Donald Trump won the election and conquered the White House by “slaughtering” traditional politics. However, the spotlight is now on his policy regarding actual slaughter.
Yesterday, the president announced that he will travel to Florida, where the latest American mass shooting took place. This new tragedy caused by easily available firearms has blown away the lives of at least 17 high school students and teachers in a hail of bullets. Trump offered solidarity. He promised to focus more on mental illness and to prioritize school security. Once again, he steered clear of the most burning issue: the demand for gun control, at least regarding the most lethal weapons, such as assault rifles, automatic and semi-automatic guns that kill en masse. According to the polls, there is an increasing demand for new and stricter laws, and for politicians to not hide behind the excuse of the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment that, according to several historians, is the clumsiest, most tortured of all amendments, and does not give carte blanche to buy an arsenal. This is a call for politicians who do not pretend to cater to voters who want firearms of any caliber at home while actually paying homage to the most hidden and noxious lobby, the powerful National Rifle Association.
After setting words aside, Trump was faced with a great deal of pain and horror, and anticlimactically came up with the most traditional and traditionally inefficient remedy: He suggested a summit with state and local authorities. Significantly, he never even mentioned guns and did not question the NRA’s power, which the NRA has wielded during federal and local elections for decades and which carries much more weight than its 5 million members. Nor has he said a word about extremist interpretations of the Second Amendment, which are increasingly being written, on tombstones with every new massacre: over 130 mass shootings (characterized by at least four victims and one to three killers) since 1966, with more than 1,000 victims and 300 firearms, often legally purchased. Six school massacres just this year. This is a sign that gun control reforms are still a mirage. There is no certainty that the increasing number of victims will weigh on the minds of the majority party in Congress or on Trump’s. Up to this point, he has instead called for increasing arsenals in order to arm the “good guys” against the “bad guys.”
Cruz: Birth of a Mass Shooter
The bad guy of the hour is certainly the maladjusted Nikolas Cruz, charged with 17 counts of murder. The 19-year-old shooter and former student at Parkland’s high school was expelled for disciplinary reasons, a lone wolf who nevertheless made no mystery of his passion for firearms and his hatred toward the school. In his social media posts, he made threats he later acted on to become “a professional school shooter.” It was then revealed that the FBI had received two tips indicating that he was a safety risk. Cruz was also part of a group of local extremists and white supremacists; he may have even participated in paramilitary drills. All of this is true, and these deeply concerning signs were either missed or underestimated.
Focusing only on Cruz and on his mental condition, according to critics, distracts from the true scandal, though: What truly led to the birth of a mass shooter was the fact that a young man like him was able to purchase firearms legally. One of his pictures on Instagram shows him laying an arsenal on his bed. That is because Florida, alongside Texas, is the most lax American state with respect to gun control. There is no need for a permit or a license, no obligation to register firearms and no limit to how many can be bought, including assault rifles. Their sale is not regulated; shop owners do not need a license either. People can carry a concealed rifle without authorization, and permission is granted almost automatically to carry a concealed pistol. Florida is also sadly distinguished by its “stand your ground” law, a real license to kill: Everyone can use lethal force as long as they feel threatened in a place where they are authorized to be. In 2012, this practice led to the death of 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin, who was killed in cold blood by a volunteer member of a neighbor watch group who had considered Martin’s appearance “suspicious.”
The Holy Alliance between Trump and the Gun Lobby
Familiarity with weapon arsenals was not always part of Trump’s agenda. It was actually a sign of his transformation into the candidate for the populist right, which to this day has a powerful and indispensable ally in the NRA. Back when he was still a real estate and media mogul, he published a book called “The America We Deserve.” In it, Trump wrote, “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.” In 2012, he even spoke in favor of Barack Obama’s call for stricter controls after the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
However, Trump did a complete 180 to traditional ultraconservative positions in 2015, as the election drew near. He depicted himself as the champion of the Second Amendment against Clinton, who, according to him, would “take your guns away.” He stated that gun-free zones, such as schools and churches, were a “catastrophe.” Furthermore, he had his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, woo the National Rifle Association. In a twist, the NRA ended up supporting Trump and invested $30 million in his campaign. Considering his lack of volunteers and organization, he was happy to accept. As president, Trump has already acted on his newfound passion for firearms by introducing laxer laws for their purchase. Under his administration, not even the slightest changes have made any headway, such as the ban on the bump stock device, a simple tool that turns regular weapons into automatic ones.
The Endless Battle over the Second Amendment
Pro-gun lobbyists know one thing perfectly well: that the absolute right to carry arms is not unequivocally set in stone by the Constitution. It is instead upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions, some of which are very recent, have generated fierce campaigns and political debate, and can vary depending on the court’s composition. The late Italian-American and ultraconservative ideologue Antonin Scalia is the father of the Second Amendment’s current interpretation. In 2008, the by then solidly conservative majority of the Supreme Court had him pen a victory for the pro-gun lobby in the historic case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia disavowed two centuries of jurisprudence in order to explain how the scant and confused words of the Second Amendment bestow an individual constitutional right to own arms. Even Warren Burger, the conservative chief justice of the Supreme Court between 1969 and 1986 who was nominated by Richard Nixon, called this hypothesis “a fraud.”
This is history, as we are reminded with extraordinary effectiveness by the “biography” of the Second Amendment written by jurist Michael Waldman. The original text of the amendment reads: “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.” When framed in the context of its time, says Waldman, it obviously “protected the individual right to a gun … to fulfill the duty to serve in a militia” as citizen soldiers, a concept that was as understandable then as it is outdated now, with the exception of participation in the National Guard. Moreover, that text, which today has become important to the point of characterizing a long political and cultural battle, was originally written and approved without extensive debate or notation, without praise for the purpose of self-defense. If anything, the Founding Fathers made a wholly marginal concession to rural regions concerned about the necessary centralization of federal power.
The NRA: From Hunters to Machiavellian Politicians
Most importantly, the myth of a golden age of undisputed and free gun culture is just that, a myth. Restrictions were pervasive even in the far West: the classic picture of Dodge City shows a prominent sign banning guns and rifles in the city. In the years of Prohibition and the Great Depression, strict gun laws were crucial to fight organized crime. The contemporary political revolution of weapons supremacy actually began very recently. In the ‘70s, the NRA transformed itself from an association for hunters and sportsman to an influential and very well organized lobby, led by a group of conservative attorneys who were bent on having the Constitution recognize gun ownership as indispensable to freedom and self-defense. It is no accident that this transformation coincided with other phenomena occurring in the country: the social upheaval of the previous century, progress made by the civil rights movement, middle-class white people fleeing urban centers, the degeneration of cities and the shadow of crime. The fascination with firearms, exalted by the vigilantes as the ultimate expression of individual freedom in the Hollywood movies of the time, can be seen as an easy but powerless reaction to an era of vulnerability and change. This response is still being practiced by the association’s leader, 68-year-old Wayne LaPierre, known for his maxim “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The industry and its lobbyists have repeatedly exploited the original sin of fear to advance aggressive pro-gun agendas. We are talking about a field with considerable interests: over $8 billion a year in sales and an economic impact amounting to $32 billion. It is headed by legendary names such as Smith & Wesson, which put 310 million pistols and rifles in the hands of American citizens, more than one firearm per person without counting newborns (a world record, twice as much as Yemen, which ranks second), producing an average of 85 victims per day. In 2004, it was fear that prevented the 1994 ban on assault rifles from being renewed. Sales spiked after the election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama. Trump has been using that same force of fear by narrating ominous depictions of documented and undocumented immigrants, who actually commit crimes at a far lower rate than “real” Americans.
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