Another day, another US massacre by a problematic person with a licensed, high-powered firearm. We have seen so many of them, and the aftermath is so tired and predictable, that they all become a blur.
Right now, in the wake of the Florida school shooting, there is a lot of hope. The survivors are young, intelligent upper middle class adults, and they are prepared to use the sudden media attention to push for change. No politician, even Donald Trump, dare trample on their grief by dismissing them out of hand. Perhaps they will succeed in making change. Perhaps they won't.
As Australians we tend to feel a bit smug about this. In 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre, the Howard government introduced tough new gun controls and there have been no mass shootings since. Our crazy school attacks are carried out with knives, and no-one dies. Then again, there were not many mass shootings in Australia before 1996 either, once Europeans stopped massacring our first peoples. Conservative Americans look at our gun laws and think we are crazy. 'What, you mean you let your government disarm you, just because some fruitloop went mad and shot a bunch of tourists?'
Australia is different to the US in many ways, most of them superficial. We are a little less individualistic. We don't have a strong culture of gun ownership. We didn't have a civil war where one half of the country imposed its will on the other half by force. But we share a lot of common base assumptions which can help us understand the gun issue.
In other words, it's time for another World Diagram!
This one is modeled on the original World Diagram and its descendant, the diagram on Islamic terrorism. This time it summarises the dimensions of the argument against gun law reform in the US, digging down from the overt politics to the underlying assumptions. I would suggest that while the more overt layers of this - the top two segments of the pyramid - are distinctively American, the bottom two are commonly held across many societies, including our own.
Politics and Money
At the top level is the obvious play of political forces. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of America's most powerful and cashed up lobby groups. It donates a lot of money to political candidates, including Donald Trump, who switched views on gun control in order to court its funding and favour during the Presidential election. It purports to speak on behalf of gun owners (and perhaps even does represent the views of many of them) but its money comes from the arms industry - gun manufacturers and dealers who stand to lose a lot of money if there are stricter gun laws.
This is politics as usual - the tobacco industry spruiking the benefits of smoking, the fossil fuel industry opposing climate change policy, the Business Council of Australia supporting company tax cuts, the development industry opposing housing affordability measures. Wealthy lobby groups will always support their own self-interest. The question is, why does the wider population buy it? Why are many ordinary Americans so adamant that gun control is anti-democratic, in the face of repeated preventable atrocities?
Individualism
What I think drives this agreement or acquiescence (depending on your viewpoint) is a robust level of individualism. All Western cultures are individualistic to some extent, but the US represents the pinnacle. Australians were so shocked at the Port Arthur massacre that there was very little resistance to Howard's tighter restrictions and a high level of compliance with requirements to surrender firearms. People recognised a level of shared responsibility, and that agreeing to tighten gun controls would make others safer.
Many Americans I have discussed this issue with don't buy this. They are equally shocked at the killings, but they don't take collective responsibility for them in the same way. 'I've always owned guns,' they say, 'and I've never killed anyone. Why should I be punished for the crimes of some crazy/bad person? Guns are not the problem here, crazy/bad people are.' This is individualism talking. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, we need not take responsibility for the actions of others.
Now of course I disagree with this. I agree that my debate partner is not a murderer, but easy availability of guns, and a huge surplus of them circulating in the community, enables those who want to kill to do so on a large scale. This is not 'punishment' of innocent people - it is people of good will making some compromises to fix a collective problem. But then I would say that, I'm both an Australian and one of those lefties.
Goodies and Baddies
Supporting this individualised approach to responsibility is a very black and white approach to people. The world is divided into good people (like us) and criminals (them). Criminals will get guns whatever the law says because they have no respect for the law. It's fine for good people to have guns because they won't use them to harm others. In fact, since criminals will have them anyway, it's better for good people to have them to protect themselves and others. Hence the suggestion, recently taken up by President Trump, for teachers to go to school armed to prevent further shootings.
My four-year-old grandson views the world in these terms. In his imagination, the goodies (generally the police) deal with the baddies by biffing them with cricket bats and locking them up. He, of course, is or will become a police.
This is fine when you are four, but adults inhabit a far murkier world. It is not always easy to tell goodies from baddies. The Las Vegas shooter had no criminal history to speak of. A seemingly nice quiet family man or a sweet gentle kid can rapidly turn into a psychotic mass murderer. All of us, in moments of anger or grief, can do things we regret later.
And then, of course, the good can be simply incompetent. If his story is to be believed (which by the way the police did not), Oscar Pistorius thought he was shooting at an intruder when he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 26 people (including 20 children) at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, did not own a gun. The guns he used were owned by his mother, who was apparently a good person. She was his first victim. If she had not owned guns, or had stored them safely, she and 25 other people would still be alive.
