“Gun control is hitting what you aim at.” Or it least that’s what the bumper sticker said I read during my first visit to New York in the USA in 1995. No doubt the owner of the car was also a NRA member, or, as they are known: the National Rifle Association. And I am sure I’m not the only one that noticed there is only one letter that distinguishes them from the IRA, a now dormant terrorist group from Ireland. Now the reason I bring this up off course, is the fact that today there was yet another school schooting in the USA: a 32-year-old milk truck driver walked into an Amish schoolhouse Monday, binding and shooting three girls execution-style before killing himself. Seven other girls were wounded in the vicious attack. The gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV was not Amish himself and he did not have a police-record.
It has not been the first of such an “incident”. In fact, last Wednesday a 16-year-old girl died when an armed man, who also killed himself, took six students hostage at a Colorado high school. And on Friday, a head teacher at a high school in Wisconsin was killed when he confronted an armed 15-year-old student as he entered the school. Now, the difference with other cases is, that it wasn’t a student that shot the little girls. Still, it is a very disturbing thing that – with a few exceptions – the US seems to have this exclusive problem of school shootings.
The US is also the one country on Earth that I know off – and please correct me if this is wrong – where the right to bear arms is part of the constitution. In fact it’s the Second Amendment, right after the First Amendment. In a way it is ironic, because the First Amendment gives US citizens freedom of speech and religion, and the Second Amendment gives them the legal right, basically, to protect that with arms.
And there lays the problem. The fact that the US constitution says that anyone has the right to own a gun makes gun control virtually impossible. I think that gun control might be the only solution to these kind of problems and incidents. But it ain’t going to happen, I’m sure.
No tragedy will ever be big enough to make the Americans lay down their arms. Because, as the NRA always puts it so nicely: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”. Of course that is the same retoric that doctors that treat people who have gunshots use: “It’s not the bullet that kills you, it’s the hole.” And more of that hollow nonsense.
So what makes the Americans such a violent people? Who knows. Even documentary maker Michael Moore couldn’t get his finger behind the mystery when he made “Bowling for Columbine”. What I do know is that they have absurd laws in many states, including Florida, where it is legal to shoot someone as a pre-emptive measure, when you feel threatened enough. Basically it’s back to the times of the Wild West. Off course the bill making this possible was heavily backed by – you guessed it – the NRA who is sometimes said to be the single most powerful non-profit organization in the United States.
Yes indeed, it’s a Mad World.
The BBC News website charts the history of gun violence in US schools.
- October 2006: A 32-year-old gunman shoots dead at least three girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, before killing himself
- September 2006: Gunman in Colorado shoots and fatally wounds a teenage schoolgirl, then kills himself; two days later a teenager kills the headteacher of a school in Cazenovia, Wisconsin
- November 2005: Student in Tennessee shoots dead an assistant principal and wounds two other administrators
- March 2005: Minnesota schoolboy kills nine, then shoots himself
- May 2004: Four people injured in shooting at a school in Maryland
- April 2003: Teenager shoots dead head-teacher at a Pennsylvania school, then kills himself
- March 2001: Pupil opens fire at a school in California, killing two students
- February 2000: Six-year-old girl shot dead by classmate in Michigan
- November 1999: Thirteen-year-old girl shot dead by a classmate in New Mexico
- May 1999: Student injures six pupils in shoot-out in Georgia
- April 1999: Two teenagers shoot dead 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at Columbine School in Colorado
- June 1998: Two adults hurt in shooting by teenage student at high school in Virginia
- May 1998: Fifteen-year-old boy shoots himself in the head after taking a girl hostage
- May 1998: Fifteen-year-old shoots dead two students in school cafeteria in Oregon
- April 1998: Fourteen-year-old shoots dead a teacher and wounds two students in Pennsylvania
- March 1998: Two boys, 11 and 13, kill four girls and a teacher in Arkansas
- December 1997: Fourteen-year-old boy kills three students in Kentucky
- October 1997: Sixteen-year-old boy stabs mother, then shoots dead two students at school in Mississippi, injuring several others