About Boys and Guns

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States – which dates from 1791 – guarantees people the right to keep and bear arms. “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.”

In this time of the shooting in Aurora, it is worth evoking that.

The Constitution of the USA is a kind of sacred book. Questioning whether some of its propositions have become anachronisms, such as the carrying of arms in the time shortly after the country became independent, is possible heresy. The punishment for this could be political death with an accusation of national betrayal. It is also a perfect document, and attempts to interpret it frequently result in national uproars and the exchange of serious accusations.

However, we are seeing neither the President nor his Republican adversary, Mitt Romney, raising any question that might be taken as an offense with respect to the document. On the campaign page of Barack Obama, there is no mention of the subject. On Romney’s, there is ” The Right to Arms,” a topic on the defense of the Second Amendment.

After the massacre of Aurora, the Republican stated that more control would not have made a difference in the outcome. Already, the Democrat admitted that more requirements at the time of sale would have prevented the suspect, James Holmes, from having the access to the paraphernalia that he did. But there is nothing that gives heed to or speaks against what the Constitution is guaranteeing.

All irony aside, I am a fan of the American Constitution. I admire that they neither encumbered the document with 789 amendments nor redid it every time the wind changed direction. Instead, it has been considered something written in stone, immutable, ready to be interpreted to the letter by everyone forever. It always seems to me as logical as any religious fanaticism.

In this historical context, one needs to take into account that in a smaller society, it is easier to know what each person is doing with his weapon or who is buying the arms.

We were talking about a time when there were militias and they were necessary. But in 1791, the country had 3.9 million people and about 900 thousand – at the most – had the right to carry. Today there are 220 million [eligible] people (311 million inhabitants minus about 90 million below legal age, the sole cut-off criteria).

If this is not the time for another look at the Second Amendment, is it not at least important to look at the criteria for selling weapons?

In this emotional time, many people see in American culture a trivialization of violence. I don’t think violence here is any more trivialized that in any other society on this side of the planet.

Easy explanations are surfacing profusely. (For example, Vinicius Mota wrote a good article on Monday about on this subject for Folha) The problem is that the debates are taking the argument in the wrong direction.

Yes, “the freedom to bear arms” would easily be on this list of “explanations.” There were 8,775 shooting deaths in the U.S. in 2010 (the last data available), whereas in Brazil, a country where carrying weapons is not allowed, there were 35,233.

However, the question – both there and here – goes beyond the law and the spirit of the times. A debate would be educational, but the immediate issue is control. The point is that control in the United States will happen with a change of law. Without control being institutionalized, it would be difficult to circumvent the shadow of the Second Amendment.

Let us take advantage of this opportunity to discuss the deaths that did not make the news and the reason why they stirred so much less interest. (Identification is the key word, but that also would be moving away from the subject).

At the least, any massacre here and there and any killing that could be avoided here and there should be avoided.

It is a hypothetical exercise, but if you look at the math and consider that there is normally an attempt to uphold the law in the U.S., betting that a United States with control of weapons would have fewer deaths is, at the minimum, a well-grounded guess.

In the most recent Gallup poll on this subject, 54 percent of Americans were in favor of some type of stricter gun control last year. But just half of those specifically mentioned stricter gun control laws. It makes no sense to use the sacrosanctness of the Constitution as an intractable barrier.

*****

It is interesting to note that the donations from the anti-gun lobby in the USA have been falling, while the pro-arms lobby’s numbers declined a little, but by much less.

In 2010, the anti-arms groups donated $7,600 to politicians in the U.S., while the pro-arms supporters filled their coffers with $2.87 million, 16 percent of which was for Democrats and 84 percent for Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In 2000, the highest point of these donations, the anti-gun lobby had donated $581 thousand, or 76 times more than than today. The pro-gun lobby donated $4.3 million, less than double what they spend today. In ten years, the ratio of spending for the anti-gun lobby to the pro-gun lobby went from $1 anti-gun for $7.40 pro-gun to $1 anti-gun for $377 dollars pro-gun. Any idea why that is?