I am from the UK and I was going to say that I am lucky enough to live in a country that has strict gun laws, but that would be a lie.
It is not down to luck.
Almost 22 years ago on the 13th March 1996 a man killed 16 children, a teacher and injuring 15 others before committing suicide in Dunblane Primary School.
It was, and still is, the deadliest mass shooting in British history.
People were obviously outraged by the atrocity and by the next year it was illegal to own handguns (basically any gun not barrell loaded) unless they were of ‘historical importance’ i.e. made before 1919.
Owning a gun legally in the UK is hard. You must get a 5 year licence i.e. a background/capability check (yup it runs out), you must give a valid reason for needing a gun (i.e. the humane slaughter of animals/vermin); self defence is not a valid reason for owning a gun. You must be subjected to an inspection of your home where you have to show police where you are keeping the guns and ammunition, these must be kept in separate locked containers, and if you are needing to move the guns you must show that these containers can be moved whilst the guns are locked away.
Through all of this we have one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the word and last year only 26 people died in a gun related incidents (this includes air rifles and imitation guns), and most of these are from illegally obtained guns. It’s got to the point that if someone does die of a gunshot wound it is on the national news.
This being said we have a healthy National Rifle Association in the UK, but instead of demanding people be allowed to own weapons they teach marksmanship (traditional and modern) and promote shooting sports like clay pigeon shooting, which is very fun and we often have it at village fêtes.
The fact that gun control is still a debate in the US is astounding to me.
The fact that Sandy Hook was 5 years ago and there is still a debate on whether gun owners should be subjected to background checks is astounding to me.
The fact that someone can get an automatic or semi-automatic weapon and shoot hundreds of innocent people from the 32nd floor of a hotel is astounding to me.
The fact that each year we hear on the news that there has been the ‘deadliest mass shooting in American history’ is astounding to me.
How is this even a conversation?
Call your senators, your representatives at all layers of government, tell them you want stricter gun laws, tell them that this can’t keep happening.
The best thing you can do to honour the victims in Las Vegas is to make sure something like this can never happen again.
I remember seeing news reports the Dunblane massacre on television, and being too terrified to go to school the next day. I ended up faking stomach pain to convince my parents to let me have the day off school. And it was several weeks before I felt I could truly relax in school, and wasn’t constantly glancing around for the nearest exit/hiding place. As a grown up now, the idea of a child feeling like this, planning what to do in the event of a madman bursting into her classroom, is horrifying.
How do children in the US states with more laissez-faire gun control laws cope? If one event in my lifetime would terrify me so much, how do you find the will to go into school every day? Children don’t deserve to live in fear like that.
“last year only 26 people died in a gun related incidents”
^^ Is that real? That number is so astoundingly low it’s mind boggling to me. It seems in the US we have come to accept gun-related deaths as an inevitability. It’s depressing.
I think when I was a kid I clung to the idea that school shootings, or any shootings, were things that happened to other people, elsewhere. Now that I’m an adult, I can no longer depend on that fallacy. And honestly, I do live in fear. It’s strongest after an event like this, of course, but it’s always there. I look for ways out in crowded spaces. The possibility of a shooting is always at the back of my mind at school, in movie theaters, or any gathering with large numbers of people. And yes, I profile. Lone, white male adults scare the ever loving hell out of me, especially if they’re acting suspicious. But what is suspicious behavior? Everything. Anything. It feels like nowhere is actually safe.
Honestly what I find the most crazy is that our reaction to international terrorism in this country is so much more extreme, and yet those events are much rarer. You are much more likely to be killed by an American with a gun in America than a terrorist.
There are some events in UK history that everyone still talks about in hushed whispers. The Dunblaine massacre is one of them. There are any unfair things in the world; disease, natural disasters, war. But school shootings are a special kind of awful that sticks in your memory.
Yes, we really don’t have many gun crimes AFAIK. Stabbings are a problem (particularly in London), and they appear to predominantly affect young people. I’ll be honest, we don’t do enough to engage young people and support those caught up in gang violence. Recently acid attacks have been increasing, perhaps because of increased control over knives. Obviously neither of those are causing anything close to the sheer amount of casualties that the US gun situation are causing. We still have our own problems that need addressing, though, and I feel it worth pointing out that we too could do better.
What happened in Las Vegas was a tragedy, just like the many other shootings that preceded it. It seems a huge number of people were injured, on top of significant casualties, and I hope all the affected and their family and friends get adequate support. The news moves on, and soon enough there will be some other thing to divert the public’s attention, but many people will be living with physical and mental consequences for the rest of their lives.
I’m not American, and therefore I know I and many people commenting on this post don’t share the same culture. And that’s true; the culture in many countries is less individualistic or focused on the self at the expense of others. But culture is not infallible, and culture is not an excuse, and cultures can and do change, when those within the culture need them to. Culture is not an excuse.
