OPINION
A friend of mine is suffering. They are unable to work, shower, eat or do anything much at all but weep. My friend is uncertain if they should attribute this paralysing state to biology or, as , to the toughness of life. But, my friend is not at all uncertain of the moment in which this paralysis began. It was upon learning of the .
The latest—atrocity has become so commonplace, we now describe it in that commonplace way. Such a thing should never occur. That such things occur at all is shocking. That they now occur so often that we can describe them as routine is…well, as my profoundly sad friend said, “there is no word for it.”
And I recalled that phrase as I read of the deaths of children in another place today.
Of the ongoing war in Syria, the , “No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers and their loved ones.”
The world, in my view, has run out of both words and the capacity to respond to needless deaths of all its people.
The UN has run out of words. My friend has run out of words. The world, in my view, has run out of both words and the capacity to respond to needless deaths of all its people. It is not that we do not wish to end these murders in , , the USA or Syria. Unless we are monstrous, we do, very much. But, unless we can rid our analysis of our very human sadness, we won’t.
In our grief for Florida, we believe that the answer is singular: gun control. In our grief for Syria, we may think the answer is singular, too. Many people propose that faith or sectarianism is the cause for the multiple conflicts in that nation. And, if they believe this, they also believe that the most compassionate and sensible solution is to “ban” religion.
There is an entire school of thought in foreign policy that holds that clashes are caused by cultural division. I don’t buy it. I think it’s almost always the other way around: clashes cause cultural divisions. Which is to say, the Syrian conflict is not simple. There is not one single evil force at play, as much as our hearts might demand a single object for their grief. Take one man or one sect out of Syria and you will not see the significant change for which you’d hoped. Take one element out of the ongoing gun fight in the USA, and you may not see the reduction in deaths for which your heart had yearned.
Please, do not misunderstand this as a pro-gun argument. I am pleased to live in a nation without a Second Amendment and with strict controls on arms. I am not pleased to report that the claim that Australian homicide rates following gun control legislation is exaggerated. The fact is, national homicide rates were as they remained in the 1990s: among the lowest in the world.
This is not to say that the legislation should not have been changed. This it is not to say that there have been no lives saved by John Howard’s noblest act as Prime Minister. It is to say that lives must be saved. It’s also to suggest that there are those in the US who have guns in the quest to save their own lives.
You can argue for non-violent resistance, or, you can think a little of what it must be like to live in one of those impoverished parts of the USA where police are not just heavily armed, but militarised.
A conservative leader was able to muster fast support for weapons control here because a majority of Australians have never been controlled by weapons. In the USA, that is not the case. The violence of the USA is not confined to its citizens. Police violence touches many .
Now, you can argue for non-violent resistance, or, you can think a little of what it must be like to live in one of those impoverished parts of the USA where police are not just heavily armed, but militarised.
The 2016 mass nightclub shooting in was a tragedy. But, it’s a tragedy with a background. If you could bring yourself to look at the pictures of the site, what you would have seen was something called a , a heavily armed tactical vehicle almost certainly used by the US in its ongoing war on Afghanistan. If you could bring yourself to read about the perpetrator, you would have learned he was an employee of a . Such people would be licensed even under very strict controls to own arms to guard private assets in the USA.
There are two sides to this conflict. US tanks used to end the lives of civilians in other nations are commandeered by state police in small US cities. The fear US citizens have of their own lives being ended by police are not, at all, unreasonable. It is difficult for me, a comfortable midlife white woman in a country where so very few homicides unfold to think about what I might do if I were an uncomfortable young black American man. But, really, not that difficult. I believe that I would own a gun.
I also believe that if I were a white resident of a place like Florida, where was shot, I would own a gun. I believe that it is possible that my everyday panic about living in such a heavily armed nation might collide with racism. I believe that it is possible that I could have ended the life of that little boy.
I believe that the US does not just have too many guns but too many weapons and too many victims, inside its own borders, and beyond. I believe it is no surprise that the world’s most militarised nation is given to violence. When killing is for heroes and many lives, especially black and brown ones, just don’t seem to matter, this is the nation you get. The solution you need is likely to be less than simple.
