A psychotic young man buys two handguns and hollow-point bullets with one goal in mind: to kill as many of his fellow classmates as possible. The purchase was entirely legal in the United States. After tragedies such as the Virginia Tech Massacre there are calls for restrictions on firearms. In other countries terrible tragedies have led to effectvie gun legislation. Today a reader writes to the New York Times from Scotland about the Dunblane school shooting that left 16 young children dead:
Out of this horrific carnage there emerged an opportunity for radical positive change. I had read that in the wake of this tragedy a campaign was being coordinated to ban handguns, so I contacted the organizers to see if I could help. A couple of days later, I met two fathers who had lost their children in the massacre, and as a result ended up providing money for the campaign, which proved to be enormously successful. It resulted in new legislation that banned the private ownership of handguns in Britain.
That is a positive and perfectly rational outcome. Unfortunately, this will never happen in the United States. Christoph Albrecht Heider has an editorial (Das Recht auf die Knarre) in the Frankfurter Rundschau here he discusses the differences between Germany and America concerning the right to own firearms:
Nach dem Amoklauf am Erfurter Gutenberg-Schule vor fünf Jahren verabschiedete der Bundestag zügig restriktivere Waffenvorschriften. Es war eine fast schon routinierte Reaktion der Politik, die von den meisten Bürgern erwartet und somit auch akzeptiert wurde.
Amokläufer sind häufig zur Selbsttötung entschlossene Mörder. Lassen sie sich aufhalten, wenn ihnen der Zugang zu Schusswaffen entschieden erschwert wird? Ob der Glaube an die Wirksamkeit solcher Vorschriften beispielsweise in Deutschland stärker verbreitet ist als in den USA, mag dahingestellt sein. Darauf kommt es auch nicht an. Man rührt in Deutschland nicht an ein Tabu, wenn man die Bewaffnung der Zivilgesellschaft zu reduzieren sucht, darin liegt der wesentliche Unterschied."After the shooting rampage at the Erfurt Gutenberg School five years ago the government quickly passed more restrictive weapons legislation. It was almost a routine political reaction. Most citizens had seen it coming and accepted it without dispute. People who run amok like this are often murderers bent on killing themselves. Can they be stopped by restricting access to firearms? It may or may not be that confidence in the efficacy of such regulations is more widespread in Germany. But that’s not what’s really at issue here. In Germany you’re not breaking a taboo when you try to restrict civilian society’s access to weapons. That’s the main difference between the two countries."
As long as the courts and cowardly politicians in the US promote the myth that owning firearms is a "constitutional right" we will continue to see the carnage in our cities at our schools.
