Don’t blame the Second Amendment

As two mass shootings in a single day in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, killed 31 people and wounded many others last weekend, there have been fresh calls, including in this publication, to rid the American Constitution of its Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.

Such calls frequently accompany the aftermath of mass shootings, defined as killings with more than three victims, which occur with grotesque regularity – more than 250 so far this year.

But the Second Amendment is not the chief problem facing campaigners who want to restrict or eliminate possession of the military-style, assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines (clips holding ammunition), involved in so much of the mayhem.

It is a lack of political desire or courage among legislators to change the law contrary to the wishes, propaganda and cash-lubricated influence exerted by the powerful gun lobby consisting of the National Rifle Association, an organisation claiming more than five million members, and gun manufacturers.

For years, a majority of Americans have backed proposals to restrict the most devastating rapid-fire weapons and to increase background checks to identify criminals or mentally ill people.

All that is necessary is to change the law; there is no need to alter the constitution to knock out the Second Amendment – a complicated Congressional procedure requiring a degree of bipartisan support impossible to imagine in today’s bitterly-divided US political landscape.

The House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, indeed passed last February two measures to impose stricter background checks on those desiring to purchase weapons. But the legislation has since been stuck in the Senate where the leader of the Republican majority, Mitch McConnell, has not allowed it to be brought forward for a vote.

The NRA and gun manufacturers portray any attempt to make weapons purchases harder as encroaching on the rights of citizens and have helped squash some 100 attempts to introduce stiffer legislation. They give financial help to re-elect politicians who support them or by donating cash to unseat those who they deem anti-gun.

McConnell has received more than one million dollars in NRA donations. The NRA spent millions in advertising and other help to support Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and a majority of their members are believed to be part of his “core” supporters.

After 17 people were killed last year at a Florida school, Trump, in a televised session from the White House, declared he wasn’t beholden to the NRA and vowed action on stricter gun laws. The next day he met with the NRA and tamely submitted to the gun lobby’s wishes.

Trump has been blamed for inciting the sort of anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant race hatred that is believed to have prompted the shootings last Saturday in El Paso.

On Monday he spoke woodenly and platitudinously about how dreadful the shootings were. He then tried to tie his, and the Republican Party’s, support for gun legislation to the Democratic Party’s backing for his immigration legislation. That trade is unlikely to happen and so, once again, substantive legislative attempts will likely fizzle out.

For most Britons appalled by the endless gun deaths in America, it’s probably perplexing that the US should be so reluctant to ditch the amendment enshrining the right of everyone to own a lethal firearm.

Why not simply confiscate most types of guns and severely limit the type of weapons civilians are allowed to keep, as was done in Britain in 1996 following the massacre at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland?

After all, the Second Amendment was formulated in the wake of America’s war of independence so that a citizen militia, with each man providing his own musket and gunpowder, would be ready to challenge any foreign foe, like the recently-defeated British Empire, or a domestic tyrannical government.

But although many Americans believe the amendment is outdated and should be repealed, they are far from a majority.

And most Americans do not want British-like weapons restrictions or object to gun possession for recreation or self-defence.

That is hard for many Britons to understand because, even before Dunblane, the idea of gun ownership beyond shotguns and rifles for hunting or pest control by farmers and perhaps pistols for competition shooting, was distasteful or suspect.

But in the US guns and ownership of weapons are bound up with an American, mythological, image of toughness and self-reliance. People are more familiar with guns in the US, where they were an everyday tool for gathering food and for protection against wild animals or hostile humans, until much more recently than in Europe.

Americans might support getting rid of assault-type guns with magazines packing outlandish numbers of bullets. But in a country where there is more than one firearm for every man, woman and child and which is also awash with illegal guns, most people feel do not want to outlaw a gun for home-defence or recreation.

Although the US shares many core values with the UK and many Americans are Anglophiles, their psychological composition is more than just a Brit with a funny accent.

Advice from Britons or others to change the US Constitution because it’s different from their own “sensible” versions just isn’t going to cut it here.