Whither the NRA

Six people shot and injured in Houston, Texas today.  Whither the NRA (National Rifle Association)?  Five people shot and killed in a mall in Washington State.  Whither the NRA?  Dozens shot and killed in an Orlando night club earlier this summer.  Whither the NRA?

It’s a legitimate question in view of the NRA and other gun lovers in the US who claim that guns in the hands of law abiding citizens will reduce crime by allowing people to stop criminals before or during a crime.  It apparently never happened in any of these cases.  And it wasn’t as though there wasn’t enough time.  The shooter in Houston was active for about an hour.  The shooter was finally shot by a police officer.  Texas prides itself on being an open carry state, so it wasn’t a case of having to go home and unlock the gun cabinet and get to the site of the shooting.  In fact, have you ever heard of a situation where gun carrying citizens have stopped, or at least lessened the severity, of a major crime?  I certainly haven’t.

So where did this illusion that the more guns there are, the lower the crime rate?  It was certainly a feature of western movies in the past, and many “revenge” movies of today.  Who didn’t want to be Clint Eastwood cleaning out the town of bad guys, or Charles Bronson taking revenge for some deed perpetrated against a family member?  It can’t be as simple as that.  After all, we watched the same movies and TV shows in Canada and it didn’t seem to have the same effect.  The license for owning guns is certainly in the US Constitution in the form of the Second Amendment (always capitalized you’ll notice).  But read carefully what it says about the right to bear arms as part of a well formed militia.  Since when is a man (or woman) walking down the street with a fire arm part of a “well formed militia”? Now there is more than one gun for every man, woman and child in the country, more than 330 million we are told. Up until 1959, the US Supreme Court recognized that limitation on gun ownership.  Gun ownership did have restrictions and limitations.  Something changed the Supreme Court’s mind.  And of course, the US Congress has refused to pass any meaningful restrictions under great pressure from, among others, the NRA. 

The truth is that there are more gun related deaths per capita in the US than in any other developed country.  In every other such country, there are meaningful restrictions on gun ownership.  It is always interesting to watch British crime dramas, where the ordinary police officer and detective are unarmed, discover a crime where a gun has been used.  There is a sense of horror and surprise that a criminal has resorted to that means to perform the murder or theft. 

 

It is scary to think about the proliferation of guns in the US.  There are great tensions in that country driven by politics, wealth, immigration and economics.  When a candidate for the US presidency can stand up and give a strong hint that some NRA member can solve problems by taking action against his opposition you have to wonder where this could lead.  Assassination? Civil war?  You have to wonder.  Will the NRA have an answer to that?