Mass Shooting, again: a European Perspective.

This summer, I wrote extensively about Americans and guns after the mass killing in Aurora. (here and here).

Sadly, but expectedly, nothing has changed since then, and I could easily copy and paste what I said last July today. Only this time, the horror has reached a new peak with the death of so many children: undeniably the most sacrilegious killing in our Western societies.
Could this new abomination be the defining moment that may turn American public opinion in favor of gun control?

This is the kind of questions the rest of the world, and certainly the Europeans have been asking since yesterday.

And if we are to take president Obama at his words, something may be done:
“We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

High profile NY mayor Bloomberg, a long advocate of gun control, is keeping the pressure:

The country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem," Bloomberg wrote. "Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response.” (Huff Post)

And maybe this time, the American people will as well. (here).

If things change, it won't be easy, if you look at the reactions of gun supporters.

THE ARGUMENTS OF GUN SUPPORTERS
Just hours after the shooting, some Gun Advocacy Group (Gun Owners of America) claimed that gun control is actually the reason why the shooting took place. Yes, seriously. Their "logic" is that if the teachers had had guns, they could have killed the guy. Read this amazing statement:

Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.(Here)

You think this is just from some crazy group? Think again: a this week, Michigan passed a bill that would allow guns in schools. (here) :

Most of the attention on the new bill has focused on provisions allowing hidden handguns in places where they are now forbidden, such as schools, university dorms and classrooms, and sporting stadiums (Michigan Live)

BLAME IT ON THE HEATHEN
You'd think that a non-violent religion like Christianity might have helpful points to make. And indeed, many people turn to faith on such terrible trials.
Unfortunately, some major leaders - like a former governor and presidential candidate - have a very different view of God:

Mike Huckabee attributed today’s deadly massacre in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut to the lack of God and religion in public schools. (ThinkProgress)

If we followed the logic of this statement, then Europe should have a lot of violence in its schools. Fortunately, it is not the case.

THE U.S AND THE REST OF THE WORLD:
This may be a good opportunity to give this a little perspective by looking at statistics and compare our the U.S. with a few other industrial countries:

                                            (The Guardian)

                         Gun ownership                                        Gun murders
USA:            88.8 per 100 inhabitants                            2.97 per 100 000
Canada:        30.8 per 100 inhabitants                            0.51 per 100 000
The UK:       6.2 per 100 inhabitants                              0.07 per 100 000
France:         19 per 100 inhabitants                               0.06 per 100 000

(Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)

GUNS DOWN, CRIME DOWN:
To be fair, it must be stressed that gun crime in the U.S., like all crimes, is going down. (The Guardian or National Institute of Justice), and....

... despite what is often said, so is gun ownership:

Since 1973, the GSS has been asking Americans whether they keep a gun in their home.  In the 1970s, about half of the nation said yes; today only about one-third do.  Driving the decline: a dramatic drop in ownership of pistols and shotguns, the very weapons most likely to be used in violent crimes. (The Monkey Cage)

But it is still much higher than in any other Western country.

That being said, it is hard to compare the situations in America and in Europe: different histories, different results.

SOLUTIONS?
If we want to think of possible solutions, we need to look at the present reality as it is: there are already significant numbers of guns in circulation in the U.S. Once a lot of people have guns, it may seem more natural to want your own to defend yourself.
As Lexington put it yesterday on the Economists's blog, this may be "tinged with a blend of excessive self-confidence and faulty risk perception.":

I am willing to believe that some householders, in some cases, have defended their families from attack because they have been armed. But I also imagine that lots of ordinary adults, if woken in the night by an armed intruder, lack the skill to wake, find their weapon, keep hold of their weapon, use it correctly and avoid shooting the wrong person. Lexington 

The problems is that most Americans have too much confidence in the success of what they do. This has a lot to do with education, as we have discussed on this blog: Americans tend to be over confident, while the French are actually too pessimistic and have too much low self-esteem.

As for the common used argument of preventing tyranny:

As for the National Rifle Association bumper stickers arguing that only an armed citizenry can prevent tyranny, I wonder if that isn’t a form of narcissism, involving the belief that lone, heroic individuals will have the ability to identify tyranny as it descends, recognise it for what it is, and fight back. There is also the small matter that I don’t think America is remotely close to becoming a tyranny, and to suggest that it is is both irrational and a bit offensive to people who actually do live under tyrannical rule. Lexington 

Banning all guns will never happen, but stricter regulation is clearly needed.

MYTHICAL VIOLENCE:
Just as importantly, if not more, but never mentioned in the media, Americans need to have a discussion on their mythical approach to violence (see my post here), especially in popular culture where violence is often shown as the normal way of resolving issues, where the violent past such as wars is often glorified, and where children are so often exposed to violence in movies, series, and videogames.

Here I am not talking about censorship, but about a way of discussing the real impact of violence on people's real lives, and make it a big deal. It might be also a good idea for a lot of politicians to tone down their violent rhetoric against their opponents (like here)

It remains to be seen if, once the emotion wears off, anything meaningful will really happen. Personally, after so many years of hearing the same things, I have some doubt. But if the killing of 20 children does not do it, nothing will.

