At first, the gun lobby ignores the protest of the gun control lobby. But if the recriminations and protestations do not die out on their own, then the most prominent gun lobbyist National Rifles Association launches an all-out offence which is unbridled and unmitigated in nature, content and expanse
Gunrunning and gun-related violence, especially at offices, schools and malls, has become a repulsive feature of the US society. From the Sandy Hook killings in 2011 to the Uvalde school shooting last week, the rampage has left the American homeland dazed and President Joe Biden determined to fight against the powerful gun lobby. One can latch onto the scenario in the Chicago city wherein gun shops are conspicuous amid isolated mansions and apartments.
The condition of gun trade was much worse in the yesteryears when any individual could literally walk into a shop and buy automatic and semi-automatic weapons without the need of a psychiatric check or an age certificate. The scenario has changed for better, but the rising number of shooting cases clearly manifests that much needs to be done by the Government of the day in tandem with the NRA (National Rifles Association) and the very powerful and all pervading realm of the gun lobby.
Earlier, drug abuse, marijuana usage and tobacco consumption received a great deal of attention from the legal fraternity, now on a similar strain the frequent massacres at the hands of deranged shooters make one sit up and take up deft notice. All in all, in the contemporary American context, a few law firms and the American legal fraternity have filed suits against the norms through which guns have entered the stable and peacenik lives of the American neighborhood with dogged impact. Akin to anti-cancer initiatives, the anti-gun lobby too has been spawned with vast resources of funding but not in the same bracket as the National Rifle Association and the attendant gun lobby.
President Biden too in a state of exasperation has contended that, “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” The first lady and President Biden visited the shooting site in Uvalde and empathised with the families of the victims as the first couple contended that they can very readily relate to the sense of loss felt by the bereaved families as they too had lost a son in a car accident.
Al Jazeera reports about the fundamental contours of the gun lobby in America very pithily and tersely. The news portal contends, “The so-called gun lobby in the US is a broad term that encompasses efforts to influence both state and federal policy on guns, usually through supporting candidates who have pledged opposition to gun control measures. It includes direct contributions to legislators, efforts to independently support elected officials, and campaigns to sway public opinion on issues related to firearms. Such lobbying is often carefully calibrated to navigate laws. Several investigations have shown that major anti-gun control lobbying groups — notably the most prominent the National Rifle Association (NRA) — have close ties with the multibillion-dollar firearms industry in the US.”
It has also been investigated and research has shown that the National Rifle Association is in cahoots with the firearms industry in the United States and it utilises every massacre with a deft legerdemain of media management to boost the sales of firearms. The initial trajectory of action of the gun lobby is that they ignore the protest of the gun control lobby. But if the recriminations and protestations do not die out on their own, then the NRA launches an all-out offence which is unbridled and unmitigated in nature, content and expanse all across the length and breadth of the US gun-running firmament.
The gun lobby counter attacks by contending that how can the gun control lobby vitiate the political ecosystem of the larger nation and its hoi polloi by adding a political tinge to the larger spectrum of events. Thus, the gun lobby lobs the accusation of politicisation upon the vestiges of protestations and contestations adhered to by the gun control groups. The second amendment was also being utilised in the past by adhering to the larger dictum of harking back to the right of the American citizens to own and bear arms in self defence.
A significant shift in the approach of the White House occurred a few years back when psychiatric check of the prospective gun owners was made part and parcel of the entire gamut of the gun debate in the besieged US.
Jonathan M Metzl Kenneth and T Maclesh contend in the American Journal of Public Health, “Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the US: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that gun control “won’t prevent” another Newtown, Connecticut school mass shooting. Each of these statements is certainly true in particular instances.”
What needs to be incisively comprehended is the idiom that the medical veneer of gun violence is the key factor underpinning the scourge of gunrunning in the American homeland. The often deft striving to relegate the term “medical condition” and “psychiatric checks” to compartmentalisation of public health defeats the objective of the medical illness factor in the context of larger gun violence witnessed since the last decade in the US. Both the newspapers of the order of New York Times and Washington Post have contended that undiagnosed schizophrenia and manslaughter are terms which are not given the kind of required preponderance in developing a process of mitigating and constraining the menace of incivility in the form of gun violence.
It has been recorded that 44 per cent of the Republicans and their supporters contend that they are proud and fortunate owners of guns. While in the same trending proportionality, 20 per cent of the Democrat party members and their supporters contend that they too own guns. Thus, it’s all ingrained and embedded in the larger political debate of the American nation that a mainstream, corporate and nationalist ethics pave the way for a reformed and controlled gun culture in the nation. How can a nation forget the crack of guns and the echo of the horses’ hooves as and when a cowboy marches across daintily and disdainfully upon the terrain of the Oregon Trail?
Also, the scintillating remembrance of gun touting patriots arranging for guns and engaging the British colonists in the marshlands of Pennsylvania has become part and parcel of the patriotic zeal of the nation all anointed by the halo of the revolutionaries who fought under the iconic leadership of George Washington.
(The writer teaches at International Relations and International Organisations, IIPA, New Delhi)
