Beholden to guns

COLUMBINE, Sandy Hook – and now another.

Tuesday’s massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has shocked the world. But it has surprised no one familiar with America’s long history of failures when it comes to getting guns properly regulated.

The brutal murder spree came 23 years after the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, ten years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut and a mere ten days after a man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a supermarket in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Buffalo, New York.

The question that has been asked each time, and which we again must ask, is: How many more must die?

The leading cause of death among US children and adolescents is firearm-related injury, according to an analysis done by the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month.

Put another way: in America today the most likely cause of death of a child is being shot. That is a statistic that should give US politicians and citizens alike considerable cause for pause.

Yet the divisions over gun regulation in that country continue, fuelled by disagreement over the appropriate bounds of a constitutional right to bear arms.

While the exact meaning of this right has been subject to much theoretical scrutiny and ideological debate, that has not stopped its implications from being devastatingly, tragically real.

The source of America’s paralysis on this matter is, fundamentally, a question of jurisprudence. Should the US constitution’s second amendment – the exact text of which is in dispute – be interpreted literally and at all costs to other rights such as the right to life?

Or should a constitution be regarded as a living and breathing document, its meaning unlocked through contextual understandings of changed times and circumstances?

For a country that prides itself in having broken free of the yoke of colonialism, America seems, on this matter, hell bent on myopically preserving a legal right that was actually an invention of, or at the very least inspired by, English common law.

This country is fortunate to have escaped the scenes of carnage that played out on Tuesday. However, while we are very different from the US in that regard, we do share the same problem of not being able to control firearms, except for different reasons.

Not only do guns mysteriously enter the country, but guns that are seized are ending up back in the hands of criminals. Most crime is firearm-related, but there are even allegations of criminal conduct when it comes to gun licensing.

The global Small Arms Survey suggests there are now more guns in the US than people.

Tuesday’s tragedy is a warning that if we do not get our act together, we could soon follow in America's footsteps.