The Walking Dead, a post-Modern Western Tale.

 Except for 28 Days which was a happy surprise, let's face it: most shows with zombies tend to be utterly ridiculous or gross. 
Why do people find zombies so scary anyway? 
Sure, they can bite you, but really, they can't run, they can hardly move (although Michael Jackson remarkably challenged them into dancing), they can't think, they give themselves away by growling, they're constantly spilling blood, and easily break into pieces and, finally, they are the butts of a number of parodies and comedies to the point that you almost feel sorry for them.

So it was no surprise that I missed the first season of The Walking Dead, despite hearing good things about it. After all, I also heard good things about shows like Buffy and never liked it either.
Finally, last summer, a French radio program on the comics Walking Dead turned my attention to the series once again, and I thought I'd give a chance to the TV show and so of course, what was bound to happen, happened: I was literally mesmerized, and ended up watching season 1 and 2 in a compulsive marathon over the end of the summer. Then I tried to make sense of this new craze.

But what makes The Walking Dead so interesting is precisely that it is not really about zombies (who are a mere excuse to get a bunch of people in a post-apocalyptic world). It is in fact more a post-modern Western than a horror show. 

It is not the basic story. The pitch is rather simple - a sheriff's deputy, Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma to find the world dominated by flesh-eating zombies (just like in 28 Days), called "walkers", decides to try to find his family and meets other survivors along the way. So it is essentially about a small group of survivors living in the aftermath of a (zombie) apocalypse. Been done before. 


A WESTERN NARRATIVE
As Erin Obervey writes in The New Yorker, it has all the elements of the Western: the "reluctant sheriff, a wilderness to be explored, and “savages” to be fought". It does consciously play with the western motif: the hero is riding a horse, and his cowboy hat becomes the obvious symbol of manhood and authority for his son. There is even a shootout in a saloon and gun duel at dawn between tow major characters.

 The camp at the beginning of season one looks like a wagon train circling as a defensive maneuver against Indian/Zombie attacks, and the heroes out to the city arrive right on time to save the party, just like the cavalry did in westerns.  
In the second season, a farm becomes the last outpost of civilization and the group takes a heroic last stand in fighting off the attackers who are taking over thanks to their numerous superiority. (whose motif dates back to at least D. W. Griffith’s The Battle of Elderbush Gulch, 1913) Then, the wandering group, like the knights errant of old European medieval tales, becomes the pioneers looking for a promised land in a hostile wilderness invested with savages.
In season three, which just started, they find a prison where they hope to find peace and safety (the irony!). It has the shape and function of the defensive fort against the zombies/savages so common in the old western narrative.

If westerns find their roots in old European medieval tales and 17th century rescue narratives, they primarily offer the great advantage of taking the heroes back to a state of nature (the wilderness) before the dawn of civilization embodied by law. As such, it gives a chance for the audience to consider what makes us humans outside our modern world.

In The Walking Dead, not only are the characters confronted with the wilderness and the constant dangers of the zombies (or for that matter of other dangerous human beings), but they also have to deal with finding motivations for staying alive in the face of adversity ('suicide' is an option clearly laid out by a number of characters) and what it means to be and remain a human being. The good thing about this show is that, contrary to most American shows, it does not give you an easy answer and the characters are all struggling to find a reason to move forward.
As in classic mythical tales, The Walking Dead also relies on a series of simple opposites you can easily identify:  humans/non-humans, country (which may offer some peace) vs. cities (which are treacherous), civilization vs. savagery, living vs. dead. Because they have a common enemy (the Walkers), not only are humans forced to see what's essential about their human identity, they also have to put aside their old bias.

"There are no niggers, no inbred, dumb-as-shit-white trash fools, neither," Rick tells the others. "Just white meat and dark meat." 

Incidentally, it is quite fitting then that this story should take place in the south, and in Atlanta, which made some critiques see it as a fusion of Clint Eastwood and Gone With the Wind.

THE EVIL INSIDE
But the narrative of The Walking Dead goes beyond the classical morality tales of old Westerns or medieval tales because the threat comes essentially from within the community and the self. This is true at so many levels: members within the group, like trigger-happy Shane, can be a threat to the ethics of the community, but they are all potential threats because, as it turns out, everyone is infected by the virus and could turn into a zombie at some point. Death itself is a threat and only total annihilation of the enemy (the destruction of the body) can bring safety. But the most important and undermining threat is that of inner violence.
No one is immune to the consequence of their actions: at the end of season two, even Rick, our hero, turns into a small dictator by declaring to the group that there is no longer a "democracy" (within the community). It seems that in the process of becoming the unchallenged leader of the group, rick may have lost some of his soul.
The beginning of season three is in this way very meaningful: the first five minutes show the group seven months later killing walkers in a house to try to find shelter in total silence. No word is uttered as if they had become hunted animals themselves. The first episode is one of the most violent ones and some scenes are disturbing.

VIOLENCE
Violence is probably the most important theme in the story. Little by little, all the characters learn how to kill and they do it brutally as they ought to make sure of the total destruction of the walkers (I forgot to mention that if you bitten, they will turn into zombies themselves), which means destroying their brains by knife, sword, gun, arrow, metal rod or baseball bat. As the stories move forward, you see the characters' desensitizing to brutal killing.

