Lin Min

linmin67@hotmail.com

A FORMER employee at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis, the U.S., shot and killed at least eight people at the facility late Thursday night before committing suicide, in the latest of a string of shootings that are rocking the country and stunning the world.

This was the fifth mass shooting resulting in the deaths of at least four people in as many weeks, following massacres at three spas in metro Atlanta, a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, a Southern California office building and a private home in South Carolina. Indianapolis officials said it was at least the third mass shooting in the city this year.

More than 12,400 gun deaths have been recorded in the United States so far this year. The Gun Violence Archive puts gun deaths at about 40,000 each year for the past five years. U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday called gun violence an “epidemic” and “an international embarrassment.” In fact, one can arguably claim that persistent U.S. gun murders are worse than a “genocide.”

Americans have an excessive obsession with gun ownership. Over 30 million guns are sold each year in the country. The Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey estimates that “American civilians own 393 million guns, ranking the U.S. number one in firearms per capita.”

As of April 7, 2021, the United States had a population of 332.48 million. This means each American owns nearly 1.2 gun in average. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States owns 46 percent of the global civilian-owned guns, according to a Small Arms Survey report.

This exposes the fact that the United States puts the rights to firearm ownership before the right to life. It also exposes the hypocrisy of American politicians who purportedly care about human rights in other countries but turn a blind eye to the scourge of gun violence back home. Their failure to curb gun violence has resulted in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths each year.

The staggering number of gun deaths also highlighted racism, poverty, income inequality and many other social problems in the United States. Gun homicides in the U.S. are 25 times higher than the average of other high-income countries. Factors such as poverty and inequality are contributing factors, Mark Kaplan, professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said in 2017.

The easy access to guns drastically increases violence. “The more guns, the more lethal the assault. When guns are absent, people are more likely to survive an assault,” said Kaplan.

Gun ownership has been part of the American tradition way before the country was even established. Some say this is the reason why this practice has been protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, while others claim the Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery. Whatever the original intention of the amendment, Americans believe that with the right to own a gun, they are given the right to protect themselves. However, do they think about the lives taken by gunmen when they defend the rights to own a gun?

The insistence that the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed upon shows ideological stubbornness. The Second Amendment was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, when Americans believed that civil society was fragile and that the government was often unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from crime. More than 200 years after the ratification of the amendment, such belief has long been outdated. The government is supposed to protect its citizens with a full-fledged law enforcement system. Bearing firearms to protect oneself was part of life in the Wild West but should be considered an abnormality in modern society.

Tougher background checks for buyers of guns will not stop the cycles of bloodshed. Some of those who have passed background checks might someday become insane. With almost everyone having a gun, gun violence will continue to be pervasive. But few politicians are bold enough to call for Americans to reconsider the Second Amendment rights.

Even piecemeal actions to control guns will face many obstacles. Biden has suggested he will support a ban on assault weapons, but gun control legislation is extremely difficult to get through the U.S. Congress due to partisan politics and the influence of interest groups. Past attempts to impose gun control have been thwarted by powerful lobbying by interest groups such as the National Rifle Association.

Biden has said, “Enough prayers. Time for some action.” However, what he said may just be a promise and platitude without forceful actions if he does not intend to tackle the thorny issue of easy access to guns and to reject lobbying from interest groups.

(The author is a deputy editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Daily.)