What’s it gunner take?

In resurrecting the GOM, I had hoped to write light-hearted pieces that might bring a wee smile to a few faces, but there’s nothing remotely witty to be drawn from this week’s subject.

It’s been a week since we woke to the shocking news from New Zealand of the heinous attack on our Muslim brothers and sisters in Christchurch, where 50 people lost their lives.

Since then, the news in the UK has reported a terrorist attack in Utrecht where another three lives were taken and in the United States, where mass shootings are now so commonplace that an incident barely registers media attention, there have been six mass shooting incidents since Friday that have resulted in six deaths and 22 injuries.

I received a message soon after the Christchurch attack that included a comparison relative to population.  By extrapolation, the 50 souls lost in New Zealand would be the equivalent to 3,412 deaths in the US, an astonishingly high number.  What is sobering though, is that since the start of the year, that is not far off the actual number of deaths due to firearms in the States.  At the time of writing, and according to the not for profit Gun Violence Archive, shootings have cost the lives of 3,030 people and a further 5,226 have been injured.  Included in the statistics is a staggering 320 “Unintentional Shootings”.

Yet the differences in the response from the two countries could not be more different, which was summed up in a tweet I read from @Fitz_Bunny the following day:

US: “Thoughts and pr-“

NZ: “Semis are banned.”

US: “-ayers. Wait, what?”

Under the inspirational leadership of its Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, the country has already moved to ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons which came into effect at 3pm yesterday.  In addition, she also proposed a gun-buyback scheme for those who already own such weapons, citing that “fair and reasonable compensation” would be paid.  The scheme is estimated to cost the country somewhere between NZD100 million and NZD200 million and the government will still need to develop plans on how to fund it.

Further reform is needed to include elements relating to licensing, registration and storage, and the NZ cabinet will be presented with proposals for consideration on Monday.  With no central gun register in NZ, Ardern stated that the immediate changes are intended to address, urgently, the critical need to remove such weapons from circulation.  She also said there would be a shortened select-committee process for the legislation and that she expected the amendments to the Arms Act to be passed within the next session of parliament on Monday.

Yet New Zealand doesn’t have a proud tradition of gun control or amendments to its firearms laws.  After two shootings by police in 1995, the government ordered an inquiry into police procedures for storing and using firearms.  The police reported in May 1996 that the system was sound and that no major changes were needed.

That outcome led to a government decision in August 1996 to order an independent report, this time led by former judge Thomas Thorp.  Thorp made detailed recommendations covering 28 areas including restrictions on legal gun ownership, restrictions to ammunition sales, license renewals on a three yearly basis and establishing a Firearms Authority.

The government subsequently made four attempts in 1999, 2005, 2012 and 2016 to amend its firearms laws, all of which failed to become primary legislation.

This time, however, things are different and the demand and momentum for change is significant.  As well as Ardern’s firm commitment to implement change, the country has seen cross party support from the conservative opposition National Party.  It’s leader, Simon Bridges, has stated that

“National will support firearms reforms. We have been clear since this devastating attack that we will work constructively with the Government.”

We are at a defining moment, not just for New Zealand, but for the rest of the world.  Ardern and the New Zealand government is poised to demonstrate leadership that can only be dreamt of in the United States.

Contrast New Zealand’s approach to an article from the Associated Press on 16 March which reported that Republican state Rep. for Missouri, Andrew McDaniel, has proposed measures that would force adults to own handguns and young adults to own AR-15 semi-automatic rifles in a level of idiocy that goes to eleven. That’s akin to increasing the speed limit outside a school and believing the children will be safer because the cars are not taking as long to go past.

The AP report suggested that the Missouri Lawmaker’s Bill is not meant to pass and that he’s trying to make the point that mandates are bad.

“The other side of the aisle loves mandates, so I’m trying to get them to make an argument against mandates.”

If that’s the case, and that was his intention, then surely, he could have been a little more inventive, coming up with a mandate that everyone needs to wear non-matching socks; using eccentricity to highlight his point rather than promote a reckless and irresponsible bill that, potentially, could still pass into law.  By any standard, what he has proposed is moronic, utterly insensitive and ignores the wider issues that we face.

We live in times where extremists in many forms are perpetrating violence on our societies at an alarming rate.  Ultra-right nationalists, Islamic fundamentalists and other terrorist organisations are poisoning our societies with hate-filled rhetoric and malignant beliefs that are contrary to the good, decent values that most of us try to live by.

Worse still, those beliefs are fostered and given succour by some of our world leaders.  Soon after the attack in Christchurch, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, exploited the attack in his local election campaign by screening video footage of the assault at his rallies.

In the United States, following the death of Heather Heyer and the injury to 19 others in Charlottesville in August 2017, the mendacious President Trump, who had been shamefully slow to condemn the white nationalists and neo-Nazis at the “Unite the Right” rally, flipped from the forced denunciation in the White House prepared statements of a day earlier and defended the white nationalists who protested, saying they included “some very fine people,” exposing his inherent racism and also suggesting that the counter-protesters deserve an equal amount of blame for the violence.

At the other end of the power spectrum is the disgraceful vitriol spewed at Chelsea Clinton by students at a vigil at New York University for those who lost their lives in Christchurch, blaming her for the killings.  Leen Dweik confronted Clinton with the words

“This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world. And I want you to know that and I want you to feel that deeply – 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”

To her credit, Clinton maintained her dignity and responded with the words

“I’m so sorry you feel that way.”

Dweik’s view, as insane as it is, with no causal link save for a spurious connection to Clinton’s condemnation of anti-Semitism, is an example of the unbridled anger and hate that serves to exacerbate the self-fulfilling state of violence within which we find ourselves.

New Zealand’s bold approach to legislating changes to its gun laws may well address the risk of a future attack, but it doesn’t address the underlying issues that led to the incident.  People were murdered by hate.  We should spend our time fighting that instead of each other.

We can start by not ignoring racism, or other forms of “ism”.  It’s not easy; we must park our sensibilities and our fears and call it out.  The focus shouldn’t just be on egregious cases, but also the subtler forms of prejudice that routinely pervade our lives and we all too often ignore.  We condone those actions with our silence and give strength and power to the offenders.  By voicing our condemnation, we erode their power.

In response to the backlash that followed his ill-informed propagandising, Erdoğan has since tried to diffuse the ensuing diplomatic row by stating that Ardern’s empathy after the deadly mosque attacks in Christchurch was an example to the world.  He further counselled that

“We can’t solve problems by sweeping them under the carpet. We cannot treat social diseases by ignoring them. We can’t get away from problems by hiding. We cannot respond to the issues that threaten us and all humanity with silence.”

Whilst I agree with the sentiment he expressed, that is tempered by how his rhetoric might manifest; he could quite easily adopt the principles he promotes with his customary trampling of human rights.  Instead, I would rather leave the last words to Jacinda Ardern, a woman who exemplifies leadership and who has demonstrated to the world what it means to serve her country.  Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, she unambiguously espoused a simple and profound ethos that should be embraced the world over when she said

“New Zealand is their home.  They are us.”

Twitter: @gomintraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019