But at the same time, no one is immune, and you also experience your own desensitization, and this may be more problematic. Of course, it is a bit like watching a Tarantino movie - the violence is so crude and the walkers are so monstrous that it may be hard to relate. In this respect, it is easier to see zombies killed than native Americans. However, there are scenes where the walkers are simply executed and even though you know they're not human beings, they do look human enough and their massacre is somewhat disturbing (and the characters themselves are disturbed).
This use of violence is also what makes The Walking Dead quintessentially American:

What is distinctly “American” is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced, the forms of symbolic violence we imagine or invent and the political use to which we put that symbolism. Gunfighter Nation, Richard Slotkin 

As much as I love The Walking Dead, I'd give it a word of caution before I'd let my teenage son or daughter watch it. When I asked my high school students (age 15 or so) the other day if they ever watched it, a majority of them had seen it online and were familiar with it. When I told them it was too violent to show in class, they laughed it off of course. 

If nothing else, it seems the violence in The Walking Dead (or in other shows for that matter) should be discussed with the family. I may be a bit too French about this, but I fear that exposition to violence is potentially worse than to frontal nudity, which so many Americans seem to fuss about. 
That being said, and this warning in mind, I would highly recommend  The Walking Dead for its cinematic quality, its character development and also for providing an opportunity to reflect on our notions of savagery, justice and civilization. 

Mass Shooting in America (1/2): Guns

The most horrific thing about mass shooting is not just the number of people killed or wounded, but it is rather how easily one can identify with the victims.

The massacre in Aurora, Col is a no exception: who hasn't been (or doesn't anyone who has been) to the movie premiere of a much anticipated blockbuster?

Mass shootings are horrible abnormalities in very normal time and places - in schools, on campuses, at political gathering, in shopping malls, in churches - in all those locations that we are so accustomed to and that are part of our everyday life. And so the victims could be us because, even though it is statistically unlikely it should happen near you, the sentiment is that it can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime. 


The other scary element is that contrary to what you may see in Europe, those are recurrent events. (see my post on this blog last year). The last killing spree in the U.S. happened only last April 2012.
And every time, it prompts a "national talk" on gun control in the United States (NYTimes, Wash. Post), while the rest of the world is watching, bewildered.
And the two sides of the issue are mostly divided along party lines:

With 70% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying it's more important to protect the rights of gun owners than to control gun ownership. (source here)

Now it seems that the conservative side has won the argument, despite the recurrent mass shootings, and even optimists, likes James Fallows cannot imagine this to change any time soon.

It is very hard for the rest of the world to even begin to understand where Americans come from on gun issues, especially if they hear an argument like that of this representative from Texas who questioned "why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter." (here) - a typical pro-gun argument.
There is a sense that the United States is really apart from the rest of the world on this question. And it is.

First because because the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. But from reading it, you'd never guess it is about people carrying weapons for their private use. It reads

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

This has been used by the Supreme Court to strike down gun restrictive laws. Yet, it was not always so. 

Jill Lepore, a Professor of American History at Harvard University, had an excellent (but very long) piece on the gun issue in the New Yorker last April.

She explains that the current prevalent view of the 2nd Amendment is something rather recent and finds its origins - against all odds -in the liberalism of the 1960s, she says.

They are the product of what the Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet has called the “rights revolution,” the pursuit of rights, especially civil rights, through the courts. In the nineteen-sixties, gun ownership as a constitutional right was less the agenda of the N.R.A. than of black nationalists.

Even more surprising, the NRA (National Rifle Association - the very powerful gun lobby) supported the 1968 Gun Control Act, in the wake of the assinnations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The N.R.A.’s executive vice-president said at the time that although some elements of the legislation “appear unduly restrictive and unjustified in their application to law-abiding citizens, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

In the 1970s, the N.R.A. began advancing the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a gun, rather than the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense. 

Opposing gun control was also consistent with a larger anti-regulation, libertarian, and anti-government conservative agenda. 

Ironically (since he was himself shot), Ronald Reagan was the first Presidential candidate whom the N.R.A. had endorsed.

In 1986, the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment achieved new legal authority with the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act, which repealed parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act by invoking “the rights of citizens . . . to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.” 

In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that the District’s 1975 Firearms Control Regulations Act was unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Two years later, in another 5–4 ruling, McDonald v. Chicago, the Court extended Heller to the states.

Despite this:

Since 1980, forty-four states have passed some form of law that allows gun owners to carry concealed weapons outside their homes for personal protection. (Five additional states had these laws before 1980. Illinois is the sole holdout.) A federal ban on the possession, transfer, or manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons, passed in 1994, was allowed to expire in 2004. In 2005, Florida passed the Stand Your Ground law, an extension of the so-called castle doctrine, exonerating from prosecution citizens who use deadly force when confronted by an assailant, even if they could have retreated safely; Stand Your Ground laws expand that protection outside the home to any place that an individual “has a right to be.” Twenty-four states have passed similar laws.

There may be hope:

The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.

(End of Part 1)