Aftermath

The aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting rampage couldn’t be uglier, more disgusting and any more telling if a bunch of people got together and made it their mission to dream up the ugliest, most disgusting and most telling reponse possible.

One would think that 26 dead would make the most hardened gun nut consider, whether changes might be necessary to what are ludicrously lax gun laws.  One would think, alas …

After a week of silence the NRA came out with what I consider easily the most deluded idea in decades by saying that the way of dealing with gun violence in US schools is to have armed guards stationed in schools.  Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined anybody ever coming up with that.  I should have, they mean it.  There is so much wrong with this notion that I wouldn’t know where to start debunking it if I tried, in the end, I decided not to even try, because you can’t logically argue with deluded people.  One thing, though, is worth mentioning: it does not work.  Fort Hood, a military installation where in 2009 a gun man killed 13 and wounded 29 is the only proof I need for the effectiveness of armed personnel in a shooting (yes, the shooting apparently took place in a gun-free zone but you’d still expect the military to be able to muster some kind of response  quickly and efficiently).

The most deluded of them all, a certified nut case by the name of Wayne La Pierre, a Vice President at the NRA just made a laughing stock (although nobody is laughing given the seriousness of the situation) of himself on national TV by claiming that it would not have made any difference to the death toll if the shooter did not have a clip with 30 rounds of ammo, but only five.  My 8 year old can grasp that concept without difficulty.  Not so Mr. LaPierre.

So what are these mad men (and women) fighting for: allegedly the Second Amendment, that is the right to bear arms.  As much as I, as a bleeding heart European Liberal, think that guns don’t belong in the hands of civilians, complete gun control will not happen in this country, not in my life time and presumably not in the lifetime of my boy either.  So, and that is the critical point, nobody with any power in this country is pushing for a complete ban of guns.  What is under discussions are modifications such as:

• an assault rifle ban – assault rifles are those, that chamber a new round after each shot making it possible to shoot in rapid succession.  Those guns were developed by the military for combat situations when they realized that in combat situations soldiers did not aim very well (surprise, surprise) and just sort of shot in the general direction of the enemy.  Assault rifles solve that problem by giving the soldier the option to just blanket an area with shots under the assumption that one will hit.  And now can anybody please explain to me why a civilian would need such a gun?  For which purpose other than inflicting maximal casualty in minimal time??  Seriously, anybody has any suggestion?  And don’t say hunting because I won’t believe that the hunter’s goal is to make minced meat off the prey right in the wilderness.
• smaller ammo clips.  As mentioned above, to anybody with the intellect exceeding that of an average 3 year old it is clear that 30 rounds have the potential to inflict 6 times as much damage as 5 rounds.  It is the same with rocks, really, or Lego blocks used for tossing, or even pillow fights – the more ammo you have, the more hits you land, even if you don’t aim very well.
• Closing loop holes in background checks – yes, allegedly their are background checks but only if you buy the gun at a store, you buy from an unlicensed dealer, or at a gun show – no background check required.  In which universe does that make sense?  Maybe somebody should introduce legislation to the effect that drugs are only illegal when bought on street corners but if you sell them at an official drug show it is fine.

Shocking to me, also, is the ferocity with which people defend their guns and the paranoia into which they fall as soon as somebody as much as suggests that it might be time to start potentially considering certain small limitations to the all out gun craziness in this country.  Even on some of the liberal blogs I read there are those high-pitched voices screaming that the government is going to take all their guns away and that that would be the end of the world as we know it and civilization and that the enemy who lurks out there, armed to the teeth is just waiting for that moment.

I was thinking what possible could instill such paranoia in Germans and I didn’t come up with anything, really.  The closest would be a comprehensive speed limit on the Autobahn which would cause a huge outcry.  But the reality is, most stretches of the Autobahn have a speed limit imposed anyway, not even that comparison is valid.

So, I am still trying to grasp the psychological underpinnings of this gun craziness – and am utterly failing so far.