Even the police, surely the goodies if my grandson is to be believed, frequently shoot and kill innocent people by mistake. And they are trained for the job. Imagine what armed teachers might do. Especially on a rainy Friday afternoon the week after the teacher has discovered his or her partner is having an affair.
The Myth of Redemptive Violence
Beneath these considerations is a phenomenon deeply embedded in most human cultures - what Walter Wink describes as the Myth of Redemptive Violence. According to him, this myth 'enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. It is one of the oldest continuously repeated stories in the world.' The world is full of evil and chaos, we are told, and this can only be restrained by good people (us) using force to control and repress it.
This myth informs so much of our approach to order and security, from 'tough on crime' policies and the criminalisation of drug use, to our approach to terrorism at home and abroad, all the way up to the idea of nuclear deterrence (if we don't have nukes, our evil enemies will get them and use them against us). It also informs much of the debate around gun ownership. 'If I give up my guns,' the argument runs, 'I will be prey to all those evil people who also have guns. How then can I defend myself against the chaos that will result?'
The problem with this myth is that it is untrue. If we attempt to use violence to restrain violence we end up mirroring the very thing we fear. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte attempts to eliminate the drug trade by allowing the summary execution of suspected drug dealers - exactly the behaviour he deplores in the criminal gangs who run this trade. In our efforts to eliminate terrorist organisations in the Middle East we bomb innocent civilians including children - the very thing we fear and are trying to prevent.
Part of the reason we do this is that we can't imagine a world run any other way. We have been blinded by the myth. Yet this is precisely the type of world the prophets of Israel encouraged us to imagine. The prophet Micah provides a good example.
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
Micah urges us to believe that a better future, a future without fear and violence, is possible. Jesus urges us to make a start right now.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat (or your under-garment) as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Wink makes it clear that Jesus is not advocating passive acquiescence to evil. He is not suggesting we lay down and let our oppressors roll over us. Instead he is asking us to resist our enemies while loving them, to stand up to them and shame them without becoming like them. He is calling us to a better way.
Right now, in the wake of the Florida school shooting, there is a lot of hope. The survivors are young, intelligent upper middle class adults, and they are prepared to use the sudden media attention to push for change. No politician, even Donald Trump, dare trample on their grief by dismissing them out of hand. Perhaps they will succeed in making change. Perhaps they won't.
As Australians we tend to feel a bit smug about this. In 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre, the Howard government introduced tough new gun controls and there have been no mass shootings since. Our crazy school attacks are carried out with knives, and no-one dies. Then again, there were not many mass shootings in Australia before 1996 either, once Europeans stopped massacring our first peoples. Conservative Americans look at our gun laws and think we are crazy. 'What, you mean you let your government disarm you, just because some fruitloop went mad and shot a bunch of tourists?'
Australia is different to the US in many ways, most of them superficial. We are a little less individualistic. We don't have a strong culture of gun ownership. We didn't have a civil war where one half of the country imposed its will on the other half by force. But we share a lot of common base assumptions which can help us understand the gun issue.
In other words, it's time for another World Diagram!
This one is modeled on the original World Diagram and its descendant, the diagram on Islamic terrorism. This time it summarises the dimensions of the argument against gun law reform in the US, digging down from the overt politics to the underlying assumptions. I would suggest that while the more overt layers of this - the top two segments of the pyramid - are distinctively American, the bottom two are commonly held across many societies, including our own.
Politics and Money
At the top level is the obvious play of political forces. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of America's most powerful and cashed up lobby groups. It donates a lot of money to political candidates, including Donald Trump, who switched views on gun control in order to court its funding and favour during the Presidential election. It purports to speak on behalf of gun owners (and perhaps even does represent the views of many of them) but its money comes from the arms industry - gun manufacturers and dealers who stand to lose a lot of money if there are stricter gun laws.
This is politics as usual - the tobacco industry spruiking the benefits of smoking, the fossil fuel industry opposing climate change policy, the Business Council of Australia supporting company tax cuts, the development industry opposing housing affordability measures. Wealthy lobby groups will always support their own self-interest. The question is, why does the wider population buy it? Why are many ordinary Americans so adamant that gun control is anti-democratic, in the face of repeated preventable atrocities?
Individualism
What I think drives this agreement or acquiescence (depending on your viewpoint) is a robust level of individualism. All Western cultures are individualistic to some extent, but the US represents the pinnacle. Australians were so shocked at the Port Arthur massacre that there was very little resistance to Howard's tighter restrictions and a high level of compliance with requirements to surrender firearms. People recognised a level of shared responsibility, and that agreeing to tighten gun controls would make others safer.
