Again a shooting. Another in a long tragic and painful chain of school shootings in the USA. Once again the gun control debate reopens throughout the country as both sides get their argumentative ammunition ready. We´ll hear again about people´s right to bear arms, and about statistics. Some will remind us that this has happened in other places (Google: Oslo Massacre 2011) and that it has happened as well where people have had no access to guns (Google: China Knife Attacks 2010). Statistics will be fired in every direction: percentage of gun crimes carried out with legally obtained weapons, number of these weapons that end up in the wrong hands, gun crimes in the USA vs countries where access to firearms is limited, number of criminals who claim they would not have killed if they had known for a fact that there were other armed people among their potential victims, and so on. More than anything, people will adopt a position somewhere around the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
The Second Amendment is the part of the Constitution´s Bill of Rights that defends the people´s right to "keep and bear arms." The Bill of Rights is the term applied to the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in order to guarantee basic rights (such as freedom of speech and a fair trial) to all Americans, as well as to limit the powers of Government. Viewed from a 21st century point of view, especially from outside the US, the fact that having firearms is considered a basic right seems crazy to say the least. We should consider things within their context though, and the 2nd Amendment´s context was very different from anything we deem normal nowadays. The 13 Colonies had just earned their independence, war had just ended, and newly declared American people understood that if they wanted to protect their lives, property, families, and freedom they had to do it themselves. After decades of being abused by the British Crown, it was only understandable that they wanted the right to protect themselves and rebel against an unfair rule guaranteed in writing. In present day people debate whether the guarantees established by the second amendment are still necessary.
As I have said before, every time there is intense debate over anything we must stop and wonder what the other side is seeing that we are not. Thus I am willing to accept some of the reasons told by people who use the self-defense argument as logical. For example that those who legally buy weapons are NOT the ones that commit gun crimes, or that states that are more permissive with guns are NOT the ones with the highest gun crime rates. However it is not easy for me to understand that people defend the right to have assault weapons. I personally don´t understand, but I don´t judge either, those who want to have hunting guns. I certainly don´t share the idea of having a revolver for self-protection at home, but I can sometimes understand it. But I most definitely can´t accept that we allow anyone to have guns that were specifically designed to kill people. Accurately. Multiple people at a time. Who can seriously claim that people who buy this kind of weapon have self-defense in mind? Self-defense against what? An army of mercenaries?
As President Obama said, "the complex causes of gun crime can´t be an excuse for inaction" and something has to be done. Some US politicians have already promised they will propose a nation-wide ban on assault weapons (which I applaud, but is not enough), and everyone throughout the country is urging people to reflect on what needs to be changed to prevent another massacre like the one in Newton, Conn. It is hard to say. I certainly have no answer. It breaks my heart to think of the families who sent their little ones to school just another Friday morning and never saw them return. I can´t begin to imagine the pain they must be going through as I type these words. The thought that there is something deeply wrong with a country that produces the kind of monster who would perpetrate such an act is only slightly alleviated by the idea that the overwhelming majority of us are NOT like that. Most of us wish to change something. Most of us send our condolences and prayers to the families of the victims. But nothing we do or say will bring them back.
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