A Global Tragedy

“He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Isaiah 2:4

Friday, Dec. 14, a young man, 20 years old, entered a primary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and massacred 20 children from six to seven years old, as well as six teachers at the school. He then killed himself, having first killed his mother and helped himself to three pistols and an assault rifle. His mother had taught him to shoot the guns. We do not know the real motives, and perhaps we never will: The individual had no criminal background.

The Uniqueness of American Life

The U.S. is the land of paradoxes. “In God we trust,” read the bank notes, yet at the same time the U.S. appears to be the most uncertain country in the world. We received authoritative proof of this in the Newtown shootings. Sylvie Kauffmann recounts the byproducts of security policy made in the name of the Second Amendment: “One beautiful day in 1995, George H. W. Bush, in a gesture of profound indignation, sent back his NRA membership card; he sent it back to the powerful organization that defends firearms, and he made it known. An extremist in revolt against the state, Timothy McVeigh, had just blown up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 167 people. America, in shock, discovered the existence of paranoid ‘patriot’ militias in its own heartland, obsessed by the idea that the American state was trying to take away their guns. A couple days before the attack, the NRA had had the bad taste to send a newsletter to its 3.4 million members in which federal agents were described as ‘Nazis.’ This letter, explained George Bush, ‘deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor.’ Cut to the quick, the NRA had to buy entire pages of publicity in newspapers to respond to ex-president George Bush.” [WA published a translation of Kauffmann’s article, cited here and below: http://watchingamerica.com/News/189227/the-newtown-massacre-firearms-and-american-identity/ ]

Sylvie Kauffmann explains the security paranoia after Sept. 11: “The son didn’t have the same ‘decency’… The security revolution that swept the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2000, coupled with two terms of George W. Bush from 2000 to 2008, reversed the dynamic on gun control and forced a real regression in this very particular dimension of the American identity and incomprehensible to the rest of the world.”

She cites the tentative success of Bill Clinton to moralize the use of firearms: “President Bill Clinton became the champion of ‘gun control,’ an expression that, in politics, means efforts aimed at restricting access to firearms. In the U.S., a ban is out of the question: the Second Amendment to the Constitution grants ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms.’ As such, the opponents of firearms can only work on the fringes … In the 1990s, Bill Clinton and many other elected officials, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, succeeded in tipping the scales in favor of increased control. The Brady Law, signed into to law in 1993, required that all those purchasing firearms undergo a background check. It was promoted by a colleague of President Reagan, Jim Brady, who was seriously injured by a bullet to the head during the attempted assassination of the former president in 1981. Then in 1994, the vote on a bill banning 19 different models of semi-automatic assault weapons, for which President Clinton had fought like a lion, was considered a hard blow to the National Rifle Association.” (1)

A Record of Firearm Killings

Everything changed, she wrote, with George W. Bush: “However, the law prohibiting assault rifles was only in effect for 10 years. In 2004, the mood has changed, and the president and Congress did not consider it useful enough to renew …. Barack Obama, took back the White House in 2008, but he never showed the same enthusiasm as Bill Clinton on the question of firearms …. Meanwhile, the number of National Rifle Association members has gone from 3.4 million in 1994 to 4.3 million …” (1)

With seven mass killings, which left 68 dead in total, “2012 has been deadlier than ever before” for the U.S., emphasized The New Republic. “… There have been 70 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, leaving 543 people dead,” according to the website of the Washington weekly magazine. “Seven of those 70 shootings occurred this year,” and “the toll from mass shootings in 2012 has been nearly twice that of any other year… If the scenes of horror and heartbreak are now familiar, it’s because the past six years have been particularly bloody. Fully 45 percent of the victims of mass shootings in America over the past three decades were killed since 2007. That is a crisis.” (2)

Since 1999, 26 mass shootings in 21 different states have caused the deaths of 225 and left at least 1,000 wounded in the U.S. Each time, writes Sandra Jean, it is the same thing. First, the horror that comes without warning. Then, the public display of all the lives destroyed. Next comes the time of speculation, and, invariably, the debate. Should the sale of firearms be regulated? There are more than 300 million firearms in the U.S. Each month, one million guns are sold. Every 20 minutes, a person dies by a bullet, victim of a homicide or a suicide. Children from five to 14 years old who live in the U.S. are 13 times more likely to shoot themselves than anywhere else in the industrialized world. It is a familiar tune. But a demonstration of causality between the number of firearms and the increase in killings of all types is not always sufficiently convincing to effect change. (3)

What to Do? Strengthen Gun Control!

Everyone agrees that regulation is necessary. “For many,” writes Gilles Blassette of the newspaper La Croix, “the need to strengthen gun control is urgent, in order to better oversee access to firearms in a country which counts 300 million of them – one for every citizen …. The NRA, which claims nearly four million members, is one of the most important donors in the electoral cycle …. The NRA spent close to $20 million (15 million euros) during the elections this fall. Each year, it spends many additional millions to advance favorable legislation in the capitol. The power of this lobby lies also, if not primarily, elsewhere: in its success in putting the idea in the heads of many Americans that the solution is not fewer weapons, but more! … In 2008, the Supreme Court thus denied Washington D.C. the right to ban guns in its territory. ‘Now, to modify the Constitution it would take a vote of two-thirds of the two chambers of Congress, plus ratification by three quarters of the states,’ recounts Vincent Michelot. In the end, this question must be placed back in its larger context: that of violence in the United States. The country must ask itself what has been growing within itself.” (4)

Yet it goes even farther – there is a counter-accusation: “If the teachers had been armed ….” “Gun lobbyists have advanced two arguments opposing all changes to current legislation: ‘It’s not guns that kill, but the humans who carry them,’ and ‘the problem is not one of over-armament, but under-armament of those who could defend themselves …’” In this vein, Larry Pratt, Director of Gun Owners of America, thinks that the teachers, had they been armed, could have prevented the tragedy: “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure [sic] that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones.” (5)

“Another argument used by Gun Owners of America and proclaimed on a T-shirt from the association: ‘If guns kill people, then…pencils miss spel [sic] words, cars make people drive drunk, spoons made Rosie O’Donnell fat.’

