There is clear evidence of the incapacity of the United States to deal with the problem of violence with firearms, in spite of the fact that for years there has been a debate over their control.

Half of the parishioners in a small church in Texas, including eight children, have been assassinated. The month before, a gunman without motive unleashed bursts of machinegun fire over 22,000 attendees at a concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 and leaving 500 wounded, all this with a portable arsenal of 42 rifles, machineguns and other arms (and thousands of rounds of ammunition) all legally acquired over eight weeks before the event.

There are dozens of this kind of action every year. Among the most important: in the Columbine high school (12 students and a teacher killed, Colorado, 1999), the Sandy Hook primary school (20 children, Connecticut, 2012); Aurora movie theatre (12 killed, over 70 wounded, Colorado 2012); church in Charleston (South Carolina 2015, 9 people), the Pulse discotheque in Orlando (49 persons, 2016) and others. The list of massacres will continue to grow until society takes charge of the debate and a sensible arms control is promulgated.

The assassinations of black people at the hands of the police has increased, yet, in the face of the proliferation of the use of deadly weapons and massive assassinations such as those mentioned, the government is incapable of facing the problem and impotent to fulfil one of their basic functions, the protection of citizens.

The result is that without a doubt the United States is facing an epidemic of shootings and mass assassinations that are increasingly brutal and shocking. While homicides with firearms have lessened, mass assassinations by shooting have increased their frequency and seriousness over the past ten or fifteen years.

Although in part this is the continuation of a long history and a culture that has always been marked by violence and racism, since the days of expansion towards the west and the near extermination of the original indigenous population, as well as lynching carried out by the Ku Klux Klan and others, these facts are not unconnected to the extreme polarization, social decadence and moral deterioration present in extensive segments of the country.

Surveys indicate that a considerable majority of US citizens are in favor of greater controls in the sale and possession of firearms, and for the prohibition of the most deadly ones.

However, albeit a minority, there also are many who advocate for the right to carry firearms, either for sporting activities such as hunting, or as protection from delinquency and a few with the illusion of being able to defend themselves from the epidemic of violence. Behind this is the encouragement and manipulation of a powerful minority that is influential in the activity and the decisions adopted in Washington.

The latter have their stronghold in the influential National Rifle Association (NRA), rooted in rights of hunting and sports, and in the political meddling of powerful groups of the country’s arms manufacturing sector. At present, there are some 300 million firearms in private hands in the United States. The data indicate that the proportion of those who employ them for hunting is not high. There is no other country in the world that comes even close to the per capita rate of firearms or deaths caused by them.

At present, arms designed for war are available for individual purchase via internet and in many arms shops with minimal requisites or effective controls. This in part nourishes the occurrence in recent years of a wave of violence on the part of angry citizens who enact shootings and the hunting of human beings in schools, shopping centers and other public places. According to the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, from 2001 to 2013, in the country some 406,496 US citizens died from gunshots, that is, over 30,000 per year.

The increasing frequency of these events is more than alarming. There is something sick or inhuman in the proliferation of individuals who take up arms and indiscriminately and unexpectedly shoot against passersby or parishioners without any motive, or motivated by who knows what traumas or primitive instincts.

Some people have attempted to argue that these are isolated actions of individuals who are evil or possessed by the devil, and more recently, of Muslim immigrants or others, something that the statistics do not uphold. Although the assassins have different profiles, complex causal models can be observed that include the violent and racist tradition with which the country grew, its glorification in the movies and other media, recent brutal actions in the exterior, as well as the frustration and anger accumulated among many persons in the midst of the present fragmentation and social deterioration in a great part of the country.

A good part of the perpetrators are mentally instable persons, interested in firearms and explosives, with a certain fascination with death and Satanism; many are veterans of the diverse wars that the empire wages in every corner of the world.  A war that has been waged continuously over 16 years without a victory, but where hundreds of thousands of soldiers go through traumatic experiences while they perpetrate or witness assassinations among the civil population, commit brutal violations, etc.

In recent years, these military interventions and actions have taken place under a supposed “war against terrorism”, part of which has involved the use of mercenaries and the support of local terrorist groups, which provokes a chain reaction that leads to terrorist actions in the United States.

The Second Constitutional Amendment and its manipulation

The question of the mass possession of arms in the hands of the population, including automatic and combat arms, freely accessible in various states for anyone wishing to buy them and with no need of formalities or presenting ID documents – is shielded in an appendix to the Constitution of the country.

This is the Second Amendment, ratified by the thirteen original states around 1790, but later subject to controversial interpretations. The text is as follows:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The allusion to a “well regulated militia” was in a context very different from the present one. From this amendment, the right to rely on hunting shotguns has derived in the present licentiousness of being able to own machineguns and combat arms of every type.

