US gun laws and the massacres we will have to deal with in the future

It was a tremendous shock to hear the news last Friday that a gunman had got into a school in the US and killed upwards of 25 people. I remember hearing the news and feeling physically sick at the thought. We have since found out of course that the gunman was 20 year old Adam Lanza and that he killed 20 children and 6 of their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School (having already shot dead his mother) before turning the gun on himself. We know as well that the teachers there, those who died and those survived, performed acts of incredible bravery to ensure that others were not killed. And finally we know that America is in grief and in a period of introspection because the massacre was carried out with 3 legally acquired guns.

Many are hoping that this could be a turning point, a moment when gun laws in America will change for good. I hate to type this and I hate to be a prophet of doom, but I fear that is naive and that any law changes will be minimal. Massacres like that at Sandy Hook last week, like the one at Colombine in 1999 and like the one that took place today in Pennsylvania will sadly go on.

We’ll have a look at the wider situation in a minute but lets first dwell on Sandy Hook. Adam Lanza had 3 weapons on him, all again bought legally. The first was a semi-automatic (and as far as we are aware unmodified) MX-15, essentially a rip off of the AR15, the civilian version of the M16. He seems to have only used that weapon, but he also had two pistols on him, a Glock 20 and a SIG Sauer. He killed his mother with a fourth weapon, a .22 Merlin rifle. I’m sorry to put all this so clearly but it is important we engage with events.

The question is therefore why does a civilian need to have access to these kinds of weapons? And the answer, put out today in a feeble and wretched statement by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is because there are so many guns around. I find my brain doing cartwheels of rage. That they go on to promote the idea of armed guards in all schools almost makes me explode.

Their mentality is of course that guns are legal and so crime will exist and so the best way to protect people is to have guns. Remarkably (though understandably when you are ‘pro’ something) they don’t think about taking guns away, which would help solve the problem and make the tracking of illegal weapons and illegal weapon modification much easier. They claim their right to these weapons is found in the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution and have developed a powerful public following and (crucially) a powerful influence in State legislatures and in Washington D.C.

So lets now review the legislative status of guns in the US very briefly. For those who don’t know, the ‘right to bear arms’ is in the US Constitution, the very bedrock of the Republic. Whilst not in the original document it was enshrined as the Second Amendment along with the Amendments that number 1-10 as ‘the Bill of Rights’ in 1791. The actual text of the Amendment is unclear, and it is a little known fact that the phrasing that the House of Representatives approved was ever-so-slightly different to that which the Senate approved. However, the text that appears in the Constitution is this:

‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’

Basically, if you will forgive me for being trite, ‘we need a militia so the people need guns’.

Now you probably don’t need me to tell you that there has been A LOT of wrangling over the meaning of this statement. People have raised the issue of the defining of ‘militia’, the meaning of ‘the right of the people’ and even the importance of the comma between the words ‘state’ and ‘the’.

I’m not going to go into all of that because it is technical legal speak and therefore boring and complicated. However, the important thing to note is that all this arguing has led to the rise in gun sales and the radicalising of the NRA, which many people forget was quite a normal organisation until the 1970s (in short the moral build up caused by the assassinations of two Kennedys and MLK plus 2 attempts on Gerald Ford and the Brady Law after the Reagan assassination attempt led to the NRA being a major polarising force by 1990).

So where does that leave the US now? Well in short gun technology has moved on from the 1790s so instead of single-shot musket gun owners now have revolvers, pistols and semi-automatic assault weapons in their houses (see footnote). Then there is the open-carry phenomenon and the movement of so called 'preppers' plus right wing militias and even more right wing white supremacist groups and 'border guards', all of whom are fanatically pro-gun and anti-government. 

I cannot help but thinking that this is a situation that the leaders of 1791 could not even have imagined. The ability to (putting it bluntly) rapidly kill several of anything with a firearm was simply not there when they said people have the right to ‘bear arms’. Gun technology has changed so much in the last 221 years that it seems remarkable that this law still stands unchanged. But the reality is that it hasn’t.

