SO far this year, which is only half gone, almost 8,500 people have been killed and nearly 17,000 injured injured in one of the world’s least acknowledged wars. Among the dead have been more than 2,000 children. If this were virtually any other country, there would be an international outcry and a demand that something be done to stop the carnage. But this butchery is the United States of America and it has happened thanks to one of the basics of the US Constitution.
Under the Second Amendment passed on Dec. 15, 1791, all American citizens were guaranteed the right to bear arms. Ever since, that entitlement has been jealously defended, not least by US gunmakers and their powerful lobbying group, the National Rifle Association (NRA). But these shocking casualty figures, which include no less than 247 mass shootings since January, must call into question the wisdom of jealously guarding a right that was set in constitutional stone all of 227 years ago, when the young United States was a very different place. In part, the Second Amendment came about because of the suspicion of standing armies and the preference by those who were building the new nation, for instead placing reliance for the country’s defense upon citizens militias.
The Americans now boast the world’s strongest economy with arguably the world’s strongest armed forces. The militia tradition survives in the National Guard. US law officers are well-equipped, indeed looking at their paramilitary kit, over-equipped to handle criminals. Yet the NRA backs vigorously the constitutional right of Americans to own their own weapons for both sport and self-defense. They make the specific argument that it is not guns that kill people but the people who have the guns. Their riposte to horrific regular massacres is that an armed citizen could and sometimes has actually shot dead gunmen bent on mass-killing. This is not good enough. Thousands of US citizens are being dying for the sake of a constitutional provision that has long outlived its purpose and its usefulness.
The latest three victims of the Second Amendment included a six year-old and a youth aged 13, gunned down this week at, of all things, a California Garlic Festival. The 19 year-old killer, who was himself shot dead by police, had bought the high-powered assault rifle, perfectly legally, in neighboring Nevada earlier this month. Whatever cruel fantasies rushed through this young moron’s brain, it is absolutely clear that someone of his age and outlook should have been barred by law from possessing any weapon, let alone one with the devastating firepower of an assault rifle.
There is a growing body of opinion in the US that the current gun-ownership restrictions enforced in some states and city jurisdictions are woefully inadequate. What is needed is Federal legislation to impose tight licensing on those who can bear arms. Unfortunately President Donald Trump is not among those who are concerned. And the NRA is already limbering up its next argument which is that there are already so many weapons legally and illegally in circulation (43 percent of US household have one or more guns) that any attempt to curtail their ownership would be pointless. This is a counsel of despair. For how much longer can US leaders resist the removal of the Second Amendment?
