Gun control a lost cause in the US?

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THE SANDY HOOKS massacre was waiting to happen. And when it did one fateful Friday over two weeks ago, it wasn’t such a big surprise, was it?

This may sound harsh but not all that far-fetched. Precedents of shooting rampages in the US are well-documented. The situation is aggravated by unfettered proliferation of firearms in the country.

According to FBI estimates, privately-owned firearms in the US amount to a mind-boggling 200 million.

Add these to those from the military, law enforement agencies and museums, there is probably one gun to one American. In total, 350,000,000 guns are floating around and within easy reach.

In the latest carnage at Sandy Hooks elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a gunman brutally murdered 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old. The shooter had killed his mother at their home before breaking into the school to carry out the bloodbath.

The violence was the US’ second deadliest school shooting, surpassed only by the Virginia Tech massacre that claimed 33 lives in 2007. It re-ignited a nationwide (but not new) outcry for stricter gun control.

In the aftermath, President Barack Obama said “our hearts are broken today” and called for “meaningful action” to prevent similar shootings, saying: “As a country, we have been through this too many times. Surely, we cannot allow it to become routine.”

Indeed, there have been quite a number amok shootings in the US.

In Aurora, Colorado, this year, a gunman unloaded into a crowded suburban Denver theatre, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others.

A few years earlier, another gunman killed a Federal District judge and a nine-year-old girl and seriously wounded Arizona Congresswoman, Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords at a public function in Tucson, Arizona.

Back in 1999, two teenagers killed 15 people and injured 24 others in the Columbine High School massacre. They later committed suicide.

In the 2007 carnage at Virginia Tech, the gunman killed 32 people before killing himself while an army major also killed 13 people in a rampage at a Fort Hood, Texas in 2009.

These are some of the chilling examples of senseless killings of Americans by Americans that successive US administrations seem helpless to prevent.

The easy access to firearms could be a reason for the shooting sprees. Even after the Tucson and Newtown slayings, gun sales across the US soared in apparent panic buying to supposedly protect against gun violence that could potentially follow. Needless to say, the vested interests are laughing all the way to the bank. How pathetic!

Americans’ romance with guns traces back to the American Revolutionary War. The militia and frontier ethos that draw from the country’s early history is firmly entrenched in the American way of life and protected with religious fervour by the Second Amendment (on the right to bear arms).

The almighty National Rifle Association (NRA) is so powerful that even the White House can do little to rein it in despite the berserk shootings that have taken so many innocent American lives over the years.

Even in the face of the latest slaughter, pro-gun groups were saying had the teachers been armed, they could have taken out the gunman and saved lives. At best, this an over simplistic solution to a very complex problem.

But will giving teachers guns prevent school shootings? What if there are some sickos among the teaching staff? Being armed, will they not also use their guns on the children in their class? What then? Arm the children and start a classroom war?

The Sandy Hooks massacre has jolted most Americans to the realisation for stricter gun ownership. Fifty-two per cent (up from 30 per cent) of concerned citizens want Obama to show strong leadership in tackling gun control issues.

The president has responded by putting vice president Joe Bidin in charge of a task force to produce concrete proposals on the reform of firearm laws within weeks.

The task force will look at changing gun laws, improving access to mental healthcare and at what is described as the glorification of violence in American culture.

Some NRA-backed senators have now come out in favour of change but others, after lying low, are emerging to say the slaughtering of innocent children at Sandy Hooks has not changed their views and they will oppose any changes to existing gun laws – patently unperturbed by the over 80 fatal shootings a day (according to one count) across the country.

For any meaningful gun control to happen, what needs to change in America are its citizens. As one commentator aptly noted: “The blame lies not with those in power but with those who bestow that power.”

For after all, the American government, as Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed so long ago, is a government by the people, of the people and for the people.

Clearly, the move has to start from the ground for any significant change to take place. Otherwise, gun control in the US will be just a political football game, a fool’s errand and a lost cause.