The Tribune

“AT some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it,” said President Barack Obama shortly after a race-crazed killer gunned down nine of 13 persons as they prayed in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina Wednesday evening.

As he addressed the nation after the tragedy the President – who on another occasion, agreed to an individual’s right to bear arms, but did not agree that it was an absolute right that could not be negotiated – said that “at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.”

How many more deaths have to be recorded in the United States before the American people come to grips with a right given them by their Constitution in an earlier time and in an historical context that is no longer relevant today? Such a cherished right might have made sense in 1791, but with the passage of time it makes no sense now. Americans should have long since outgrown their frontier mentality — but have they?

Wednesday’s gunshots “coming as they did inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church… are echoing through black communities in a particularly painful way,” said CNN’s Tom Foreman shortly after the capture of the 21-year-old youth who fired the shots, which in his unhinged brain was aimed at launching a racial war in the United States. “The soaring, historic structure in Charleston, South Carolina,” said Foreman, “is not just a building. It’s not even just a place of worship.

“Emanuel is at the very heart of African-American history, and for many people it is holy ground in every way.”

“The black church has always been our freedom house,” said Alton Pollard, dean at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC.

Will the massacre at Emanuel be the shots that will bring Americans to their senses? How much more bloodshed is there to be before the final shot is fired that will close the book on America’s love for her destructive guns — guns that are daily destroying lives even in the Bahamas, because of their easy availability from the US. And so, it is also in the Bahamas’ best interest that Americans come to terms with their love affair with their destructive guns.

So far, four sitting US presidents have been killed by a madman exercising his second amendment right to carry a gun – Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A Garfield (the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F Kennedy (the 35th President). There was also a failed assassination attempt on President Harry Truman in 1950 and President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In the attack on Reagan, his White House Press Secretary Tom Brady, was seriously wounded, confined to a wheelchair, and recently died of those wounds.

And then there are the schools. The ten deadliest school massacres in US history have been the Bath School disaster in Michigan in 1927 - 45 victims; Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, - 2007- 33 victims; Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut - 2012- 28 victims; University of Texas in Austin - 1966 - 16 victims; Columbine, 1999 - Littleton, Colorado, 1999, of which a movie was made - 15 victims; Oikos University in Oakland, California, 2012 - 7 victims; California State University at Fullerton- 1976 - 7 victims; and Northern Illinois University - 2008 - 6 victims.

In 2012, a gunman killed dozens of people at a movie theatre in Colorado. In Wisconsin, a man shot and killed six people worshipping at a Sikh Temple. And just last year, a murder-suicide rocked the NFL and sparked a debate over gun control and the priorities of America.

Americans claim to have inherited through British common law their right to “bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state.”

This right, as first declared in the British Bill of Rights of 1689, came during a tumultuous period in British history when the king and parliament were battling over who had the right to govern over whom — the king or the people’s parliament. There was also the religious battle with the Catholic Stuart King James II, who replaced the Protestants, William and Mary on the throne. King James attempted to disarm his Protestant subjects, but not the Catholics. The fight for a standing army was debated. It was declared that “the subjects, which are Protestant may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions as bestowed by law.” This confirmed that King James’ Protestant subjects could not be disarmed by the king without the consent of parliament. There was no standing army or police force in England before 1829. Up until then it was the duty of certain citizens to “keep watch” and every subject had the right “to protect the king’s peace”.

After a standing army was established, Britons no longer needed to bear arms for their own protection. However, it was out of this Bill of Rights giving Protestants the right to bear arms, that was born almost 100 years later America’s inalienable right for every citizen to carry a gun. The National Rifle Association of America, with its victory fund and powerful lobby, is the strong armed group that backs those who believe that it is their inalienable right to have a gun in their holster. Despite the fact that America has an Army, Navy, National Guard, police force and many other agencies guarding their citizens, the citizens still feel a need to protect — and kill — themselves.

It just does not make sense.

John Howard, former Austrian prime minister, faced much of the same problem as the US. Like the US, Australia also had a frontier mentality where citizens carried arms for their own protection. Gun violence was destroying the country. In 1996, about 12 days after 100 people were shot dead at a tourist resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia’s newly elected John Howard announced gun control measures — severe gun control laws, buy back of weapons, and banning all importation of new automatic an semi-automatic weapons.

Of course, there were loud objections, but the majority of Australians were so alarmed by all of the killings that they backed their prime minister. It was reported that “the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50 per cent— and stayed there.”

In 2013, Mr Howard wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he said, “Today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate.”

Mr Howard had no doubt that Australia’s murder rate using guns has fallen and there was not much doubt in his mind that “it’s the availability of guns that causes such a high rate of murder using weapons”.