Who will pay for gun control

ON OCTOBER 1st America reached 1000 mass shootings in the three years since the Sandy Hook massacre, which left 20 young children dead.
The recent headline grabbing attack on a campus in Oregon was number 994, meaning there were a further six on the same day. It was the 294th mass shooting in America this year. Following the shootings, which left nine dead, not including the gunman, United States President Barack Obama gave yet another press conference calling for stricter gun controls.
It isn’t the first time he has made this plea though. The same call for action was made after Sandy Hook, Charleston, Fort Hood... In total President Obama has called for more regulations governing gun ownership fourteen times.
Why then is it that America still won’t give up its arms? One reason is the Republican right, which has viewed the right to carry arms as a constitutional matter and therefore something to be clung onto irrespective of rational arguments against. Perhaps the key case to be made against the second amendment, aside from its ambiguity concerning who can actually carry arms, is that it was written at a time when you had to take a tea break to reload between shots. Guns have moved forward and it is time that legislators came to terms with this.
If the Republican right really believed that handing out more guns would help prevent more deaths then they would only have to look at the statistics for mass shootings on military bases to see the flaw in the argument.
Politics is just the public face of the case against tighter gun control. It is the economics behind the politicians which are the real reason President Obama will inevitably have to give another press conference before his term of office is over.
In 2012 the National Rifle Association was reported as spending approximately  $15million on Republican political campaigns in an effort to thwart President Obama from regaining office. American Presidential campaigns have become known for their multimillion dollar war chests. The size of the NRA’s fiscal support for the pro-gun republicans gives a sense of the money involved though and the scale of the opposition President Obama is facing in his attempt to overhaul gun laws.
While the arms industry is notoriously hard to find exact figures on the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms (NISA) estimates that American small arms purchases in 2009 accounted for 38% of global total of imports at $1.8billion, more than 47 other leading importers combined. Meanwhile figures given in 2010, relating to 2007, by the US Census Bureau estimate that domestic sales revenue for smalls arms sales could be $2,742 million per year, with a payroll for employees in America of $507million.
The money involved is vast and the interest groups powerful. It isn’t an unwinnable battle though. The government’s long running campaign against big tobacco, and its loosening of the corporation’s stranglehold on politics shows that it can be done. It won’t be through good intentions though and will require a shift in focus for the Republicans, among others. The American constitution has been amended and updated before as circumstances required. There is no longer the same need for armed citizens, forgoing the argument of enhancements to the guns they are carrying. The only thing holding back the debate is the question of who will pay the price, the coffers of the arm trade or the lives of the next victims?

All the same on the Western front

Well that’s it, all that money, all that time, all those speeches, adverts and debates and what has changed? Pretty much nothing actually. President Barack Obama is safely in the White House, Governor Mitt Romney is stumbling over his words and Donald Trump is making a ranting fool of himself on twitter, all in all pretty much business as usual it would seem in American politics, from my cynical Brit viewpoint anyway.

I like to try and stay objective when it comes to commenting on breaking events, particularly elections. Once they have been decided though it is a different story. Whether liked or not it cannot be argued that whoever is sitting in the Oval Office has a massive influence over the rest of the world. It is for this reason that I for one was relieved that President Obama won a second term. The thought of Mitt Romney being President has actually left me with sleepless nights. I’ll be fair though I am sure that Governor Romney honestly had the best interests, as he could see them, of the country at heart. Then again I also have to wonder if his comment to “earnestly pray for him [President Obama] and for this great nation," was meant in good faith or just as a sly dig, back to that cynical British attitude again.

If anything has convinced me, however, that it is a far better thing to have a Democrat in charge of one of the most powerful countries in the world than a Republican it has to be Donald Trump’s spectacular political analysis on Twitter.

Tweeting: “We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” was perhaps not the most balanced response of the evening, and possibly treasonous, but it was by no means Trump’s only one: “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” Demonstrating perhaps a slight misunderstanding of what the purpose of the whole election thing was all about and how democracy works.

What was perhaps most surprising about the election though was how unsurprising it really was. During the run up to voting day we have seen pundits predicting that first one side then the other would win a close race. We heard how Hurricane Sandy would influence the vote and how Governor Romney’s showing in the first presidential debate would change the outcome in his favour. At the end of the day, however, what appeared to be demonstrated by several polls was that a large proportion of people had already made their minds up about who they were going to vote for back in September.

The biggest question now is whether or not having secured a second term in a decisive victory President Obama will now be able to work with the Republicans in government to ensure that he can implement some of his proposals.

While President Obama may have pledged that “the best is yet to come” he will have a tough job on his hands to prove this. Donald Trump may not be entirely representative of the Republican Party but there will be those who follow his call not to give “anything to Obama unless he terminates Obamacare.” Essentially he is calling on people in power to block proposals and plans to help the country and rectify its ongoing economic strife is President Obama does not reverse legislation which ensures that everyone has access to medical treatments and people wonder why I despair with hardline Republicans.

