For Whom the Guns Are Fired: Racial Inequality and the Dilemma of Gun Control in America

On May 28, one Republican figure after another made a splash at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Finally, former US President Donald Trump said, "The evil that exists in our world is not a reason to disarm the law-abiding citizens, on the contrary, it is the best reason we must arm the law-abiding citizens." Cheers.

This is the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association. In the two weeks leading up to the meeting, there have been three mass shootings in the United States. The most recent occurred in Uvalde, just over 200 miles from Houston. The shooting killed 19 students and two teachers.

In 2022 alone, there will be 229 mass shootings in the United States, and a total of 7,926 people will die in gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The shooting haunts everyone in American society like a nightmare.

America on Guns

In 1789, when U.S. lawmakers introduced the Second Amendment to the Constitution, they probably did not envision gun violence as widespread as it is today. In fact, this 27-word sentence has been understood differently since its inception. The full text of the Second Amendment reads "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." necessary for the safety of the people, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be inviolable)

Since the constitution was originally a manuscript, the state legislatures ratified slightly different versions in each state. Some states add a comma to the sentence, some states add two commas, and some states don't add a comma. This leads to two different interpretations, one that defines the right to bear guns among the "militias", and the other that believes that everyone has the right to bear guns.

However, these debates were not central to American politics at the time. As it is said that God, guns and courage created America, with the ensuing Civil War and the Great Western Expansion, a gun culture took root in America. In fact, for 143 years until the Federal Firearms Act of 1934, the Second Amendment to the Constitution was the only gun-related provision in the nation.

Guns are an inseparable part of contemporary American society, whether they subscribe to this culture or not. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, between 2016 and 2020 alone, U.S. gun manufacturers produced 24.6 million handguns and 14.3 million rifles and 7.9 million other firearms. In 2017, the Pew Research Center noted that three in 10 Americans own more than one gun, and about one in 10 Americans own at least five.

However, the large number of guns also brings about a large-scale problem of gun violence, which is becoming more and more serious with the transformation of American society and the change of social form. In 2019, a study published in the journal Preventive Medicine noted that in 2015 the number of homicides by guns in the United States was 24.9 times higher than in other countries. The Gun Violence File says 34,500 children have been killed in shootings since 2014, including 6,500 under the age of 12.

As the problem of gun violence has grown increasingly serious, gun control has finally become a central issue in American politics. However, the gun control agenda has not progressed for years. In December 2012, 20 children were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. Even if Obama took the opportunity to force Congress to pass the gun control bill, the final result is still a disastrous failure. Even the Democratic-dominated Senate at the time failed to pass the bill. The death of a first-year student in a classroom doesn't change anything. More and more states are even loosening gun control. In 2021, 19 states have passed 64 laws to ease gun control.

America with guns

People often forget that "gun control" was not as progressive as one might think to begin with. Before the Civil War, southern states had banned slaves from carrying weapons. After the Civil War, southern states quickly passed various bills restricting the ownership of guns by blacks who had become freedmen. The white man on the horse threatened the black man with force to hand over the gun in their hand. One notorious participant is the Ku Klux Klan.

On May 2, 1967, when a group of Black Panther Party (Black Panther Party, the black nationalist and socialist party composed of African-Americans, whose main purpose is to promote the civil rights of black Americans) stood with arms in California On the steps in front of the parliament, after a statement "Now is the time for blacks to arm themselves against terror". That same night, then-California Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which prohibited the open carrying of loaded weapons.

The 1967 Detroit riots amplified the fear of black guns in American society. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy provided an indisputable case for gun control. In 1968, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the Gun Control Act of 1968. One of the most controversial clauses restricts the import of small, cheap, low-quality handguns known as "Saturday Night Specials." Because the guns were mostly popular in minority communities, critics at the time bluntly said, "This bill was passed to control black people." ·

A story that may seem absurd these days is that both bills were backed by the National Rifle Association, which has opposed gun control for decades. Of course, the Rifle Association then was not the same as the Rifle Association today. The Rifle Association at the time was a moderate group of shooters, and its leaders even worked to push for gun control bills across the country. Until 1977, the situation changed.

With fewer people buying guns to hunt, the Rifle Association's leadership began to look to shape the Rifle Association as a more pure sportsman's club. This sparked the dissatisfaction of Harlon Carter, who was working at the Institute for Legislative Action, a think tank for the Rifle Association at the time. In 1977, he and his allies staged a raid at the Rifle Association's annual convention and were successfully elected as the Rifle Association's executive vice president and then president. During his tenure, Carter successfully transformed the Rifle Association into a political lobbying organization that defends gun rights.