Last year the AMA declared gun violence to be a Public Health issue. With the aim of encouraging research into what could be done to prevent it. This is what they said:
“With approximately 30,000 men, women and children dying each year at
the barrel of a gun in elementary schools, movie theaters, workplaces,
houses of worship and on live television, the United States faces a
public health crisis of gun violence,” said AMA President Steven J.
Stack, M.D. “Even as America faces a crisis unrivaled in any other
developed country, the Congress prohibits the CDC from conducting the
very research that would help us understand the problems associated with
gun violence and determine how to reduce the high rate of
firearm-related deaths and injuries. An epidemiological analysis of gun
violence is vital so physicians and other health providers, law
enforcement, and society at large may be able to prevent injury, death
and other harms to society resulting from firearms.”I don’t think this has proved popular with certain circles. But plenty of others agree that research on what is happening with guns in the US, and the debate around them shouldn’t be left to the gun lobby. There are a lot of arguments against changing the controls around guns, mostly centred around the idea that “they just won’t work”, but without proper research, how can anyone know what seems to help, and what doesn’t? So it makes sense that an increased importance should be applied to researching what is going on with US gun ownership, and how that is affecting public health in the US.
Thinking about it in Public Health terms is perhaps quite fitting. When we think about poor sanitation in, say, rural India, we think of how they can improve local infrastructure to support sanitation. How use of toilets can be encouraged in a culture where open-air is preferred. We think about local cultural beliefs, and encourage local initiatives to adapt culture in ways that improve hygeine. We think about how we can get more girls to stay in school in, for example, a village in Mozambique, if they had access to sanitary products and clean water, and what kind of cultural change might make it easier for girls around the world to stay in education, and therefore have a knockon effect on improving the lives of not only those girls but their future families. We think about road traffic accidents around the world, and how many are prevented by things like good roads, seatbelt use, enforcement of safety rules etc, and how mortality from RTAs is much higher in countries where the above are not enforced because it’s “not the culture”.
As people (particularly Westerners) we like to believe in individualism. It’s reassuring to think of shooters as one random person who lost it and did something terrible. But when we look at it on a bigger scale, it clearly isn’t; this sort of thing happens almost every day somewhere in the US. It’s not just one individual, it’s many individuals, acting alone but along lines that are perhaps predictable, or at least something we can try to understand.
I, and many of us around the world, will probably never fully apreciate the US’s cultural fascination with guns. I can understand the desire to defend oneself, of course, but our cultural background will always be different.
To many of us around the world, refusing to change gun laws when 30,000
people die every year due to gun violence, just so people can have a
theoretical right to bear arms seems illogical. Sorry, but it does. The British Army isn’t
coming back to claim the US any more. Despite protestations, I don’t believe that having more guns present in an event like this will
solve things; people would either (like the band in this case) be too afraid to use
their weapons for fear of being mistaken for a shooter, or else you’d
risk a situation with lots of relatively untrained shooters in subpar
lighting shooting everywhere whilst people are trying to flee. I fear
many more would be caught in the crossfire.To someone who comes from a country where there’s a lot less gun use all round, the idea of more guns somehow fixing things seems inherently wrong. But there’s a significant number of people who hold strong views
I get that guns are a part of life for some of the SU, and when people talk about gun control, it feels like a bunch of outsiders telling you that you can’t live how you always lived. Even if the voices that speak loudest are coming from within the US. But surely, rather than completely resisting, there must be some kind of controls, some kind of trials that can be done to try and compromise. It’s precisely because the US has a huge cultural obsession with guns that perhaps it needs to be tackled on a massive, public health scale. Because the US isn’t special or above reproach; it’s not better than India or Mozambique or the Sudan, or anywhere else where large numbers of people are suffering from something which requires a systemic approach to making things better. Any country in which people are suffering or dying can and should think about what can be done at a cultural and systemic level to address it.
But saying that that the gun issue is cultural and therefore untouchable doesn’t sit well, ethically. Not if we’re looking at it through the lens of Public Health. There are many cultural elements around the world that make implementing plans that could help people much more tricky; the US is not a special case in that way. We don’t just say “Well, female genital mutilation is cultural, so that’s OK, then.” Because it harms people. So we work with local grassroots initiatives who understand the culture, who spread knowledge of the harms locally, and who slowly adapt local culture until it isn’t seen as necessary any more. And slowly, things change. Because sometimes cultures need to change if they are harming their people. And 30,000 dead every year sounds like a significant amount of harm to this outsider.
Some of the points you make are good, but I have to kind of disagree with you in certain respects (and I know you to be a kind, thoughtful, and caring person and so I know that everything you say here is with the best of intention.). Partially because I’m not really here for foreigners, especially the British, interjecting in the national conversation about guns.
First, culture is the single most influential thing in an individual’s life. All of those changes you mention were precipitated by cultural change. There is actually a specific job for people who help medicine and culture come together: a medical anthropologist. That’s because neither exists in a vacuum, and neither is independent. And there are lots of medical practices, even in western biomedicine, that depend on cultural influence to not only be legal but to work at all (which I’m not going to go into because we don’t need a long ass sidebar about culture and the placebo effect.). But the problem of guns in the US isn’t a medical one, it’s an emotional one.