Obama however has a plan. VP Joe Biden (a man only slightly more useful than a dead salmon at a steak eating contest) and others will look into changes in gun laws. A Democratic Senator has vowed to introduce a new Bill when Congress meets again in January. Even some INCREDIBLY pro-gun Senators are supporting some sort of change.

So it all seems positive. After all, laws can be changed and assault weapons can be made illegal. But I would argue that won’t solve the problem. I hope to high Heaven that all assault weapons will be made illegal, but I fear the NRA will put up a fight and that any such Bill won’t get passed. Sadly the NRA is too powerful and the interest is currently only really in assault weapons. Very little has been said about revolvers and pistols, of which there are many more in circulation and which to me are just as dangerous.

Banning assault weapons won’t end the massacres. Further massive steps need to be taken, so let me play my little version of dreamworld for a moment. Whilst it may never happen, to me one obvious and very important step is that the US needs to repeal the Second Amendment.

If you think that sounds easy, it is not. Amendments cannot be changed. The most famous Amendment is the 18^th, which brought in Prohibition, but this hasn’t been removed, merely repealed by the 23^rd Amendment in 1933. So the 2^nd Amendment could only be ignored by passing another Amendment. Not unsurprisingly, the Constitution lays out the method of passing an Amendment - a new Amendment needs to be proposed to the states by a two-thirds vote of both houses (Representatives and Senate) of Congress or by a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratified by three-quarters of the states or by three-quarters of conventions, with Congress outlining the method of ratification at the time of the proposal (for geek points the 23^rd Amendment is the only one to be proposed and passed by conventions as well as the only one to repeal a previous Amendment).

Basically, whilst not impossible, it is incredibly hard. However, this is my dreamworld and so that would all happen and the 28^th Amendment would repeal the 2^nd. I would then allow bows, bolt-action rifles and double-barreled shotguns to be owned with proper licenses for hunting purposes and would take in all (now illegal) pistols, revolvers, semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and all assault weapons. I am not completely anti-gun. They have a purpose, but in a civilians hands that purpose is (sustainable) hunting and target shooting. Any weapons that go beyond these strict purposes are unnecessary.

Let’s step out of dreamworld though because there is one more thing that is very important to emphasise, and that is that it is not just guns that create massacres like Sandy Hook. It is the mental state of the individual who holds a gun. For whatever reason, Adam Lanza rationalised the shooting dead of children and their teachers. That is not right. Gun owners must recognise the need for proper mental health checks and guidance if someone is going to own a weapon. Counseling must be offered to those who need it. And guns must be registered so that if necessary the State can take away firearms if a person is deemed to be dangerous and/or unstable.

This last point is crucial and it applies to the UK as much as it does to the US. Many people in the UK do not realise that British gun licenses (although much better than the US) do not involve psychiatric test, that a gun owner simply has to tick a box to say they are of sound mind in order to have a gun (along with lots of other checks of course). This is simply wrong, and its flouting was most clearly proven in Derrick Bird’s rampage in 2010. Gun owners need to be checked out regularly and at random and friends and relatives should have a free hotline where they can report people they are concerned about.

With guns of all sorts in circulation in the US at the moment, massacres like Sandy Hook will happen again. The moves against assault weapons are good but might not happen and, if they do, will still leave many dangerous weapons available. Only with much tougher legislation and with tighter regulation of gun ownership and gun owner welfare and health will the world see a large fall in civilian deaths due to firearms.

Debate warmly encouraged


Footnote: not to defend the gun lobby in any way but PLEASE remember that when the US media talks about ‘assault weapons’ they mean weapons that could be used in a war zone but that can only fire one round per trigger pull. The fact that they can be illegally modified so one trigger pull fires 30 rounds is of course dreadful, but I know several British reports that have got this wrong and so some Brits think Americans can basically legally play Call of Duty in their backyards.