Enslaved To The Second Amendment

“We close the divide because we know to put our future first; we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all.”- Amanda Gorman- National Youth Poet Laureate. Since the murder of 19 fourth grade students and their 2 teachers in their classroom on May 24th at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas many of us have been pondering about the issue of gun control legislation and the value of life. Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States of America. Some have argued that regular mass shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon. According to Jason R. Silva, an assistant professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University, the USA is the only developed country where mass shootings have happened every single year for the past 20 years. After each mass shooting in the USA the same script is used and this has become too familiar “our hearts and prayers are with the families.” However, due to the fact that gun ownership is politicized and divisive not much practical solutions are forthcoming beyond those words which have become meaningless after time. The easy access to guns is protected under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. The USA clearly has a gun culture and proponents of the Second Amendment it would seem have no intention to cede an inch on the right to bear arms, even in the midst of the grim reality of children and teachers being slaughtered in their classroom. Schools are supposed to be safe spaces where creativity, teaching and learning occur. Schools are not supposed to be places where children cower in fear under their desks and are hunted down and murdered along with their teachers. Sadly, schools are now forced to routinely conduct active shooter drills as part of their safety and security plans. Where did we go wrong? The suspects in the shootings at Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York were both 18. According to State law they were too young to legally purchase alcohol or cigarettes, but old enough to arm themselves with assault-style weapons. This is problematic and is rather disconcerting for all law-abiding citizens. Chillingly, the Uvalde shooter had more than 1600 rounds of ammunition along with his semi-automatic rifles on this iniquitous day. The Second Amendment The Second Amendment, often referred to as the right to bear arms, is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the rights of individual citizens to buy, own and carry firearms. The root of the debate is whether the amendment protects the right of private individuals to keep and bear arms, or whether it instead protects a collective right that should be exercised only through formal militia units. They argue that the right to bear arms should be given only to organized groups, like the National Guard, a reserve military force that replaced the state militias after the Civil War (1861-1865). Contrastingly, there are those who argue that the Second Amendment gives all citizens, not just militias, the right to own guns in order to protect themselves. The National Rifle Association (NRA), founded in 1871, and its supporters have been the most visible proponents of this argument, and have pursued a vigorous campaign against gun control measures at the local, state and federal levels. Disturbingly, the United States is the only nation in the world where civilian guns outnumber people. According to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS) there are 120 guns for every 100 Americans. In an article by Kara Fox, Krystina Shveda, Natalie Croker and Marco Chacon it states that The Falkland Islands is home to the world's second-largest stash of civilian guns per capita. However with an estimated 62 guns per 100 people, its gun ownership rate is almost half that of the USA. Yemen a country in the middle of a seven-year conflict has the third-highest gun ownership rate at 53 guns per 100 people. While the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is difficult to calculate due to a variety of factors including unregistered weapons, the illegal trade and global conflict SAS researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million civilian guns available, which is around 46% of the world's civilian gun cache. This obsession with guns is clearly more than a constitutional right. Undoubtedly, there is an inextricable link between guns and the establishment of slavery in the United States of America. It was not until the 13th Amendment adopted on December 18, 1865 that slavery officially ended in the USA. Constitutional Right According to Zachary Elkins, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Comparative Constitutions Project the USA is one of only three countries in the world where bearing (or keeping) arms is a constitutional right. Yet gun ownership rate in the other two Guatemala and Mexico is almost a tenth of the United States. The professor added that in Mexico there is only one gun store in the entire country and it is controlled by the army. In spite of all the mass shootings and the untold grief families are left with after their loved ones are snatched away firearm manufacturing in the USA is on the increase. In 2018, gun makers produced 9 million firearms in the country more than double the amount manufactured in 2008, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). More recently, January 2021 marked the biggest annual increase since 2013 in requests for federal background checks necessary for purchasing a gun a nearly 60% jump from January 2020. There are those who believe that having more access to guns makes the society a safer place. However this idea is not supported by data. In an April 2021 Pew survey almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries. It is then predictable that the US has more deaths from gun violence than any other developed country per capita. The rate in the US is eight times greater than in Canada, which has the seventh highest rate of gun ownership in the world; 22 times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data from 2019. Gun homicides in the U.S. reached their highest level in more than 25 years during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 19,000 people were killed by guns in 2020 compared with more than 14,000 the year prior, according to the CDC report, which is based on death