Some point out categorically that part of the blame for the present crisis of violence with firearms falls on the conservative members of the Supreme Court and that their verdicts in recent cases with respect to the second amendment have been politically motivated.

The present interpretation is far from the original. The Supreme Court has affirmed that the right to carry arms is an individual right of all US citizens. Hence, neither the Federal Government of the United States nor the state and local governments can infringe this right.

Although the majority of the population favors some degree of basic control that would avoid these massacres, the support for the Second Amendment has increased progressively since the 1990s, both among liberal voters and conservatives. In 2016, 76% of US citizens are opposed to the abrogation of the Second Amendment; in 1960 this figure was 36%.

The industry of firearm production

In the privacy of Washington circles, it is known that in this business of the proliferation of firearms it is money that calls the shots. Money, of which the producers of weapons and the National Rifle Association (NRA) are an easy source for obtaining electoral funds and privileges. This, and above all capitalist commercial interests, are what is behind the interpretations of the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court verdicts in favor of the full freedom of individual possession of fire arms.

The annual sales of the extensive industrial branch of arms manufacturers total some 49 billion US dollars and maintain a close and well-established alliance with the government.

The increasingly aggressive role of the United States in the world makes governmental contracts grow and ensures huge and stable profits for these companies. This is complemented by the obsession of millions of citizens with possessing firearms, which obviously contributes to the flow of income.

A news report at the beginning of 2016 pointed out that the industries producing firearms are growing: from 5.5 million arms made in 2009 to almost 11 million in 2013.

After every massacre such as those we hear about every week — and more so, the more horrifying they are – the value of the stocks and the sales of these corporations increases given the citizens’ fever for stocking new firearms in their houses, but also due to the fear that finally there may be better laws for the control of arms; a fear that is stimulated by the industry.

At the same time, this industry and the NRA unleash greater sums for their very effective and well-financed pressure groups and for campaign committees of Congress members so as to win them over to their positions or intimidate them to guarantee that the licentious rules on the sale and carrying of arms continue to prevail, over and above those who demand that in all states a registry and licensing of arms be established, along with requirements of background checks and others, for the sale of arms, etc.

With the help of the NRA and without endangering their lucrative governmental contracts, the bigger arms producers, over decades, have frustrated regulations that a majority of US citizens support.

On the contrary, licentiousness is increasing. In February 2017, President Trump signed a law already approved by Congress that makes it easier to acquire arms, including semi-automatic rifles, for persons with a history of mental illness.

At the present time the preparations continue to achieve the approval of a law euphemistically called “the Sportsman’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act (SHARE)” that will make it easier to import assault rifles, transport arms from one state to another, and purchase silencers,

Unless a miracle occurs in the corrupt politics of the country, it appears that unfortunately we will see new occasions on which some US citizen, even one who up to that point was considered a good citizen, will trigger a weapon exercising “his right and his freedom” under the manipulated Second Amendment.

A report in 2009 of the Ministry of Homeland Security alerted that the economic problems and the election of the first black president could exacerbate economic and racial anxiety and provoke violent reactions from the white supremacists and all those who consider that the white race might be harassed.

Many of those who use a demagogical rhetoric that can attain a fascist tint and is a mirror of the country’s military policies, encourage desperate social groups to commit violent actions with arms as acts of “self-defense” and to organize militias to undertake “crusades” of diverse kinds. In some regions, the paranoia and hate speech is expanding, even among adolescents.

For many, possession of a weapon is freedom; Hollywood has framed arms as synonymous with heroism, virility and bravery: “a good American has his weapon”.

Other matters, such as the arrival of immigrants, the demonization of Latinos and Muslims, continue to be polarizing factors that are manipulated by politicians, as well as from the pulpits of fundamentalists and rightwing bodies, many of which are strongly armed.

In fact, between 2001 and 2015, more US citizens were killed by extremists of the right than by supposed Islamic terrorists.

Many stereotypes reinforce ignorance, racism and intolerance. A growing number of white North Americans who have fallen into marginality or precarious life conditions have high grades of prejudice and resentment, and are receptive of conspirative, ultranationalist and racist ideas.

Among some, this feeds fear and small-minded egotism, and even the phenomenon of the “angry white male” that has given rise to various of the better known acts of racist violence. The brutal and demoralizing experiences of war of hundreds of thousands of demobilized soldiers and mercenaries is also reflected in the flawed national atmosphere.

In an article from the Huffington Post in October 2015, the expert Howard Fineman pointed out that “a toxic mix of history, culture, politics and money is preventing — and will continue to prevent — the U.S. from significantly restricting the private ownership of firearms”.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)