It is only appropriate, even if it is ineffectual, that American President Joe Biden should decry the private shootings in his country that grab headlines every few days. While the Democrats generally have favoured stricter gun control laws, they are hobbled by the lack of a national consensus, and the obdurate refusal of conservatives in the polity who hold up the country’s Second Amendment, however obsolete it may seem, as an article of faith. This week, President Biden expressed his frustration when he said: “Every single day, every damn day in America. In areas that are poor, mostly minority, there’s a mass shooting that never reaches the crescendo that it reaches other places.

Every single day.” He told gun control advocates that stricter liabilities were needed for owners of firearms used in violent crimes, a clear allusion to the many cases where disturbed teenagers use their parents’ weapons to unleash mayhem, to vent mostly imaginary grievances. One year ago, the country’s legislature had enacted laws that aimed to bring a modicum of control over gun ownership. Enacted in the wake of a horrific shooting at a school in Texas, the law was described as inadequate by gun control activists, but was clearly the most that conservatives were prepared to concede even in the face of a grave tragedy. The Second Amendment reads: 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. For an advanced country to recognise a role for militias well into the 21st century, more than 200 years after white settlers seeking pastures in frontier lands felt the need to defend themselves against indigenous people, is ludicrous. And the utter absurdity of the law in today’s context was brought home most tellingly by an incident in Illinois last week, when a man dreamt an intruder had entered his home.

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He woke up after shooting himself in the foot, having responded to the imagined threat while still fast asleep. While the incident may provoke smiles or even a chuckle, the shooting in a sense encapsulates all that is wrong with American gun laws. The shooter/victim was holding an unlicensed weapon, a .357 Magnum used by many lawenforcement agencies. In short, he had firepower equal to that of a police officer. Like many of the estimated six million Americans who carry handguns with them daily, he slept with the gun by his bedside. And like many fed on a steady diet of violence, in his life and in popular enactments, he was trigger-happy. As someone facetiously said, if the Chinese want to overpower America, they should put their considerable manufacturing skills into producing cheap handguns and shipping them across the Pacific. The Americans are clearly quite keen to shoot each other ~ and themselves ~ up.