Memorial for the 2012 massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook (Image: Getty)
America has suffered yet another heartbreaking school shooting, and the nation is once again in shock. “There’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do,” says the President of the United States. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
But those were not the words of Joe Biden after 19 children were gunned down along with two teachers by a teenager at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday.
That call for an end to mass gun deaths came from President Barack Obama, speaking after the 2012 massacre of 20 children at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. But little changed.
A decade later America is reeling yet again after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos rampaged through yet another elementary school as its students, aged seven to ten, wound down for their summer break.
The massacre has provoked the standard response: hand-wringing horror at the carnage, heartfelt vows that we must never let this happen again, and voices that ask, like a broken record, why America has not been able to halt gun violence.
Appallingly, it is the nation’s 27th school shooting this year. As grieving families prepare for 21 funerals, and several more victims fight for life in critical condition in local hospitals, the call goes out again for gun control laws that will end the nation’s recurring nightmare of mass shootings. But the stark reality is that little changed after previous school shootings, and little will change now.
After decades of gun massacres in the US there was a palpable sense that action would finally be taken after the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 20 children aged six and seven, and six adults. Funerals of infants united the nation in grief. But little changed.
America was shaken by its worst mass shooting when a lone gunman opened fire at a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing 60 and wounding 411 in 2017, again prompting calls for an end to gun violence. But little changed.
President Biden says America ‘has to act’ (Image: Getty)
The killing of 17 students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 saw the nation inspired by the voices of angry and articulate survivors, teens who appeared on the cusp of ending America’s gun horror. But little changed.
When a racially-motivated gunman shot ten black customers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, earlier this month, the only surprise was that America still has the capacity to be shocked by such crimes.
And like clockwork, after this week’s school shooting, President Biden said of gun violence: “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act.” Speaking for many Americans, he asked: “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”
The answer is simple. America is great at expressing outrage, and is well practised in calling for change, but it is lousy at following through. If history is any lesson, new names will be etched into fresh gravestones and the country will move on; because America is a nation unable to confront its worst demons.
I recall my own impotent horror in 2014 when my daughter Sophie phoned me, cowering on her apartment floor in fear, as gunman Elliot Rodger, 22, terrorised students on the street outside at Santa Barbara University in California, killing six and wounding 14.
Gerry Connolly speaks at a candlelight vigil in Fairfax (Image: Em Pics)
The gun that I reluctantly keep at home in Los Angeles for protection from America’s tsunami of lethal weaponry was of little use to Sophie 90 miles away.
I remember walking the bullet-riddled street outside her home the next day, grateful she was alive, passing the small shrine of flowers where her friend had been killed, seeing the shell-shocked faces of the students who survived, and hoping that the thousands calling for a tightening of gun laws would be heard. But little changed.
Gun control in America is hampered by legislative delay, political deadlock, a powerful pro-gun lobby, courts that protect the right to bear arms, and the inevitable flagging of public enthusiasm after their initial horror has worn off. And with each successive mass shooting the nation becomes a little more inured, more numbed to the shock.
The biggest problem, say experts, is the vast number of guns: 393 million, more than one gun for every American, according to a 2018 survey. Americans own almost half of every civilian-owned firearm in the world. Japan, with less than one gun per 100 citizens, typically has fewer than ten gun deaths each year.
With more guns, Americans are more likely to reach for the trigger instead of resorting to fisticuffs when an argument escalates.
The National Rifle Association, even after declaring bankruptcy last year, remains one of America’s most powerful and influential lobbying groups, protecting the right to bear arms. Politicians cross the NRA at their peril.
Twenty-seven wooden angel figures (Image: Reuters)
Democrats have been calling for stronger gun control – universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons – for more than 25 years. But Americans who support the right to carry guns are intensely focused and make it a core part of their political identity.
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution guaranteeing the right to bear arms remains highly controversial, and there are repeated calls for its repeal. But it will be inviolate for years to come after President Trump ensured that the US Supreme Court is balanced 6-3 in favour of Republican-appointed judges, who have sworn their allegiance to preserving that right.
Americans enshrined in law the right to bear arms 231 years ago after rebelling against British rule. All these years later, gun ownership is still viewed by millions of Americans as a symbol of personal freedom, and independence. And in a bitter irony, calls for gun control actually lead to a boost in gun sales as people rush to beat restrictions that probably will not happen.
Enacting new gun control legislation is hard and slow. And any law that does beat those odds is invariably challenged in the courts. New federal gun laws would require a 60-40 vote in the Senate, which seems an impossibly high bar when the Democrats have only a slender 51-49 majority.
Gun sales are a part of daily life for Americans (Image: Getty)
Many Americans don’t see it as a gun problem, according to a 2017 study by Social Science Quarterly. While an astonished world looks on amazed at a nation that allows such easy availability of firearms, US gun owners are more likely to blame poor parenting, mental health issues, movies, video games or social media for inspiring the violence.
It has been 28 years since America last passed any significant gun control law, banning assault-style rifles. That cut mass shootings by 25 percent, but was repealed after a decade in 2004 as shooting deaths rose. Even when the shock of mass shootings is powerful enough to push through changes in gun laws, they are minor.
There is also a shocking lack of research on gun violence, due to the NRA’s hostility to any studies that might link guns to violence. Yet many see research into gun violence as the first step toward finding solutions to stopping firearm murders and suicides.
“There’s at least five different gun violence problems in this country and mass shooting is one of them,” says scientist Dr Andrew Morral at the RAND Corporation research group. “There’s also suicide, there’s urban gun violence which mostly affects minority young men, there’s family shootings, and there’s police shootings.
“And they all have different risk factors, they all have different motives, and they often involve different firearms.”
Mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of America’s gun deaths: most come in domestic squabbles, crimes, and suicide. Even without proposing an outright ban on guns, America has long been aware of the changes that could reduce firearm violence: banning assault weapons, increasing background checks on gun buyers, and improving mental health services.
Some view more guns as the solution. South Dakota passed a law in 2017 allowing people to carry firearms in churches and private schools, believing it would act as a deterrent, and teachers can carry guns to class in 28 US states.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday expressed his horror at the latest school shooting, saying that gunman Salvador Ramos “shot and killed, horrifically, incomprehensibly”. Yet in 2015, this same Governor Abbott complained that he was “embarrassed” that Texas ranked second in gun-buying behind California, urging: “Let’s pick up the pace, Texans.”
Ramos apparently heard the message, and 19 children now await burial in Texas.
Expect little to change.