On the Tucson shootings

I don't propose to retread the details, they're extremely easy to find all over the news media. Rather, this is a personal response to yet another mass shooting incident in the States on Friday.

A look through the American news media's analysis of the reason for the incident, rather than the analysis of the actual events, reveals a lot of soul searching about whether American politics has become 'too heated', and in particular whether the right-wing rhetoric from the likes of Sarah Palin (not just her necessarily, but it's her name that's coming up most frequently) is encouraging this sort of thing, however indirectly.

What strikes me, as usual in cases like this, is what's missing. I have yet to come across, in the mainstream news media, any mention of their gun laws. It's not, of course, for me to suggest how the Americans should legislate in their own country, their constitution and legislature is their own affair, but what I will say is that to English eyes, the lack of a really visible debate on a national level about gun control is bewildering.

How many have to die in incidents like this before this even becomes a matter high up on the national agenda? I realise they've got plenty going on to worry about but the American response after cases like this always leaves me bemused. Take Charlton Heston's response, for example, after the Columbine massacre. He suggested arming teachers and banning trench coats, which could conceal weapons.

What the fuck? I realise he was a spokesman for the NRA so was hardly speaking from a neutral position, but this is utterly stupefying. His suggestion for dealing with a High School shooting involved bringing more guns onto campus? And is the gun so sacrosanct that talk of banning it cannot even be countenanced, while at the same time he readily advocated banning an item of dress? Why can one thing be banned but the banning of another not even be up for debate?

Like I said - as a sovereign state, the US legislate as they see fit within their own borders. It's their right and their problem, but, again, this veneration of the Second Amendment, which was first laid down in a very, very different world in 1791* seems, to outsiders, very strange indeed when you see a Tucson, or a Columbine, on the news.


*The validity of using the Second Amendment as the basis of the right to carry a gun outside an 'organised militia' is still a matter for legal debate within the US, as even a quick research of their legal history will show. Indeed, there is also historic legal debate even about the definition of the words 'bear arms' and what it means in practice.