Another school shooting, and America's doomed romance with guns continues

With twenty-eight dead in Connecticut, the logical response would be gun control. America’s latest school shooting is perhaps the most shocking yet, and it is undeniable, no matter the mental state of the gunman, that the easy availability of guns was the main factor. After the Dunblane school shooting in 1996 Scottish and British gun control laws were tightened severely. The same thing happened again when Derrick Bird shot more than twenty people in his home town, targeting some of his ‘enemies’, but mainly killing random people as they walked down the street. The UK, as with most countries, are able to balance mourning for these tragedies with a level-headed and positive approach to gun control. In America, things are different.

It is inevitable, but very little, if anything at all, will happen in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting. Adam Lanza’s identity had been revealed for only a few minutes when the pre-emptive strikes against the gun control campaigners began. Lanza has a mental illness, they said, negating any responsibility that easily-accessible firearms had played in the events. At the same time, old arguments emerge which claim that bringing politics, in the form of a gun control debate, into the aftermath of a massacre is a heartless act in itself.

As someone who lives in a country where the only people who have guns are farmers and particularly determined gangsters the idea of being able to walk into a supermarket and buy a firearm is surreal. There is no call in Britain for lesser gun control, because people seem to know the risks. But Britain, like the rest of Europe, has a different relationship with weapons to America. This relationship was explored, without much in the way of a satisfactory conclusion, by Michael Moore in Bowling For Columbine (in the end this relationship confused and angered him so he ended up chasing an aging Charleton Heston around the latter's home with a picture of a dead schoolgirl).

Ultimately Americans associated guns with 'freedom', and freedom with America - as long as this remains the case, the issue of gun control will never be removed from it's deadly rut. Guns are part of the national character to a significant extent, but, especially in the familiar aftermath of shootings like the one in Newtown, there are growing calls to restrict the sale of firearms. As I said above, nothing will happen.

The political situation in America is at deadlock on almost every issue. Obama may have scrapped past Romney in the presidential election, but he still has to deal with Republicans pouncing on his every move, motivated by the slender mandate the country afforded him. Republicans don't want gun control, and they would be able, with the help of the very rich pro-gun lobbies (like the NRA, whose natural reaction to a news flash about a school shooting is to draft a defensive press release), to make the argument very difficult for the Democrats. Obama and his party know this. I don't know Obama's personal views on gun control, but it's also likely that many people in his own party are against it. It is a hugely damaging and risky argument to have, and therefore, with their partisan nature, the Republicans have been able to shut down any attempt at establishing a discourse on the matter. The same thing has happened, to differing extents, to gay marriage, to climate change, and to solutions to the failings of American capitalism.

Gun control is also not the type of thing that would show improvements overnight, and the public are often hard to convince on measures which require a lot of work now, with no guaranteed outcome. In the event of guns being made illegal to own in America, there would be shootings and suicides as the police attempted to remove firearms from people. A few months in, when the first massacre is committed with an illegal gun, the pro-gun lobby will cart out their usual argument that it would have been prevented if one of the victims owned a gun.

Perhaps Obama, with no need to worry about personal re-election, could be brave, and attempt to move America towards a solution. He would have a number of big city mayors, like Michael Bloomberg, on his side (mayors who have to deal with gun crime in large American cities know first hand that the real tragedy of America's relationship with firearms is not the occasion school shooting but the constant stream of bodies which flow from gang disputes, all aided by a lack of gun control). Obama is already one of the most divisive presidents in American history, and immediate move towards gun control would likly entrench that. But dither, and refuse to move, and he will face a few more tearful press conferences before he walks out of the White House for the last time.