certificates. The ease at which one can obtain a gun differs according to State. There are some States which have a more robust background check before one can purchase a firearm. However, it seems much too easy to access guns in the United States of America especially assault weapons such as the AR-15. In South Africa, gun-related deaths almost halved over a 10-year-period after new gun legislation, the Firearms Control Act of 2000, went into force in July 2004. The new laws made it much more difficult to obtain a firearm. In New Zealand, gun laws were swiftly amended after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Just 24 hours after the attack, in which 51 people were killed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the law would change. New Zealand's parliament voted almost unanimously to change the country's gun laws less than a month later, banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons. The United Kingdom tightened its gun laws and banned most private handgun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw gun deaths drop by almost a quarter over a decade. Those of us who live outside the USA should be concerned since many of the guns in the USA usually end up in the hands of criminals in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Powerful Gun Lobby Group How many more students will have to be murdered before the Republic Party joins with the Democratic Party in crafting gun control legislation to curtail the ease of access to guns of private? Are these politicians so enslaved to the Second Amendment that they are blinded by the hurt and pain of grieving families who are left behind to take up the pieces and move on? Founded in 1871 the National Rifle Association (NRA) is perhaps one if not the most powerful of lobby groups in the USA. Within days of the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Texas, former president Donald Trump addressed the National Rifle Association. This move by Trump speaks to the deeply divided US society regarding the issue of gun control or lack thereof. Trump said, the existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law-abiding citizens. He added, “the existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.” The issue at hand is not about removing access to guns from law-abiding citizens; the issue has to deal with adding more checks and balances in a system to prevent the sale of assault weapons such as the Bushmaster XM-15, DDM4 and the AR-15 to the general public. The AR-15 was developed in the late 1950s as a civilian weapon by Eugene Stoner, a former Marine working for small California startup called ArmaLite (which is where the AR comes from). The AR-15 is revolutionary for its light weight and easy care. AR-15s cause much more damage to human tissue than the typical handgun, which is used in most shootings. That is largely because of the speed at which projectiles leave the weapons; they are much faster out of the muzzle of an AR-15, or similar rifle, and deliver a more devastating blow to bones and organs. Those projectiles are also more likely to break apart as they pass through the body, inflicting more damage. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Americans now own an estimated 15 million AR-15s. New AR-15 style guns range widely in price, from about $500 to more than $2,000. While many things can be said about the NRA, one thing is sure is how effective the organization has been over the years in ensuring that these needs are catered to by the political class. Close the Political Divide The killing of 19 fourth graders at Robb Elementary School in Texas should be enough for both the Republicans and the Democratic parties to join forces and arrive at bipartisan gun legislation. Prior to the mass murders at Robb Elementary School there was Columbine High School, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary. Disappointingly, in the aftermath of these murders not much has been done as both political parties could not arrive at a consensus regarding gun control legislation. Agonizingly, gun violence has become normalized not only in the USA but in many countries and is now of epidemic proportions. Maybe the time has come for the elimination of the filibuster in the US Senate in order to facilitate the majority party to pass legislations. The filibuster is a 19th-century procedural rule in the Senate that allows any one senator to block or delay action on a bill or other matter by extending debate. While a final vote in the Senate requires a simple majority of 51 votes, a supermajority, or 60 votes, is needed to start or end debate on legislation so it can proceed to a final vote. The Democratic Party will therefore need 10 Republic senators to cross party lines in order to get a meaningful gun control legislation passed. However, the Republican Party appears not to be in a rush to cooperate on gun control legislation. A Culture of Paralysis Perhaps these generations of politicians do not have the will to do what is common sense. Possibly common sense is not so common after all. The frequency of mass shootings in the USA has led President Joe Biden to add Consoler- in- Chief to his many official duties. With freedom comes a sense of responsibility and those who are elected to lead should not allow themselves to be chained to a culture of paralysis which obviously has overtaken Washington and its politics. Parents expect that their children will return home after a day at school. However, we live in an age of the unexpected and this can be debilitating. We are at a critical juncture regarding the issue of gun legislation. A decision has to be made surrounding the side of history you wish to find yourselves. The time to put away ego is now. The time has come to ban assault-style weapons and expand background checks regarding the purchasing of guns. The time is now for the US society to free itself from the enslavement of the Second Amendment and legislate the required gun prevention measures in order to save lives. In the words of Barack Obama, I do not accept that we cannot find a common sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic second amendment freedoms and the rights of law abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis. Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues. waykam@yahoo.com @WayneCamo © #guncontrol #massshootings #Uvalde #Buffalo #EndtoViolence