by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Ten people, including a police officer, were killed in yet another mass shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, last Monday, less than a week after the Atlanta massacre. Ten people, ordinary folks, young and old, getting their prescriptions filled or grocery shopping, just everyday tasks, ending in gruesome death.

The weapon used by the suspect in the shooting, 21-year old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, was a Ruger AR-556 assault rifle. He was arrested wearing no shirt and shoes, and was shot in his leg at the time of arrest. Police have not as yet offered a motive, but Alissa’s brother said that he was suffering from mental illness.

Alissa, a long-time resident of a Denver suburb, has been charged with 10 counts of murder. He was ordered by court to be held without bail pending a mental evaluation.

President Biden was devastated by the shooting, which he described was not a bipartisan problem, but an American problem. He expressed his deep sympathy for the families of the Boulder shootings, and assured them that sensible gun control laws will be enforced in the near future. A boilerplate statement made in the past by every president after a mass shooting. Followed, of course, by thoughts and prayers, but no other action.

The mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado was preceded by a mass murder in Atlanta, Georgia two weeks ago. Eight people were murdered in three separate attacks in Atlanta-area spas. The killer was a 21-year-old white man, Robert A. Long, his weapon of choice was an AR-15 assault rifle.

Among the dead in Atlanta were six Asian women, raising obvious suspicions of a hate crime. However, despite evidence staring them in the face, Cherokee County police officials stated that “it was too early to determine whether he’ll be charged with a hate crime”. They said that Long, who has confessed to the crimes, was a “sex addict who patronized these establishments”, and was “motivated by a sexual addiction at odds with his religious beliefs”. They also said, and I kid you not, that he was “having a bad day”.

Just a poor white, religiously confused kid who likes sex and was probably suffering from a hangover.

Both the Boulder and Atlanta shooters, Alissa and Long, are alleged to be mentally sick, and purchased assault rifles within a week before the shootings. Long purchased his weapon on the very same day of the shooting, Alissa six days before.

Three of the main demands of proponents of gun reform, reiterated by President Biden last Tuesday – a ban on assault rifles, universal background checks and a waiting period after purchase – would probably have prevented both shootings, had these reforms been in force. Reforms which have the support of over 80% of the American population.

President Biden and Vice President Harris visited Atlanta in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Their messages to the families of the victims and to everyone in the nation mourning yet another senseless mass shooting were full of compassion, empathy and hope. The same aforementioned thoughts and prayers.

The American Constitution, drafted in the late 18th century, was designed to protect the rights of white men who had lost the privilege of owning slaves to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The time to amend this famous though somewhat obsolete document, redefined to reflect and safeguard the rights of all Americans, is past due. In an earlier essay, I pinpointed some of the more obvious flaws in the US Constitution: the antiquated Electoral College, the dangerously long 11-week transition period of the Lame Duck presidency, and the imbalance of representation in Congress. But I left out its most dangerously and fraudulently misinterpreted section – the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment states: “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 arms then under reference were muskets, not the military-style killing machines in vogue today. The Amendment was ratified in December 1791, to ensure that a well-regulated militia was necessary as “armed citizens will keep the government honest”, that a federal government will not attempt to take control over an individual state as long as its people were armed. An era when the 13 original states (colonies) sought to maintain their individual rights and freedoms.

Chief Justice Warren Burger said in a 1991 interview that the Second Amendment “has been has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public”. He said that the “right to bear arms belongs to the states”, and not to individual citizens. The Second Amendment guarantees a state’s right to be armed with a well-regulated militia like, for example, today’s National Guard.

Burger attacked the National Rifle Association (NRA) for fostering the opposite view, that the Amendment guaranteed an individual citizen’s right to bear arms, to enable its members – the defense contractors and the gun manufacturers – to carry on a massive fraud on the American public and government.

An armed citizenry will prove no match against well-regulated state and federal forces in the event of a rebellion, as was conclusively proved on January 6, when armed thugs of the radical right, hardly a well-regulated militia, attempted to overturn a democratic election by force.

Mass murder is fast becoming the solution to any racial, political or psychological problem, a national sport sponsored by the NRA, the Republican Party and “Originalists” – a breed of constitutionalists who believe in the words of the American Constitution in their original and literal form, with no consideration to the fact that the nation’s environmental, racial, political, economic and social circumstances have changed beyond recognition since the late 18th century.

President Bill Clinton did enforce a 10-year ban on assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines in 1994, after a spate of mass shootings in California and Texas, between 1991 and 1993 left 65 dead and 58 wounded. Mass shootings fell by 43% between 1994 and 2004, when the sunset provision of the ban expired in 2004.

