Virginia Tech shootings: America's gun culture or the Wild West mentality?
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The worst shooting rampage in US history spread shock waves through the world today, criticizing authorities for waiting too long to alert people as gunman on the loose killed 33 people. However, this situation should again prompt us to take a closer look at reviving calls for tighter gun control and end the lingering on-campus security debate.
There is no way one can sum up the grief, fear and rage that all sensitive people feel about such senseless cruelty, however, unfortunately, it is not a rare event in a culture that celebrates guns and violence. Unfortunately, it is a country where politicians say they'll do anything and everything to prevent another terrorist attack, yet they neglect their country's terrible gun violence. What a pity!
The Virginia shootings, different only in terms of numbers killed from several other School shootings in recent years, is but the latest example of violence in what has increasingly become a sick society. Not surprisingly, the event has generated a type of hysteria, which sheds more heat than light on basic causes. The conspicuous cause and the only thing to take the heat after the incident is the divisive issue of gun control that is shoving again into the political spotlight.
Let the facts speak for themselves -
* More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds in the United States every year and there are more guns in private hands than in any other country. But a powerful gun lobby and support for gun ownership rights has largely thwarted attempts to tighten controls. [Reuters]
* Advocates of gun ownership rights saw Monday's massacre as evidence of the need to relax gun laws rather than tighten them.
* NRA, the largest and best-known gun rights and gun sports advocacy group, has long been campaigning for legislation to be passed by congress to ban what it calls 'reckless' lawsuits 'aimed at bankrupting' gun manufacturers. [Guardian]
* There is no national gun register in the USA, so it is impossible to know exactly how many guns are in circulation or who have them. The FBI estimates there are more than 200 million guns in civilian hands. The NRA estimates that half of all American households (total US population is 294 million) have at least one gun owner.
This is the sad truth, which in fact is behind the rising violence on the streets of US. The US legislators are the main culprits behind such massacre that are bent to protect interests of the gun industry rather than ending these shootings. Also, the reaction after every massacre in the United States seems to be a routine as anti-gun activists and the pro-gun lobby come up with their usual mantras; former forcing Bush and the Congress to restrict the availability of weapons and the later citing the US Constitution's right to bear arms and other familiar remarks such as 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
At this point, I would like to put the whole society in the courtroom and start the mudslinging. If we've been sane enough to make guns then why we've lost that sanity to 'use' the moulded metal? I think the 'Wild West' mentality is still hanging in the US psyche today.
Time Line US school shootings
