In the year 2007, while I was a senior in high school in Phoenix, Arizona, I traveled to Montana, the state where I was born, to visit old friends. In one instance, I was wearing a t-shirt with a painted image of then-senator Barack Obama when I decided to enter a gas station to stock up on junk food for a road trip. As I was leaving and walking to our car, a man in a large truck yelled at me from across the parking lot, “Hey, you know he’s going to take our guns away, right?”
This is a common mentality throughout the United States. Yesterday evening, just as the NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots was getting underway, the network coverage changed abruptly. President Obama was in Connecticut to give a speech addressing the recent school shooting where 20 children and several school employees were killed. In his speech, the President expressed anger. “We have do to better,” he said in reference to the slew of public shootings that have occurred in the U.S. in recent months. Immediately after the speech, people across the country rushed to gun stores in order to buy automatic weapons in anticipation of stronger restrictions on gun ownership.
The NRA is a prominent interest group in American politics.
The issue of gun ownership rights is the most fervent ongoing political topic in the U.S. The pro-gun ownership side is supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA is the strongest lobbying group in the U.S., which means that every election unsung quantities of money are given to, mostly Republican, lawmakers in order to ensure that no new restrictions on gun ownership will occur. On the other side of the issue are Democratic lawmakers, for the most part, who want to place buying restrictions on certain types of guns, notably assault rifles and hand guns. If it’s not a sensible hunting weapon it doesn’t belong on the streets, is their argument. This debate has been occurring for a very long time, and it doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon.
But, incidents like the recent shooting in Connecticut give us pause to reconsider gun ownership laws. Last summer I was living in Denver, Colorado with my wife when we heard about a mass shooting in a movie theatre not even 20 minutes drive from our house. The following night, when we attended a theatre to see a film, policemen were guarding the entrances. During the film, if anyone left to buy popcorn or use the restroom, they would return to the anxious staring of everybody in the theatre. We were all on edge.
When I lived in Arizona, we were literally just a few hours drive from areas of Mexico where people are being terrorized and brutally killed by drug cartels. On nearly a daily basis, news of drug-related deaths in Mexico can be read about, but never seen. This violence doesn’t cross the border into the United States, ever. The reason? Think of 9/11. The number of people killed on that tragic day is about 1/5 of the amount of children globally who parish from hunger everyday. But, the American response to an attack like 9/11 was large enough that 12 years later soldiers are still in Afghanistan.
As Americans, we are not exposed to guns and violence. We are never invaded or attacked, and we never see imagery from overseas. There are human rights tragedies of enormous consequence occurring everyday in places like Syria and the Congo. But, we don’t see any of it.
When I tried to visited the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, I arrived too late and was forbidden from entering. The man who told me the museum was closed, though, had an assault rifle strapped over his soldier. To the people who live there, seeing a security guard with a rifle is normal. To me, being from the U.S., it scared the hell out of me. Similarly, when I was walking in a small border town in Mexico, a policeman walked up to a car and tapped on the window with the barrel of his gun. “What if he shoots someone on accident?” I thought to myself. Talking with a friend in Tbilisi, the capital city of the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia, he recounted to me the story of how he and his friends were in a street fight when some of the kids pulled out hand guns. “Weren’t you terrified?” I asked him. To which he casually replied, “No, it’s normal.”
Don’t think that guns are completely absent from American society, though. I live in Washington D.C. This city was historically one of the most violent in the U.S. Why? Poverty. Even today, incidents of shootings on city buses in low-income neighborhoods is a reality. For the majority of my life I did not live in or even visit poor areas like that. But, now that I see them, I realize something significant. To illustrate this significant point I’ll use two recent natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
To those people who have visited and know that city, it is one of the greatest in the United States. The amount of culture and artistry that exists there is beautiful. But, New Orleans is mostly poor minorities. Hence, the humanitarian response to Katrina was abysmal. Lives there are less consequential. No money, no voice. In the aftermath, wealthy developers have come there to buy destroyed (and un-destroyed) buildings as investment properties. Rebuilding the city is a priority. But, it is being rebuilt to fit a different vision from what existed prior. Low-income housing is being replaced with condominiums and high-rises.
Relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.
Hurricane Sandy, which happened last month, affected the East Coast of the United States, not the south where New Orleans is. Here in Washington D.C. we had consistent rain and a tree or two fell down, but overall the effects were minimal. Parts of New Jersey, though, were not so lucky. Images of demolished suburbs and inundated boardwalk communities filled television news coverage. While relief efforts were quickly initiated. Now, Hurricane Katrina happened while George W. Bush was president, and as a leader he was a joke. So, perhaps part of the better response to Sandy involved who was in the White House. It should not be dismissed, however, that those communities most effected were neither poor, nor minorities.
It is the same case with gun violence. It’s the worst in areas like those effected by Katrina, but unless it occurs in areas like those effected by Sandy it isn’t prioritized nationally.
What’s to be taken away from this article for anyone who doesn’t live in the U.S. is a broad understanding of the role of guns in society here, and the politics associated with the debate over ownership, or crime. Again, on 9/11 3,000 people died tragically, and it disrupted the country so badly that even 12 years later people are sensitive about the issue and American troops continue to be stationed in South Asia and elsewhere. But, everyday in the world, 15,000 children die as a result of not having enough food to eat. In this case, who is Katrina and who is Sandy?
View the Original article
0 comments:
Post a Comment