The final word on the subject for now should, justly, come from President Obama himself. Delivering his victory speech he addressed not only those who voted for him but also those who oppose his views. He demonstrated once more why he is a global leader and provided at least some hope that he understands the differences in America and wants to find a means by which to heal the divide which the bitter battle this election has been has caused:

 "Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times or we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won't change after tonight. And it shouldn't.

"Despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America's future. ... We want our children to live in America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet."

"Forward, that's where we need to go. Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts, it's not always a straight line, it's not always a smooth path... That common bond is where we must begin."

A passion for politics?

If ever there was an ideal demonstration of the amount of influence the United States of America has over the rest of the world it is undoubtedly the impact which the run up to its election has. The fact that there are more elections going on than just the Presidential one, more candidates that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, seems to have been missed out of the global enthusiasm.

When America does something it tends to be on a huge scale. Everything is a show, everything is turned into a show. When they are electing their President why would anyone assume that it would be any different?

With the two key candidates racking up something in the region of £2billion dollars, or as Mitt Romney may describe it “pocket money”, it is understandable that they would generate a reasonable amount of interest.

As a Brit the way American elections play out is something which at once amazes me and then amuses me, it is just so different from our own relatively grey and dull affairs. The concept of attack ads for instance is just something which wouldn’t really work in the United Kingdom. It may be that we are just so cynical that we always look at the worst of our politicians but they just wouldn’t have the same impact in this country.

Whereas in America politicians are seen as larger than life symbols of a nation in this country they are seen as somewhat grey and uninspiring for the most part. When American politicians take to the airwaves they are filled with passion. They spout memorable and carefully crafted quotes; they espouse rhetoric worthy of a blockbuster script. When politicians in the UK try something similar it is “I’m a Celebrity...get me out of here” and they get suspended from the party. It just isn’t the same really.

From our perspective across the pond it does seem that Americans vote with a passion which we Brits just cannot seem to muster. If our politicians spent $2 billion on campaigning they would be roundly demonised. Once there may have been a loyalty to the party, a passion for politics, a sense of duty in Britain, once people felt that voting was important. Nowadays, however, it seems at times as though no-one cares anymore, and that includes the politicians we vote for.

In America it can seem to us poor out of touch Brits that any form of election is an opportunity for a pageant. In Britain we are rapidly approaching electing Police and Crime Commissioners and no-one seems to know who the candidates are, let alone what a Police and Crime Commissioner actually does.  There just doesn’t seem to be the passion for politics in Britain that there is in America, perhaps that is why we follow our cousins in America so closely, they get to have the excitement we miss out on and then some.

A stormy time for the news

The impact of Hurricane Sandy has thrown up more than just chaos in America. While houses are being ripped up, Wall Street shut down, power outages and lives lost something far more important seems to have gripped the minds of a rather substantial amount of news agencies and bloggers, the cause of the storm.

While it may come as a surprise to many people it would appear that Hurricane Sandy is not, as may have been foolishly  thought, a natural meteorological event. Instead it is in fact anything from the wrath of a vengeful god, a callous campaign stunt from President Obama or alien intervention.

For the most part we are all aware of the rants which some conspiracy theorists come out and have become inculcated against. As such it is reasonably safe to assume that the views of Pastor John McTernan, who argued that the storm was a punishment from a divine being for America allowing homosexual marriage, or that the storm itself was foretold by little green men from a galaxy far far away (and not as suspected at Disney studios) would be dismissed as ever so much rot.

When the conspiracy ideas start to form in relation to President Obama or the American elections the sheer weight of people jumping on the bandwagon has to make people start to wonder about the sanity of those people allowed to report on the news.

Articles accusing Obama of orchestrating the storm via a genuine scientific experiment the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (HAARP) caught the attention of people shortly before certain rather right wing republican news organisations started to accuse the President’s administration of using the storm to hide bad news, cover up employment figures, postpone the election or in one case create some form of dictatorship.

When the religious and political right start to use a natural event to help them spout ideas of a vengeful god, intolerance and bigotry, hatred and just plain stupidity, then the news and those who write and broadcast it must step back and question where it has all gone wrong.

Hurricane Sandy is obviously a huge story. As with any big story the challenge is finding a new angle, something to capture people’s attention and beat out the competition. When news agencies resort to publicising the rants of the mentally ill and delusional though they degrade the integrity of journalism and diminish the true impact of the hurricane on the lives of innocent people. Conspiracy theories can be fun to read but at the end of the day they are not news and must never be treated as though they are or else the real news will be lost in the maelstrom.