Sandy Hook: The irrational aftermath

A disturbed 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle and two handguns, recently forced his way onto the premises of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and there shot to death 20 children, six adults and, finally, himself.

After the de rigueur global expressions of shock, grief and horror at this needless tragedy, thoughts naturally turned to how we might ensure that it did not happen again anywhere, at any time. Not that there was not an eerie sense of déjà vu about this; similar sentiments had followed Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora… the list is long.

In an editorial last week, we surmised that there would be no unanimity as to the methods necessary, and this was not because of any intellectual deficiency in arriving at the solution. But it was because we sensed that the solution which readily presented itself as a matter of logic – restricting access to the type of weapons used in the Sandy Hook massacre – would not find favour with a certain influential section of the American public who are not yet prepared to surrender their constitutional right to bear arms.

The actualisation of this was not long in coming. Even as President Obama sought to initiate public policy to “reduce the epidemic of gun violence”, the National Rifle Association, perhaps the most powerful lobbying group in the US, posited a call for armed security guards to be placed in every school in the country. In other words, the sole solution to mass shootings and gun violence generally was more guns. As the executive vice-president of the NRA put it, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun…” Of course, he envisages a situation where the good guy with the gun is still standing and able to stop the bad guy, otherwise the logical extension to this argument, as has probably been pointed out, is to arm everyone at the school, including those in the kindergarten. His mantra should then become, “the only way to stop one bad guy with a gun is many more good guys with guns…”

Needless to state, popular reaction to this proposal has been, for the most part, negative. Indeed, the Israeli Education Ministry itself has recently refuted one of the bulwarks of his argument, that Israel had reduced a spate of school shootings by adopting the identical solution. It denies any “whole lot of school shootings” as premised by the NRA official and rebuffs the notion that the lightly-armed guards at its schools are there to fight this phenomenon rather than as a first line of defence against terrorism generally. Hence the presence of armed guards at most public facilities in Israel, including bus and train stations, parking lots, malls and restaurants.

Even the guarantees of the US Constitution itself are seemingly dispensable in the gun lobby’s insistence on upholding the right to bear arms. Tens of thousands of people are reported to have signed a petition seeking the deportation from the US of the British-born CNN interviewer, Mr. Piers Morgan. His offence? Taking too aggressive and, admittedly, too rude a stand for tighter gun laws and thereby engaging in a “hostile attack against the US constitution”. He has described one gun-advocate guest, the improbably named Larry Pratt, as “an unbelievably stupid man”.

Mr. Morgan is taking it all in good spirits, it seems, but what is ironic is that his opinion is itself constitutionally protected. The First Amendment provides in part that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech...”

This apparently does not hold water with the gun lobby.