Republican President George Bush refused to renew the ban in 2004, complying with the instructions of the controllers and paymasters of the Republican Party, the all-powerful NRA. Mass shootings surged by 239% after the ban was lifted, culminating in the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, when a 20-year old white man armed with a military-style assault rifle shot and killed 26, including six teachers and 20 children of six and seven years.

President Obama’s efforts to impose reasonable gun control measures after the Newtown shooting, reforms the Democratic Party had been calling for since the ban on assault rifles was lifted by Bush, were blocked by the majority Republican Senate, on instructions of the NRA.

The current pro-gun lobby arguments are that guns are required for one of America’s favorite “sports”, the hunting and killing of defenseless animals for fun, not for sustenance; and for self-defense, especially for those living in rural areas. Military-style weapons are not the answer to either of these endeavors.

These killing machines have become “the symbol, the embodiment of core American values – freedom, might, self-reliance”. A love affair that claims more than 35,000 lives every year. And highlights the insecurities and shortcomings (pun intended) of some Americans.

The NRA has purchased members of Congress, mostly Republican lawmakers, to vote against any action designed to limit the sale of all types of arms and ammunition. To anyone.

As the sadly accurate joke goes, the only thing easier to buy in America than a gun is a Republican Senator!

The constitutional misinterpretation by these “Originalists” of the terms of Second Amendment, the Separation of Church and State and other outdated clauses is responsible for the greatest threats facing America today – the trifecta of the plagues of organized religion, domestic terrorism (aka white racism) and gun violence. Continuing and escalating dangers that make the Covid 19 virus look like a mild attack of the common cold.

Like universal health care and free education, America, the self-confessed richest and most powerful country in the world, also lacks gun control regulations enforced in every other developed country. Laws which have succeeded in those countries keeping gun violence to a fraction of shootings per capita compared to the numbers in the USA.

Australian firearm policies had remained unchanged for decades, until a spate of mass murders in the 1990s culminated when a gunman opened fire at the Port Arthur National Site in Tasmania, killing 35 people in 1996. Australia’s conservative Prime Minster, John Howard, immediately delivered nationwide, bipartisan gun law reform. By January 1997, all eight state and territory governments had completed a mandatory buyback or confiscation of over 650,000 (in a population at the time of 18 million) specified firearms. In the 15 years prior to these reforms, Australia had endured 14 mass shootings in which a total of 126 people died. In the 20 years that have followed, there have been no mass shootings recorded.

New Zealand provided an even more compelling reason for gun reform. A white supremacist killed 51 and wounded 40 Muslims at prayer in two Christchurch mosques in 2019. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately announced a total ban of all semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. The new laws went into effect on April 11, 2019, a record 26 days after the shooting. Prime Minister Ardern said, “Our history changed forever, now our laws will too”. There have been no mass shootings in New Zealand since the new legislation has been in force.

Both Australia and New Zealand have strong gun lobbies, which were outflanked and outwitted by both popular demand and strong, compassionate leadership.

Such drastic regulations will be impossible to enforce in the United States. A nation that forms 4% (326,474,000) of the world’s population, but has 40% (393,347,000) of civilian firearms. An average of 1.2 guns in the hands of every man, woman and child.

President Biden held his first press conference since his inauguration on Thursday, March 25. With a calm demeanor, he said that he was working on the main crises he faced on taking office, the pandemic and the economy. He said he was ahead of his aim of achieving 200 million Americans to be vaccinated before his 100 days are up, which will revive the economy and get the kids back in school by the Fall. His next priority will be his multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.

The other matters awaiting urgent action, including gun control after the two recent shootings in Colorado and Georgia; immigration reform and the humanitarian crisis at the Southern border; the elimination of the filibuster, which President Obama described as a relic of the Jim Crow apartheid era, the abuse of which serves only to block progressive legislation by the minority Republicans; will be dealt with by Congress while he was concentrating on his main priorities of the pandemic, the economy and infrastructure.

It was disappointing that Biden did not see the necessity for immediate action on gun reform, which he had earlier indicated would be one of his top priorities. After the Boulder shooting, he said that he would enforce basic reforms, notably universal background checks, a reasonable waiting period after purchase and a total ban of military-style assault rifles, if not by legislation, then by Executive Order. Legislation which has once again been pushed to the back burner.

Could a nation which saw the slaughter of 20 precious little children in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, and still failed to enforce gun control, be moved to remedial action by any mass shooting at all? Almost certainly, deplorably not. The NRA and the bought and paid for politicians of the Republican Party will not permit the enforcement of even basic reforms, not anytime soon. Gun reform will continue to stagnate as a fervent but forlorn hope.

There will be messages of heartfelt grief and eternal love, with beautiful wreaths of flowers placed at the killing scene in memory of those murdered. An outpouring of national thoughts and prayers, an avalanche of hearts going out to the families of the victims.

And little else, till the next shooting.