“‘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.’ Since its adoption in 1791, this amendment notably guaranteed the right of the people to participate in the application of the law and to fight against a tyrannical government.” (5)

Theophraste, of the alternative website Le Grand Soir, is up in arms: “Do parents know that this person to whom they entrusted their children was a gun nut? What must it do to Americans to wake up each morning saying ‘Today 34 people will die of a gunshot wound?’ What is this country, where millions of people think that if there are killings, it’s because citizens are not all armed? What is this country of cowboys who can’t picture eliminating from their Constitution the Second Amendment (added in 1791) that guarantees all citizens the right to bear arms? Back then, citizens feared that the government could disarm them to impose a standing army or a militia. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that self-defense was a central element of rights under the law.” (6)

The Other Possible Causes of These Killings

Each killing and shoot-out has its share of debates and commentaries on the causes that might have led to the killer to act. The tragedy at Newtown is no exception. Along these lines, websites like Europe1 explained the day after the drama that Adam Lanza and his friends “spent long hours playing video games,” and that he particularly “loved anything from Japan. He collected Pokemon cards and played Dynasty Warriors — a combat game with firearms that came out in the 1990s — on his PlayStation.” For the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, as quoted by Fox News: “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools …. Should we be so surprised that schools have become such a place of carnage? … We don’t have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem.”

The Massacre of Innocents and the Dishonesty of the Mainstream Media

In Iran, the spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “condemned the ‘tragic incident’ … and expressed sympathy with the families of the victims,” all while calling upon “American society to mobilize against ‘warmongering and the massacre of innocent people anywhere …’” He added a clarification, in order to be understood: “There is no difference between children and teenagers who fall victim to armed actions, whether it be inside Gaza, the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or Syria.” In China, the state news agency took a clear position in favor of the control of firearms: “Their blood and tears demand no delay for U.S. gun control.” (7)

Quite rightly, on the subject of the massacre of innocents: “And if Obama sheds a little tear, it’s also appropriate to remind him that the tons of bombs that he has poured on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria … have killed children, many children, and the world, which has been so rotted by money, is not moved by it and does not shed a tear. And this is to say nothing about Gaza …. This British documentary follows American families who love firearms and teach their children to use them, whether they want to or not.” (8)

With a rare cynicism, all the radio and television stations have reported the same facts dozens of times, without ever showing the reality. They go above and beyond with scenes of crying and compassion toward these children who had their lives stolen from them. Even UNICEF, which is supposed to defend children no matter where they are from, was back at forgotten habits, cruelly recalling its silence when 100s of children from Gaza lost their lives, too. It is scandalous to see and hear, ad nauseum, Western media going over and over the events and the distress of this little town without, of course, learning anything new about the deep causes of this mass crime. Without joining a competition of victimhood, humanity demands, in a move of compassion, a further mention of the multiple blunders of the coalition in Afghanistan. On Feb. 8, 2012, the latest blunder to date, eight children were killed in the attacks.

We must also remember the 500,000 children killed by malnutrition because of an inhuman embargo, of which Madeleine Albright said, at the time: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” And in Gaza? All the 400 “buds destroyed just after their bloom” in 2008 and 2009? Nobody had crocodile tears to dry theatrically! Even the last raid of last month saw the death of 161 Palestinians and five Israelis! The many dozens of children sacrificed to destruction and victimization are always on the same side. Those who remain alive are traumatized for life, and there are no psychologists at their bedside to help them put themselves back together! More generally, what can be done so that children in war-torn countries heal from their traumas? If this therapy could, it must be applied to the children of Gaza who have escaped from Apache helicopters, Phantom F-16s and drones. This massacre was, without doubt, a horrible thing, but to go from that to speaking of it as if it was a specific and universal symbol … enough is enough! Let us be just, let us be human, totally human and maybe we will be saved. The prophet Isaiah invites us to serve humanity.

1.http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2012/12/17/tuerie-de-newtown-le-fusil-et-l-identite-americaine_1807444_3222.html

2.http://www.courrierinternational.com/breve/2012/12/17/2012-annee-meurtriere

3.http://www.lematin.ch/monde/

ameriques/newton-pleure-victimes/story/10598989

4.Gilles Blassette http://www.la-croix.com/Actualite/S-informer/Monde/La-Maison-Blanche-face-aux-partisans-des-armes-a-feu-_NG_-2012-12-17-888926

5.http://www.rue89.com/2012/12/15/tuerie-de-newtown-quen-disent-les-defenseurs-des-armes-237839

6.http://www.legrandsoir.info/spip.php?page=forum&id_breve=3128

7.http://www.rue89.com/2012/12/15/condoleances-diplomatiques-apres-newtown-liran-et-la-chine-font-passer-un-message-237843

8. http://www.oulala.info/2012/12/armes-a-feu-un-jeu-denfants/