rises”, third in a trilogy of “Batman” comic book character feature
films by British director, Christopher
Nolan had any link to the mentality of the lone assassin. Nolan’s take on the
character in these films has been notably “darker” and laced with more
gratuitous violence than any previous outing of the same character and the Colorado
suspect was dressed in an outfit resembling that of the main villain in Nolan’s
film.
Nicholas Powers, Assistant
Professor of Literature at State Universityof New York ,Albany, New York offered this analysis:
“Early morning July 20, we
cheered the new Batman movie as a thousand miles away a crowd watching the same
film screamed as a gunman, barged in, flung a smoke bomb and began shooting. In
San Francisco, we left the cinema laughing at the stupid politics of The Dark
Knight Rises. In Aurora, Colorado, 12 were killed and 58 wounded as the shock
spread to the nation in the morning news. Already one truth stands out; the
shooting is not isolated but like a mirror reflects the dark logic of the film,
itself a reflection of America’s romance with violence.
One thing we know about the Aurora gunman is that he wanted a stage. Like the 2007
Virginia Tech massacre gunman Seiung-Hui Cho, who mailed videos of himself; or
the 1999 Columbine gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who meticulously
recorded themselves prepping for the massacre; the Dark Knight gunman wanted to
be seen. In killing others, he tried to secure for himself the image of a
strong powerful man who could wreck havoc on the world. And this is exactly the
role that Bane (acted by Tom Hardy), the anarchist villain in The Dark Knight
Rises, plays as he bombs Gotham City and unleashes enraged prisoners on the
rich. He and Wayne Enterprise executive Miranda Tate (played by Marion
Cotillard) avenge those trapped in The Pit and forgotten by society. Already
the Herald Sun reports that the Dark Knight gunman was dressed in armor and gas
mask, like Bane.
What are we to make of this? Only
someone whose self-identity is collapsing is driven to recreate themselves as a
new character. It is the dark logic of the Batman films, whose title character
begins as a boy who helplessly watches his parents murdered and transforms
himself into a terrifying hero who punishes criminals. Is this not the
archetypal plot in nearly every American superhero film and tragically,
perversely the self-narrative of many gun-wielding mass murderers?
At a deeper, historical level,
the superhero narratives are part of our national ideology in which
self-creation through violence has always been celebrated. When immigrant
Europeans chased the American dream, they did so with guns in their hands.
Seizing the Frontier from Natives, they became citizens of a new nation built
on stolen land by shooting enemies. Long after the Frontier was paved over, we
kept the mythology. Whether it’s the nomadic gunslinger of the Hollywood
Western, the renegade cops going rogue or pretty much every action hero,
Americans have been raised on the archetypal plot of men recreating themselves
through violence.
And this celebrated mythology,
replayed every day in every cinema, every TV, in books and music is seductive
and dangerous to what German professor Ines Geipel called the "Wounded
Outsiders." In her book The Amok Complex, she analysed five mass shootings
in Europe and distilled from the gunmen a common character. They live in pricey
towns, come from well-heeled families but are labelled outsiders due to their
failure to achieve in the high pressure of class paranoia. In an interview on
the German news site DW, she said that after being isolated they retreat into a
fictional world. “Most of them have a strong affinity to theater and film,”
Geipel said. “It is the desperate search for their own skin, for their own role
in life.”
In the British paper the
Independent, Dr. Keith Ashcroft wrote how the path from low self-esteem is
layered with resentment which becomes paranoia. The retreat from others into a
shrinking world of rage and self-pity creates the conditions for more social
isolation. A fast and powerful downward spiral begins that pulls the young men
into fantasies of revenge. And finally there is some triggering event, loss of
a lover or a job or a home that snaps him. “Their paranoia heightens the sense
that the whole world is against them, which increases their anger,” he wrote
“It is very immature to want a gun in order to have a sense of power and
fulfillment. But it is a way of regaining control.”
Add to this social isolation the
possibility of chemical neural imbalance, a history of abuse or trauma and it
is a toxic slush mixing in the mind of enraged young men. Finally, they stagger
inside a blacklit life and see other wounded men on the movie screen, wearing
masks and striking at the world. Virginia Tech gunman, Cho aptly detailed the
arc of a disintegrating self image and its resurrection through violence. In
his videos he declared, “You forced me into a corner and gave me only one
option. You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head,
terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time.”
Anyone who watched the recent
Batman movies will hear an echo of his lament in the villains. Ra’s al Ghul of
the League of Shadows wants to cure civilization of rot by burning it down. The
Joker’s nihilism drives his war on Gotham City. And now Bane and Miranda Tate
again want to destroy a world that already destroyed them.
In repeating this mythology of
regenerative masculine violence, we are creating stages where troubled lonely
men take their stand and act out our fantasy. It’s not that we have sick young
men among us. It’s that we have inherited and actively recreate a culture that
gives them a vocabulary of indiscriminate vigilante rage. And then we allow
guns to flow freely in the name of the Second Amendment. No wonder when they
speak they speak in bullets”.
No doubt, further controversy
will continue on the origins and causes of these events but, there is no excuse
for the delinquency of American politicians in failing to confront the NRA and
its perversion of democracy and the US Constitution and introduce without delay
effective legislation curbing
access to and use of deadly weapons by any lunatic with the cash to buy them at
the weapons supermarkets which exist in the USA. The non gun-toting citizens of
that country deserve the right to live and go about their peaceful business
without threat of lethal violence. These rights trump any spurious claims of
the NRA, the arms manufacturers and their political lackeys, Romney and the
Republican Party.
The wider world scene where the
US Government orders the killing of thousands of innocent civilians in its
brutal and illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and its
acts of subversion and coup-making in several Latin American countries, shows
the hypocrisy of the leading politicians there and that the US Government is
the world’s largest terrorist organisation and its own worst enemy, racked by
delusions and paranoia. Is it any wonder then, as noted above, that some of its citizens readily
resort to vicious violence against their neighbours in a tragic reflection of
their Governments criminal foreign policy?
FearFeasaMacLéinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin
Iúil/July 22 2012
