'These Tragedies Must End'

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on Dec. 14, 2012, which claimed the lives of 27 people, a distraught Barack Obama declared in Newtown, “These tragedies must end.” This came after just one in a long line of tragedies during his term, which was neither the first nor last, in a country where the “Colt” is “glorified.” Even the idea of reforming the “sacrosanct” Second Amendment, which gives Americans the right to bear arms and defend themselves, would be considered blasphemy. But undoubtedly, what the media calls “mass murders” must have an explanation.

Even though they made headlines in the 1980s, mass shootings were rare, if not unique. Then a decade later, they started to become more frequent, and even more at the beginning of the 21st century. In the United States alone, there have been around a dozen of these more or less tragic slaughters per year. Without mentioning all of them, we can recall the bloodiest “mass killings” — Red Lake, Newtown, Newport, Northern, Fort Hood and Columbine High School — with many books and films dedicated to them, including Michael Moore’s moving film “Bowling for Columbine,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2002. The Washington, D.C. shooting which took place Monday morning at the office of the U.S. Navy, a few steps from the White House, and led to the death of 13 people only confirms the trend.

The fact remains that psychologists and psychiatrists are lost in conjectures and have no explanation for this phenomenon, where individuals, usually solitary, open fire on a crowd, resulting in dozens of deaths. This predisposition to “vent” by killing others — is it something that is unique to developed societies, such as the U.S. and Europe, where it has actually started to gain momentum, as evidenced by the Merah case in France 2011 or that of Anders Breivik, who killed 93 young people in Norway on July 22, 2011, and similar other occurrences in several other countries of the European Union, or is it a specific case in a country that makes possession of weapons a sacrosanct right?

It is difficult to answer. The legacy of the “pioneers of the West,” who always had their trusty and constant companion, the revolver, by their side still remains embedded in American tradition, part of the very culture of the American people. This was proven by the U.S. Court of Appeals’ rejection of a ban on concealed weapons in Illinois. Explaining his decision, Judge Posner insisted that “a right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home.” This is obviously in reference to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right of citizens to carry their weapons on them.

No U.S. president dares tackle this addiction for many reasons, including political ones. Indeed, any candidate seeking election to the Senate and especially the White House may face the National Rifle Association, a powerful lobby for the promotion of firearms, headed by American cinema legend Charlton Heston until his illness. Also, any attempt to address the issue of reforming the Second Amendment has been unsuccessful. Not even Obama, despite his condemnation of these crimes, nor his predecessors could put together a draft reform plan without causing an uproar. American presidents and even Congress are actually powerless in a system that crushes everything that tries to resist it.

It is not only the Second Amendment that needs to be addressed, but also the American system as it currently exists, which allows this to happen. The famous “checks and balances” that embody the American system and guarantee the balance between the institutions of the U.S. federation are there to ensure the orthodoxy that makes America unique; the president has never been a Mao Zedong who could order a Cultural Revolution. Just as well.

The fact remains that these killings that have marked the U.S. in recent years, whose perpetrators are usually adolescents — with the exception of Fort Hood, which was carried out by an Army major, and the one in Washington, committed by a former Marine — cannot be explained and certainly not by the fact of wanting to “exist,” as some psychologists argue. The wars that the U.S. leads in the world seem to be a plausible alternative explanation to the phenomenon of young adolescents getting involved in the wrong exploits. This is America, built on blood and violence.