It is worth mentioning that, in addition to continuing to participate in the infamous "Operation Wetback" in American history, many Mexican immigrants who entered the United States legally were arrested by force and driven out of the United States by patrols formed by white volunteers. ), Carter is best known for a crime he committed in his youth. In 1931, 17-year-old Carter shot and killed 15-year-old Ramón Casiano with a shotgun after hearing his mother describe Latino youths loitering around his home. In court, Carter has maintained that he was in "self-defense".

Many board members of the Rifle Association have spoken similarly. In 1999, Jeff Cooper, director of the Rifle Association, shared a story. His friend shot four black people just because they were wearing ski masks on Halloween. "Maybe they didn't do anything criminal that night, or they did, I'll never know," his friend said. In 2005, another director, Ted Nugent, shouted at the annual convention, "Shoot! I want carjackers to die, I want rapists to die".

But, as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has criticized, when legal black gun owners are killed by police simply for carrying a gun, the Rifle Association has oddly maintained silence. Another figure may explain why.

Fifty-five percent of shooting victims are black, which is completely out of balance with their share of the U.S. population. This is the real meaning behind what Carter and Nugent say about "self-defense" and "shooting." In 2017, Caroline Light of Harvard University proposed in her book Stand Your Ground: A History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense , In the history of the United States, the "right to self-defense" has never been equal. Instead, this right belongs only to white men. Caroline Wright writes, "The term 'self-defense' covers a range of histories that protect the privileges of white men as property owners, sexual arbiters, and abusers."

In this sense, Carter is indeed "defending himself." Rather than "defending citizens from tyranny," as gun rights advocates say, defending white (privileged) everyday life may be the real reason why gun rights are so important. Gun rights have always been "only" white, and they, along with other issues, form the identity of right-wing white supremacists.

zombie Washington

But don't get me wrong, the Rifle Association is not the biggest obstacle to the issue of gun control in the United States, at least not anymore. A decade ago, when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut took place, Republican politicians went into awkward silence for a week, only to wait for a statement from the Rifle Association. And today, before the Rifle Association has issued a statement, Republican politicians have rejected gun control measures of any kind one by one.

The Rifle Association has been plagued by legal battles and infighting for the past four years, and at one point was on the verge of bankruptcy. But in its efforts over the past few decades, the Rifle Association has shaped gun rights as a core identity and focus for Republican voters. Whether or not the Rifle Association exists, it has succeeded.

Campaign ads mentioning guns, the Second Amendment and "self-defense" accounted for 7.2 percent of Republican ads this year, up from 3.6 four years ago, according to Ad Impact, a media tracker. %. Many Republican politicians have been deliberately photographed out with guns to show their support for gun rights. More uncompromising radical gun rights groups, such as the National Association for Gun Rights, are stronger than the Rifle Association in blocking any gun control measures.

This is in line with all the political woes in the US in recent years. The more radical right keeps crowding out space for moderate conservatives, and the mainstream moderate conservatives are actively moving towards the extreme right. There is no denying that bipartisan public support for some gun control measures remains high, with more than 80% of both Democratic and Republican supporters supporting the sale of firearms to certain groups of people, background checks before gun sales, and a ban on carrying concealment without a license firearms.

But a 10 percent dissent is enough to sway the Republican primary and elect someone who is more determined to stop gun control as a candidate. The example of Cole Wist is the best proof. The perennial Republican Rep. is rated A by the Rifle Association (by the Rifle Association's standards, an A means he's a staunch pro-gun candidate with a clear record of support on Second Amendment issues) simply because He lost his seat in the primary by supporting a gun control bill.

On May 30, when the Bidens went to Yuvaldi to mourn the lost students and teachers, someone chanted "do something" at him. He said, "I will." Like his Democratic colleagues in Congress, his grief and anger are real. But he probably couldn't do much.

There has been an unprecedented sense of burnout in American public opinion, and no one knows what to do. Biden won the most popular votes in U.S. history, with Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and barely holding the Senate. But voting will not solve this problem, and Democrats have already struggled to advance other issues, not to mention the issue of gun control, which the Republicans are even less likely to compromise. The Supreme Court, once considered the guardian of citizens, can't fix it either, and in fact, a forthcoming ruling by the conservative-majority Supreme Court could make it more difficult to push gun control laws.

An article published in 2015 has become an internet hit again. The article, titled "The Gun Control Movement Needs Its Own Pro-Life Fanatics," says, "We must make a difference between Republican lawmakers, gun store owners, and gun manufacturers. waving pictures of the scene where the children died." If anti-abortion activists can yell outside abortion clinics to stop abortions, there's no reason why gun control proponents can't.

This may be the only thing people can do right now. As Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School, put it, gun control is failing not just because of fundamentalists and politicians, but because of everyone who has yet to find the determination, courage, and creativity to stop it. people.

(Editor in charge: New Bremen)