“Crooks are many. Cops are few. Crooks have guns. Why can’t you?” I recall this slogan on a Texan freeway when I visited San Antonio more than a decade ago. This still holds today.
The mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24 brought back imageries of my short stay in Texas where it’s legal to carry handguns in public places.
There, I met a friend. He owned several guns, all locked up in his apartment drawers. For safety, he said. And, there are rules all gun owners should know.
Always assume a gun is loaded. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Never aim your gun at people. Only point your gun at a target that you’re ready to destroy. Logical? Yes.
But with different handguns displayed on a coffee table, my logic was shot. Those guns, although unloaded, felt alive.
What would happen if those guns had fallen into the wrong hands – like the psychopaths in Uvalde, Buffalo, Sandy Hook, and other crazies lurking in the dark recesses of gun-obsessed American culture?
I see a gun as a piece of iron, tooled to kill. A totem of manhood, a symbol of white male identity. Gun owners see it as a lethal weapon meant to protect self, family, and property.
The fortified stance of gun rights proponents is this: mass shootings are triggered by mental illness, not guns per se. So, they say.
I had to feel it to understand the allure of caressing a gun and the American relationship with firearms. We headed for a shooting range. My friend handed me a semi-automatic with live 9mm bullets, 17 rounds.
I racked the Glock, clasped it with both hands, locked my shoulders, sighted the target, squeezed the trigger, and felt the recoil. I missed the target by seven meters. But it was a thrill.
More guns the solution?
Gun proponents argue there’d be fewer casualties in schools and campus grounds if security guards, staff, and students were armed and taught to shoot.
Even college students, they say, should have the right to carry a concealed weapon as long as they have a permit and are familiar with gun safety rules.
They say this is stated in the Second Amendment: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
They believe an armed citizenry protects the people from tyranny, but can good guys with guns deter random mass shootings?
Who knows, when any seemingly responsible adult can buy a gun at Walmart and regular gun shows.
Politicians who are pro- and anti-gun laws have relentlessly justified their respective positions with no concrete stipulations on how to curb gun violence or limit public access to guns.
This trend of lives lost to guns looks likely to continue according to Arlington-based PBS News Hour.
It notes that “mass killings have surged amid the Covid-19 pandemic. As of July, more than 8,000 people were killed in shootings in 2021. That’s approximately 54 lives lost per day, which is 14 more than the daily average of the previous six years.”
In Malaysia, owning a gun without a permit will land you in jail for up to 14 years. That, however, has not restricted access to guns in the black market for revenge killings as recently as in Sungai Petani, Kedah and Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur.
The establishment of research centres, like the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University and the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, shows how Americans are pulling at the seams to stop the bleed.
Media reports of random mass shootings have been intense and graphic. That may have driven “copycat shooters” and reinforced the existential fear that American universities and public places are extremely unsafe.
Fear for safety
This is why I feel and worry about my daughter’s safety when she starts work at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore later this year.
But, just like our anxiety about flying right after the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, context may - or not - help ease one’s fear of being in the right place at the wrong time in the US depending on which database you read.
According to the World Population Review: “Many people understandably assume the high number of gun deaths in the US is due to mass shootings, which receive frequent attention from the media.
“In truth, mass shootings account for only a small percentage of gun deaths in the United States. Rather, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of gun deaths in the US in 2019 were suicides.”
And this: “Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet they own roughly 45 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms, based on 2018 data from Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.”
For context, New Zealand recorded 26.3 civilian firearms per 100 persons compared to Thailand (15), Australia (14.5), the Philippines (3.4), Vietnam (1.64), and Malaysia (0.7). In the US, it’s 120.
Even as it proclaims itself as a model of true democracy and a paragon of gritty individualism, the US seems trapped in a bloody ‘wild wild west’ cycle of gun violence with no happy endings.
ERIC LOO was a journalist and media academic.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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