It is beyond debate that the shootings outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas will go into the history books as the largest mass shooting in modern US history, with at least 58 dead and more than 500 wounded. Ironically, US President Donald Trump, who broke his silence six hours after the gruesome carnage, had nothing more to offer the stunned Americans except his “warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible shooting”. He described is as “an act of pure evil” and promised an investigation into the killer’s motives, but nothing beyond that.
Even as sketchy details on investigations have come out, at least one thing can be said with certainty: The perpetrator of the tragedy was not a Muslim, was not black and was not a Hispanic immigrant. Once again, a gunman had committed what appears to have become America’s Pavlovian ritual to mow down a staggering number of innocent civilians. He did it with a fully automatic military-style firearm not in self-defence, not in the heat of battle, not in pursuit of any clearly defined objective, but simply to satisfy some inchoate rage, frustration or alienation.
It is equally indisputable that this shooting—like the Pulse nightclub shooting before it and Newtown before that and Columbine before that—will land in a political culture that is deeply divided on the proper role for guns in society and the need for—or lack of a need for—stricter gun control measures in the country. And it will end up full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
The US is in a class of its own when it comes to gun culture. According to data from the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research initiative that tracks guns, between 2010 and 2015, it witnessed 8,592 gun homicides each year on average. This is more than five times the rate of neighbouring Canada, more than 10 times that of the Netherlands and France, and more than 20 times that of Germany and Spain.
The political response in the US to its pervading gun culture is divided between two schools of thought. While some believe that America needs more gun control laws to stop this cycle of violence, a powerful lobby argues that bad people will do bad things no matter what the gun laws are. The ambivalence reflects of a massive culture disconnect between those who grew up with guns and view them as an extension of their fundamental freedom and those who did not and view guns far more skeptically.
While a majority of Americans think gun laws should be made stricter, the country’s powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) has rammed them into accepting guns by invoking the second amendment to the Constitution which declares “a well-regulated Militia” a necessity for a free state and therefore guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”
Pamela Haag, author of a recent book, The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture, squarely blames the country’s gun industry for the crisis. “One answer to the nebulous but compelling question of why Americans love guns is simply that the gun industry invited us to,” she writes. As an unexceptional, agnostic imperative of doing business, its marketing and advertisement burnished the gun as an object of emotional value and affinity, she contends.
The NRA is an influential player in American politics, bankrolling a slate of pro-gun candidates in elections. It waged a culture war during the Obama administration, casting the liberal President as a tyrannical figure intent on destroying gun rights. Trump, whose campaign received $30 million from the NRA, knows where his bread is buttered.
Yogesh Vajpeyi
Senior journalist based in Delhi
yogesh.vajpeyi@gmail.com