Splashes from Beyond the Ocean: Words and Gun Barrels

Christina Green was born on Sept. 11, 2001. Her life ended tragically on Jan. 8, 2011, when Jared Loughner killed six and injured 13 in Tucson, Arizona. Among the injured was U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

The link to the sacred-for-the-Americans date, on which the Twin Towers collapsed in Manhattan, undoubtedly added a pinch of dark ominousness to this fresh drama. Also, just like it happened in the aftermath of that act of terror, people are now feverishly searching for the answer to the question of why. According to some, the ardent, oftentimes even furious polemics between the camps of right and left thinkers in the U.S. lie at the root of the disaster, as it has profoundly influenced the unbalanced Loughner.

The anonymity of Internet forums has been a serious factor when it comes to sharpening the tone of political debates in recent years. And so has the economic crisis. The words exchanged by the supporters of the different political causes are loaded with negative energy in a way they have not been since the Vietnam War. The political leaders are also far less-than-careful in their choice of metaphors.

Sarah Palin’s popularity, for instance, grew thanks to a map posted on Facebook, on which all congressmembers who had voted for President Barack Obama’s health care reform had their districts marked with crosshairs. Not too much restraint can be detected on the other side, either. Giffords’ father (she is a Democrat) said immediately following the shooting that all members of the tea party — that is, the conservative Republicans —are her most obvious enemies. That is why in his speech at the memorial service in Tucson last week Obama himself encouraged everyone to be first and foremost calm and reasonable.

The president chose to talk about tolerance partly because he couldn’t openly take sides on the other version discussed as to what caused the tragic events: namely, the fact that there is no developed country in the world where it is easier to obtain a gun than it is in the States. As long as such a sinister seed is sown, there will be bloody plants growing from it. Guns and pistols take the lives of 30,000 human beings every year in the U.S.

But since the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to have a gun, no president has succeeded in straightforwardly opposing this inherited-from-the-past pistol culture.

Given the easy access to weapons, it is only a matter of time for them to fall into the hands of some psychopath. On top of that, Arizona is one of the states with the most liberal laws, where two-thirds of the population possesses at least one gun. Isn’t it ironic that Giffords boasted to The New York Times last year about how often she went shooting with her personal 9-millimeter Glock? The same pistol holding 31 bullets was used by the murderer, Loughner.

A gun fair took place in Tucson a week after the tragedy. The purchase of all kinds of guns and pistols took literally about 20 minutes, including all of the formalities required. That is, it wasn’t harder to buy a gun than it usually is to buy a TV set for your bedroom. I cannot grasp the paranoid fear Americans have of being deprived of their right to carry a gun under their arm or have it lying on their cars’ backseats. It is as if they expect to have to start an armed fight against the tyrannical U.S. government at any moment.

Idiocy is apparently contagious, however, as I recently read opinions on some Bulgarian forums that crime rates would go down if more citizens carried guns. Not really, dear readers. The only result from the easy access to pistols and guns is that they shoot more often. Guns are responsible for 80 percent of all murders in the U.S. The opposite proportion is true for Bulgaria — and this is not an area in which we need to catch up.

Aside from that, there is no way to entirely preempt such bloody crimes. Mad people live everywhere — even in overly regulated Europe. Only a couple of years ago, an insane young man killed 15 and eventually committed suicide in Stuttgart, despite Germany’s extremely strict rules concerning guns.

Admittedly, not everything can be avoided by means of laws and rules. But if the country is to limit my rights in a certain area for the common good, I’d rather that this area be my possessing a gun and not my right to words, no matter how furious. Words may hurt, but gun barrels kill.