Contributing writer Dickson Igwe
When this Island Dweller, and Observer of all things USA, learned from his Twitter News Stream, Saturday Morning, July 21, 2012, that there was another mass shooting in the United States, the previous night, his first thought was the usual, ‘’ I told you so!’’ Funnily, he knew this reaction was knee jerk.
That quiet voice deep in his interior, from his mysterious sub conscience, told him to hold his horses on this one: that there was much more to be learned from this latest gun tragedy. It was not a simple notion that a lack of gun control was cause. So he departed his desktop, and intuitively turned on the television to Cable News network- CNN. He was horrified at the Breaking News!
He learned that for 12 ordinary movie goers, this was to be the last day of their lives; and that, for scores of others: the most dreadful, deadly, horrific and tragic day of a very fragile existence. A late night jaunt to the movie theatre to watch a Batman movie, ‘’Dark Night Rises,’’ turned into a rendition of pure and bloody horror, for movie goers, friends, and family. It was just as bad for emergency responders: police, fire, ambulance personnel, and paramedics, who arrived to find a scene of utter carnage.
On July 20, 2012, at approximately midnight, a 24 year old Caucasian male, academically gifted, named James Holmes, went into the Century 16 Movie Complex in Aurora Town Center, Denver Colorado, USA. Aurora appears to be one of those relatively quiet places, where not much happens. However, evil visited the town in the form of one young man, well equipped, and in full body armor, armed to the teeth. Ironically, Aurora is just 17 miles from where the Columbine Massacre took place on April 20, 1999.
Using tear gas as precursor to his deadly assault, clearly a ruse to surprise and confuse the cinema audience, the murderer then shot 70 people in cold blood, with an automatic assault type weapon, killing 12 of them. Holmes possessed extra guns on his person that tragic night, but this Observer is unsure whether he used these in his massacre of innocent movie goers. The youngest victim was a 3 month old baby, who fortunately survived injury, however, a precious six year old daughter, was not quite that fortunate, and died, plunging her family into a lifetime of pain and grief.
This Observer believes it is important not just to feel sympathy and empathy for the victims of tragedy, when tragedy strikes, but to attempt in as much as that is possible, to put oneself in the place of the victim, and the victims’ family. That is the closest one can get, who is not in that tragic position, to truly understanding the grief felt from sudden loss and bereavement. And remember this, tragedy is random, anyone could have been sitting in a tragic front row seat the night of the shooting at Aurora: this Cinema Lover enjoys a family night out at the movies for one. So this tragedy hit home.
Now, one response to the shooting tells a story of an Americana culture of a love for guns and the frontier spirit, a narrative centuries old, that drives the US gun dynamic. This was a story that could be found in the British Independent Newspaper of July 21, 2012.’’ The story titled, ‘’ AURORA MASSACRE AN ARGUMENT FOR MORE GUNS SAYS LOBBYIST.’’ In that narrative, Dominic Harris, described how after the shooting the head of an American firearms lobbying group, said the shooting was, ‘’ an opportunity to loosen up gun laws.’’ Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, and a member of the National Rifle Association, a very powerful lobby, stated that, ‘’ anti gun laws were setting up people for disaster.’’ That, ‘’ most of our mass murders have occurred precisely where the criminal knew that he would find unarmed victims.’’
James Holmes. Photo courtesy telegraph.co.uk
On the opposite end, from the stance and scale of the gun enthusiast, the national Rifle association, and supporters of the Second Amendment, are the views of men and women such as New York’s multibillionaire Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s reaction to the shooting was published in The Huffington Post, of July, 20, 2012, and in two sentences which described how,‘’ New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on President Barack Obama and GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Friday, to detail their views to improve gun control in wake of the mass shooting in Aurora Colorado.’’ Bloomberg is an active and outspoken member of ‘’MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS’’ that boasts a membership of 600 plus mayors from across the USA.
Now, West Indians are fully aware that the Caribbean Sea and the surrounding Atlantic and Gulf are essentially a US Lake. American media, culture, economics, and politics inordinately influence the Caribbean, permeating cities, towns and village communities across the region. Caribbean islands possess highly porous borders. And it is a well known fact that many countries in the West Indies are used as staging posts for illegal drug shipments to the USA, and this is supported by the importation of guns illegally into the region. These guns are then tragically used in the commission of a variety of crimes: murders, robberies, and so on.
