Last
week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern
about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet
of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the
celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns
to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served
at a maximum temperature of 82C.
Although
it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this
far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than
rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding
and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go
armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this
planet.
That's
America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the
slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move
on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and,
instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war,
if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world,
perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and
their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in
every new civil conflict around the globe.
The
annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward
path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify
for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what
does.
To
absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all
the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and
follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day
that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded
by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics fromicasualties.org,
tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent
operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed
by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.
That
212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than
in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place
it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that
characterise so much of American life.
Everywhere
you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for
example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed
limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into
highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; by
2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by
firearms (32,036 to 32,929).
Plainly,
there's no equivalent effort in the area of privately owned firearms. Indeed,
most politicians do everything they can to make the country less safe. Recently,
a Democrat senator from Arkansas namedMark Pryor ran a TV ad against the gun-control campaign funded by NY mayor
Michael Bloomberg – one of the few politicians to stand up to the NRA lobby –
explaining why he was against enhanced background checks on gun owners yet was
committed to "finding real solutions to violence".
About
their own safety, Americans often have an unusual ability to hold two utterly
opposed ideas in their heads simultaneously. That can only explain the past
decade in which the fear of terror has cost the country hundreds of billions of
dollars in wars, surveillance and intelligence programmes and homeland security.
Ten years after 9/11, homeland security spending doubled to $69bn .
The total bill since the attacks is more than $649bn.
One
more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any
European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first
figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State
Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would
set foot in it without body armour.
But
no nation sees itself as outsiders do. Half the country is sane and rational
while the other half simply doesn't grasp the inconsistencies and historic
lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep
and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of
Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave
to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery.
Astonishingly, when owning a gun is not about ludicrous macho fantasy, it is
mostly seen as a matter of personal safety, like the airbag in the new Ford
pick-up or avoiding secondary smoke, despite conclusive evidence that people
become less safe as gun ownership rises.
Last
week, I happened to be in New York for the 9/11 anniversary: it occurs to me now
that the city that suffered most dreadfully in the attacks and has the greatest
reason for jumpiness is also among the places where you find most sense on the
gun issue in America. New Yorkers understand that fear breeds peril and,
regardless of tragedies such as Sandy Hook and the DC naval yard, the NRA, the
gun manufacturers, conservative-inclined politicians and parts of the media will
continue to advocate a right, which, at base, is as archaic as a witch
trial.
Talking
to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too
powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation
was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington
shooting last week. There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the
fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of
reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point
where it has ceased to be a domestic issue. The world cannot stand idly by.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/