Shortly before the end of the school day in South Florida, a young man entered the premises with a shotgun, and proceeded to mow down his former classmates. Following the carnage, 17 were dead, and an all-too-familiar pattern of events unfolded. Another mass shooting by a loner that had slipped under the radar.
The FBI was accused of “missing” a comment that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz had posted on social media claiming “I’m going to be a professional school shooter”. It emerged he’d participated in paramilitary training with a white supremacist group, had been banned from school for bringing in ammunition in his rucksack and was described as an “oddball” who loved guns. Other kids said they were scared of him.
How many times have we heard this story? Inevitably, President Donald Trump felt compelled to make a response, speaking for around six minutes from the White House, but not once did he mention gun control – because he knows that, even if he had not accepted funding from the gun lobby during his campaign, it’s a law he would never get into the statute book. And Trump doesn’t do failure, no matter how strong the moral imperative.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit monitoring group in the USA, there have been 6,738 incidents involving guns in 2018, and 1,859 deaths. As of 16 February, it calculates there have been 30 mass shootings, defined as incidents involving four or more victims. Of the deaths, 358 have been teenagers, and there were 70 children under 11.
In 2017, there were more than 61,000 incidents in the USA, with over 15,500 deaths from gun violence.
Following the Parkland, Florida shootings this week, Trump offered “prayers and condolences”, adding “no child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school”. To which one Parkland student responded: “I don’t want your condolences you f g piece of s t my friends and teachers were shot … do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this but Gun Control will prevent it from happening again”. That message has been shared thousands of times, but it will be totally ineffective.
Trump’s other anodyne reaction was to declare that the alleged killer was “mentally disturbed”, which is to demean anyone suffering from real mental health issues. Could he perhaps not contemplate the awful truth: that for Cruz, his actions probably seemed perfectly logical, given the relentless diet of violence on TV and online? Guns are so firmly cemented into what’s considered “normal” in America that using them might be seen as a perfectly understandable action.
Barack Obama made 15 speeches from the White House following mass shootings. He visited the scenes of the crimes, he said prayers and sang hymns with the families of the victims, and he shed tears in public. He tried and failed to get the gun laws reformed, and admitted: “I have seen how inadequate my own words have been.” Trump lacks the emotional intelligence of Obama – he is a mega-bully, who operates by firing off angry tweets late at night. His button is bigger than my button.
We are all familiar with the childlike aggression and foot-stamping – the sign of a big, spoilt baby who has never grown up, who fears real change and the unfamiliar. Trump has cut the funding for mental health care, which makes his rhetoric sound even more pointless. As for prayers – hitching your reaction to those who sincerely hold religious beliefs is obscene. Prayer is a handy tool for hard-nosed politicians to grab on to when they are lost for words.
Obama was strong enough to be able to admit he was frustrated and powerless. Trump doesn’t cry, doesn’t do public displays of emotion or touchy-feely (unless it involves putting his hand on a convenient piece of female flesh). He doesn’t do suffering, he believes in shooting from the hip and attacking before he is attacked – and in that, Trump embodies the mindset that believes owning a gun to “defend” yourself is a fundamental right. It assumes that we are all in mortal danger from someone, from exterior forces, all the time, and it’s that fear which got him elected.
Many of his supporters believe that carrying a gun in your car is acceptable – even for a teenager like Cruz who was too young to drink legally! Contrast that mindset with that of religious leaders. Did Jesus feel the need to carry a gun, or arm his disciples? Believers of all faiths – Christian, Hindu, Muslim or whatever – share one common ethos: that fellow men are to be trusted and are intrinsically good. If you believe that owning a gun is your right, then you believe the opposite, and should not use the power of prayer or the cloak of religious belief to hide under.
I despise the way politicians regularly claim they are “praying” for those affected by all kinds of tragedies. If they had any empathy, they would realise how offensive those words are.
The Independent.