At the last British Virgin Islands General Election Campaign, the National Democratic Party expressed its intention of tightening up illegal gun possession laws in the country. The lessons from the United States are requisite learning on that issue for both politician and constituent. But look no farther than across the channel, and allowing a culture of guns, and illegal gun possession run rampant in the United States Virgin Islands has created mayhem on that Caribbean Paradise.
Every year, scores of Virgin Islanders, and others, are slaughtered in St. Thomas and St. Croix, and some of this violence gets exported to these British Antilles. This must not become Modus Vivendi in the British Virgin Islands where the influences of the cousin geography cannot be ignored. Prevention is better than cure!
Returning to the mainland USA, and there appear to be two strains of thought on the gun issue. The first is held by those who believe that the best defense against the lone and random gunman is the citizen possessing a firearm. Then in the event of the dreadful and incomprehensible, one may be able to defend one self.
Understandable! But would that have worked at Aurora? No! An armed public and theater audience would not have changed the trajectory of tragedy that terrible night. In any event, the shooter was protected with full body armour, and used the element of surprise to kill and maim.
The other strand is the one held by the Mayor of New York, and 600 hundred other mayors. That there must be strict gun controls in place to protect life and limb. And that means only allowing guns in the hands of those who have been thoroughly vetted, and banning guns from certain places outright, such as day care centers, schools, hospitals, and social meeting places, such as cinemas, theaters, and so on and so forth. Then put in place strict deterrence, in the form of tough prison sentences for those who break the law.
A July 24, 2012, article in the Hoover Institution Journal, ‘’Defining ideas,’’ by Professor Richard Epstein, headed, ‘’ WILL BANNING GUNS PREVENT ANOTHER AURORA!’’ And the sage intellectual stated that, ‘’ the sad truth is there is precious little any society can do to defend against periodic tragedies.’’ Epstein alluded to the fact that, ‘’ today, upwards of 200 million firearms of all descriptions are available for general use in the United States.’’ Epstein’s is a depressing metric and rendition!
The Professor asserted that the imposition of a tough registration programme would lead to a substantial reduction in the number of guns in circulation. But he went on to stress that even tough gun laws may have had little impact on people like James Holmes. He described the paradox where there was a dichotomy of opinion in the USA: one point of view was fiercely in defense of gun control, and the other denunciated all gun control measures. Now, in this life, one can find a piece of literature to justify any idea. And this Gun Hater still feels that this instrument of death is best kept under strict control, if not banning it from society altogether. And there is evidence that countries that ban guns have far less homicides from guns, than those that do not.
A Canadian Media called ‘’NOW,’’ in the June 28, 2012, edition, a story headed, ‘’ 10 REASONS WE NEED A NATIONAL HANDGUN BAN, ‘’ put it this way. ‘’ handguns are blasting a hole in our national fabric, snuffing out young lives, and costing billions in healthcare every year.’’
Writer Enzio Di Matteo gave the following reasons why he felt banning guns in Canada was the way to go: firearms are the third leading cause of death among young people; suicides and accidental deaths from guns account for two thirds of all gun related deaths in Canada; handguns accounted for 40% of all homicides in Toronto between 1998 and 2003.
Then, the cost of gun crime to the health system is approximated at 300,000 Canadian Dollars per victim; two thirds of all guns seized by the police come into Canada illegally from the USA; stats demonstrate that the threat to public safety does not depend on the intent of the user, but is related to the presence of the firearm itself; and the acceptance of guns and a gun culture is warping the values of young people, leading to higher school dropout rates.
Canada is a good model to study on the effects of guns on community, if only for the reason that unlike America where the gun issue is implacably contorted by the passions of the gun lobby, Canadians may be better able to look at this malignity more objectively.
For the Virgin Islands, the best exhortation one can give is for the powers that be to continue the noble fight against illegal guns and gun crimes in the territory. And that entails new anti gun legislation; stiff sentencing by the judicial establishment; a robust stop and search regimen by the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force; with all law enforcement agencies collaborating to end the gun scourge in this small community once and for all.
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