Another \\\'routine\\\' mass shooting in US

This time it is Oregon. Another mass shooter carried out another mass killing and the gun laws are again under national focus in the United States. This time, 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer turned his weapons on students in a community college in southern Oregon where he was a student himself and killed 9 in cold blood before he killed himself. The gruesome incident was a piece of 'breaking news' for a while but it turned into a 'routine' affair the moment the killer's identity became known.  He was not a Muslim!
The latest mass killing at a shooter's hands angered the US president like never before. He appeared on TV before the nation in the evening of the shooting, asking a rhetorical question, which was how many more times would he be called to duty to offer condolences, comfort and solace to the bereaved families of such mass killings. Such killings have become routine in the lives of Americans because of the ease and regularity with which individuals are able to buy guns in the country. The president's anger was no doubt addressed to the opponents of stricter gun laws who refuse to acknowledge that these senseless, yet routine, killings are related to the gun laws adopted under the Second Amendment that make guns as easy to buy as any consumer item in the US unlike any other developed country.
Frustrated to the limits of tolerance, the president said bluntly that the US gun laws today have put guns into as many hands as the number of people in the country, mind-boggling 318 million or more guns in all. Many among the owners are people who are not of sound mind as the Oregon killer. The president challenged the media to compare gun-related deaths in the US with the other developed countries in the context of gun laws in the USA and those countries. One Internet-based digital media Vox World did that instantly from statistics easily available from the State Department, the Justice Department and the Council for Foreign Relations sources on the Internet. It revealed that for the period 2001-2011, more than 10,000 Americans were killed by gun-related violence each year. Against it, except for 2001 when nearly 3,000 were killed as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "the terrorism death count approximates zero for every year except 2001. This comparison, if anything, understates the gap: far more Americans die every year from (easily preventable) gun suicides than gun homicides."
The president was careful not to be explicit about terror- related deaths. Nevertheless, there was no doubt he was referring to terrorist acts that are committed by Muslims. The president then made a point that could be dismissed only when someone is devoid of both rationality and common sense. He said that the United States 'spent over a trillion dollars, and passed countless laws, and devoted entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so …and yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.'
Nevertheless, there are many million Americans who are passionate about their guns. They are not bothered by the statistics; they are also not bothered by the fact that their country is the only one in the world with such gun laws. They dismiss with contempt their president's passionate and now angry pleas for strict gun laws and care even less at what he says about the developed countries and their gun laws. They are in deep denial that stricter gun laws make use of guns safe for everybody. There are studies galore that show that the US leads the developed nations in gun-related deaths by a ridiculous margin (29.7 per one million against 1.4 in Australia; 1.9 in Germany and 5.1 in Canada). Further these studies have also revealed a direct and unquestioned connection between gun laws and the numbers of gun-related deaths. The stricter the gun laws, the less the number of gun-related deaths.
Yet, Jeff Bush, a Republican candidate for the next year's presidential elections, had a casual statement to make on the Oregon deaths. The candidate did not understand the reasons for the president's reaction because he said, such 'stuffs happen!' Donald Trump thought, the fact that under 'gun-free zone law' for which teachers and other staff inside the Oregon community college were unarmed was a reason why the killing took place and he wanted abolition of 'gun-free zones' in educational institutions! And Jeff Bush and Donald Trump were able to react in this utter nonchalant way because they knew they were representing what is, believe it or not, a core American value to a large number of Americans!
This time, the president showed by his reaction that he was ready to take the opponents of tougher gun laws head-on convinced that the majority of Americans now want it. He said he would not be deterred anymore if they blamed him for politicising the gun laws issue because it is Republican politics that is responsible for these senseless deaths. He, therefore, urged American voters to go to the next few presidential elections with one issue in mind: that they would not support any candidate who favours the existing gun laws even if they would support him on any or all the other issues.
The history behind the US gun laws that make the possession of guns as strong a right as free speech and assembly or any other of the fundamental human rights is of course the untold psyche of American nationhood for a great many Americans. The guns gave Americans, as British immigrants, safety as they fought and conquered the land that belonged to the American Indians. And when the 13 original states having claimed the land of American Indians as theirs gave up certain rights to establish the new country that they named the United States of America, they felt that the right to hold guns as easily and as many as they wanted was necessary to guarantee that the federal government they established would not be more powerful than them! Thus they ensured for themselves the constitutional right to hold guns with the Second Amendment.
Of course, they were also apprehensive that the federal government could amend the liberal gun laws some day and the Second Amendment was not enough. Thus, as the gun industry became formidable business, the supporters of liberal gun laws and the gun industry established the National Rifle Association or NRA in 1871. Since then, it has been a major lobby in the Congress and the nation and a powerful organisation for politicians seeking the conservative vote. In 2015, it had 5 million members.
The shooter, a half-black and half-white Christian, asked about the religion of the victims and shot those who said they were Christians saying he was sending them to God. This led the media to conclude that he had a deep grudge against established religion. But his case was pursued neither as a religious nor a terrorist act but simply as an act of a mentally sick individual leaving Muslims in the US relieved because there is a new surge of Muslim-bashing in the country but with the lingering question what if he was one!
The writer is a retired Ambassador of Bangladesh.
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