Anyway, to change a problem you have to understand it and what it is very difficult for non-Americans to understand what we mean when we say “it won’t work” and why I’m not here for British commentary on American laws. We are what you made us. The first amendment exists because the British didn’t want the rebels organizing. The second amendment exists because the British didn’t want the rebels arming. The third amendment exists because the British forced the colonists to feed and house soldiers. The fourth amendment exists because the British illegally arrested people they suspected of being rebels. Do you see where I’m going with this? It isn’t culture that we’re fighting with, it’s identity. It’s well and good to joke about bootstrapping and whatnot, but that rebel is hard-wired into our national identity. It’s right there in the simplest laws we have. And, as the writer of The Oatmeal talks about here, that’s a much more difficult thing to change.
Simply put, Americans don’t follow laws we think are unjust. We usually point to prohibition as an example of this, but it happens all the time. If we don’t agree with a law we break it and protest it until it changes. So if we think that gun laws are wrong, we just won’t follow them. This is the most fundamental American thing that exists. It is our national identity. And it’s all well and good to joke that Americans are like “…hold my beer” or that we’re independent or that we’re rambunctious and loud, and I enjoy those jokes at our nation’s expense because I think everyone involved understands that there are aspects to the American rebel that are both fun and good. But if you try to tamper with the identity of the American rebel, then God help you. We do nothing we don’t want to do. In our national heart of hearts we are still that ungovernable, rebellious group of colonies. Even people who hate the gov’t are encouraged to do so because rebellion and independence are positively correlated in American culture.
Nothing is more goddamned *eagle screech* American than protesting. Nothing could be more opposite of being British than that. Of course you (the country, not you specifically Dr Dx.) don’t understand it. You didn’t understand it ~200 years ago either. You don’t understand it when the Scots did/do it either (FYI, *many* of the original rebels were Scottish. We share a close kinship with them.). A lot of modern Americans love modern brits and modern England (myself included) and the modern UK and are perfectly happy with the fact that we’re now close allies. We think the dad jokes are hilarious. But if you ask the average person what they think of redcoats, you’ll get a different answer. Our national identities are fundamentally different.
In theory, the American laws were designed so that the gov’t ruled by consent of the people, and that we basically hold our own gov’t hostage. There’s this quote from an episode of The West Wing that exemplifies this well. Leo, who is the chief of staff, says to the president:
“…
So, my friend, if you want to start using American military strength as the arm of the Lord, you can do that. We’re the only superpower left. You can conquer the world, like Charlemagne. But you’d better be prepared to kill everyone. And you had better start with me because I will raise up an army against you and *I* will beat you.”
So all American politicking and lobbying and use of the media is an attempt by whatever group (in this case the NRA) to manipulate or circumvent the American rebel. To avoid notice long enough to gain power, or to find a way to harness the power of American rebellion. Of American identity. And that is why organizations like the NRA are so influential and strong. They have learned to manipulate the American rebellious independence in their favor. If you’ll notice, those who most feel themselves the epitome of the American national identity are those that most fervently defend guns. If there was a way to make Americans think that controlling guns was an act of rebellion, it would happen tomorrow. Same with healthcare or any of the billion other things that are wrong with our country. It’s difficult to articulate to an outsider, and that’s why any interjection into the gun conversation by people of other nationalities isn’t going to work. Because you’re right, you don’t understand it. Your nation was not born from the barrel of a privately owned gun. It was not held together by one, either.
This is the root of the problem – national and personal identity. People will protect that against all logic. And every human being ever is completely susceptible to the culture they live in. To the narrative they’re surrounded by. The thing that’s normal to them. Every. Last. Person. That’s why it changes so slowly. That’s why when the NRA dumps millions into saying “guns are part of your identity, don’t let them take away your identity” it works so fucking well. Could we vote and change it? Sure. We could. We could force them to change the laws. We could make it unconscionable to be a politician and say “gun control and single payer healthcare are bad”, but we won’t. Not until saying those things makes someone un-American.
I think that my country is going through the stages of a violent adolescence. We are a young country with all the problems of an old one and the responsibility that comes with being the only true superpower left. We need to learn and grow and figure out how to re-adjust our national identity, or nothing is going to change. If we had someone who knew how to connect gun control to the American rebel and had the money to get the word out, we’d have the gun control we so badly need. But if you think that repeated arguments after repeated mass shootings are somehow going to magically make people wake up and change, then you have no idea how American politics – or America, period – works. And you don’t understand how intertwined with American history guns are. Cultural shift, identity shift, are the ONLY ways to make this happen because Americans just don’t follow laws they think are bad.
With the exception of Canada we have a similar mindset in the rest of the Americas. As former oppressed colonies we hate being told what to do especially when it comes to defending ourselves…