America Is Silent and Prays

The probability of being shot to death is 40 times greater in the United States than it is in Canada, England or Germany. But even the latest bloodbath in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater won’t change anything because most politicians fear the powerful U.S. gun lobby.

The reaction is always the same: shock, dismay, sadness, prayer and then repression. American politicians run through the first four phases of this reaction cycle in just a few hours. They need several weeks for the fourth phase. That’s the way it was with the massacres at Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 and the attack on Congresswoman Gabby Gifford and her colleagues in 2011. And it will be the same after the Aurora bloodbath.

Both President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney interrupted their election campaigns and traveled to the scene of the tragedy. Both sympathized with the victims and their families, prayed for them, offered help and expressed the wish that the shooter would get the justice he deserves. But both also said that this was not the time to address the politics of the problem — the same reaction we’ve gotten from every previous politician. But in reality, this is precisely the time for a political discussion; to ask how such a horrendous act could happen and what the nation might do to prevent anything similar in the future. Now is the time when the nation is paying closest attention.

The problem is, if U.S. politicians ask themselves these serious questions they have to take into account the possibility, that the answer is that access to guns may be too easy. Guns like assault rifles and pump guns. Guns capable of killing and wounding as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. Guns like the AR-15 assault rifle that fires bullets at such high velocity that they can penetrate several targets. That’s the sort of gun the Aurora shooter used in his bloody attack.

The politicians dare not address the gun problem because they’re frightened of the National Rifle Association. The NRA has opposed stricter gun regulation for years. Their most important argument is simply, “guns don’t kill people, people do.” And they go beyond that. After every massacre — this one included — some representative of the gun lobby postulates that there wouldn’t have been so many victims if one of them had been armed and capable of shooting back. Thus their contention that every American should carry a gun.

Actually, that was the intention of the founding fathers when they added the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — at least that’s how a majority of Americans see it and a majority of Supreme Court justices saw it since 2008. Since then, virtually all criticism of the right to bear arms has been silenced. Only a few courageous members of Congress such as Democrat Carolyn McCarthy as well as New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg have dared to swim against the political mainstream and call for more restrictions on guns, unafraid of losing voter approval. The remainder are silent and continue to pray or prefer to consider possible motives of the individual shooters. That’s much easier.

Meanwhile, the chances of being shot to death is 40 times higher in the United States than it is in Canada, Great Britain or Germany. More than 30,000 people die by gunfire in the United States each year. Half of all American households have at least one gun in a drawer somewhere and even assault rifles are legal and easily attainable in many states. In addition, ammunition is readily available via the internet where the Aurora shooter purchased his. But instead of forbidding the sale of assault rifles or other highly lethal guns capable of firing 100 shots without pausing to reload, conservative politicians recommend allowing guns to be carried in airports and kindergartens.

How can that be? Maybe it’s because America, despite all its power, has become a nation gripped by fear. Fear of terrorist attack, fear of social decline, fear of immigrants. Above all, the once broad American middle class has taken the brunt of all the crises of the past decade. The social consensus on key political questions has been shattered. The tendency is to revert to the private sector, an emphasis on individualism and to the right of self protection for themselves and their families. In this sense, especially white Americans reject government intervention into their lives, whether it’s to provide healthcare, immigration rights or gun control. They don’t realize that its precisely these attitudes that exacerbate their problems.

They will only succeed in creating a society as gloomy and godforsaken as Batman’s Gotham City depicted in the movie “The Dark Night Rises” that was showing in Aurora the night of the massacre.