Many Americans I have discussed this issue with don't buy this. They are equally shocked at the killings, but they don't take collective responsibility for them in the same way. 'I've always owned guns,' they say, 'and I've never killed anyone. Why should I be punished for the crimes of some crazy/bad person? Guns are not the problem here, crazy/bad people are.' This is individualism talking. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, we need not take responsibility for the actions of others.
Now of course I disagree with this. I agree that my debate partner is not a murderer, but easy availability of guns, and a huge surplus of them circulating in the community, enables those who want to kill to do so on a large scale. This is not 'punishment' of innocent people - it is people of good will making some compromises to fix a collective problem. But then I would say that, I'm both an Australian and one of those lefties.
Goodies and Baddies
Supporting this individualised approach to responsibility is a very black and white approach to people. The world is divided into good people (like us) and criminals (them). Criminals will get guns whatever the law says because they have no respect for the law. It's fine for good people to have guns because they won't use them to harm others. In fact, since criminals will have them anyway, it's better for good people to have them to protect themselves and others. Hence the suggestion, recently taken up by President Trump, for teachers to go to school armed to prevent further shootings.
My four-year-old grandson views the world in these terms. In his imagination, the goodies (generally the police) deal with the baddies by biffing them with cricket bats and locking them up. He, of course, is or will become a police.
This is fine when you are four, but adults inhabit a far murkier world. It is not always easy to tell goodies from baddies. The Las Vegas shooter had no criminal history to speak of. A seemingly nice quiet family man or a sweet gentle kid can rapidly turn into a psychotic mass murderer. All of us, in moments of anger or grief, can do things we regret later.
And then, of course, the good can be simply incompetent. If his story is to be believed (which by the way the police did not), Oscar Pistorius thought he was shooting at an intruder when he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 26 people (including 20 children) at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, did not own a gun. The guns he used were owned by his mother, who was apparently a good person. She was his first victim. If she had not owned guns, or had stored them safely, she and 25 other people would still be alive.
Even the police, surely the goodies if my grandson is to be believed, frequently shoot and kill innocent people by mistake. And they are trained for the job. Imagine what armed teachers might do. Especially on a rainy Friday afternoon the week after the teacher has discovered his or her partner is having an affair.
The Myth of Redemptive Violence
Beneath these considerations is a phenomenon deeply embedded in most human cultures - what Walter Wink describes as the Myth of Redemptive Violence. According to him, this myth 'enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. It is one of the oldest continuously repeated stories in the world.' The world is full of evil and chaos, we are told, and this can only be restrained by good people (us) using force to control and repress it.
This myth informs so much of our approach to order and security, from 'tough on crime' policies and the criminalisation of drug use, to our approach to terrorism at home and abroad, all the way up to the idea of nuclear deterrence (if we don't have nukes, our evil enemies will get them and use them against us). It also informs much of the debate around gun ownership. 'If I give up my guns,' the argument runs, 'I will be prey to all those evil people who also have guns. How then can I defend myself against the chaos that will result?'
The problem with this myth is that it is untrue. If we attempt to use violence to restrain violence we end up mirroring the very thing we fear. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte attempts to eliminate the drug trade by allowing the summary execution of suspected drug dealers - exactly the behaviour he deplores in the criminal gangs who run this trade. In our efforts to eliminate terrorist organisations in the Middle East we bomb innocent civilians including children - the very thing we fear and are trying to prevent.
Part of the reason we do this is that we can't imagine a world run any other way. We have been blinded by the myth. Yet this is precisely the type of world the prophets of Israel encouraged us to imagine. The prophet Micah provides a good example.
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
Micah urges us to believe that a better future, a future without fear and violence, is possible. Jesus urges us to make a start right now.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat (or your under-garment) as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Wink makes it clear that Jesus is not advocating passive acquiescence to evil. He is not suggesting we lay down and let our oppressors roll over us. Instead he is asking us to resist our enemies while loving them, to stand up to them and shame them without becoming like them. He is calling us to a better way.
***
As long as we are trapped in the cycle of individualism, simplistic morality and redemptive violence we will struggle to make meaningful change. We may improve things at the margins. We may reduce the number or power of the guns in our community, and that will make us a little safer. But we will not learn to resolve conflicts peacefully or to build true redemption and reconciliation until we learn the skills to love our enemies not only in theory, but in the practical ways we interact with them.
This is just as true in Australia as in the US or anywhere in the world. We may be a little better in some respects, but we share the same fundamental problems and are addicted to the same non-solutions. We keep doing more of the same, hoping for a different result. We need to fundamentally change the game.
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