TWO separate shooting incidents thousands of miles apart on
Saturday has shed a harsh light on differing attitudes towards gun crime
between Europe and America.
When a gunman opened fire at Jewish Museum in Brussels the
first thought was that this must be an act of terrorism. The drive by shooting
in California, which left six people dead, was seen as just another unfortunate
addition to the ever increasing statistics of gun crime in America.
The difference between the two is not just the prevalence of
violent crimes between the two regions but also the perception among the public
of what these crimes mean. In Europe shootings are shocking incidents outside
the norm and beyond the comprehension of the majority who have never seen a
firearm in real life. In America they are seen by some as just the price of
doing business. In 2012 the
total number of homicides involving firearms in America was 8,855, of which
6.371 were with handguns. While figures for the whole of the European Union are
harder to collate, due to the cross border nature of the crime, it is approximately
1228 for the same time.
Proponents of gun ownership often cite the higher number of
gun related incidents of homicide some European countries which do not allow
handgun ownership compared to those which do, while failing to ignore
comparable studies of incidents of serious and organised crime, in comparison
to unpremeditated attacks by average people. An often quoted study published by
the Harvard
Journal of Law and Public Policy uses the rate of violent crime involving
firearms in Russia as a primary basis for the claim that gun control raises the
incidents of murder involving firearms. The
study has been widely criticised, however for its use of skewed data,
including outliers as part of a distortion of averages, and unconfirmed facts
based on anecdotal evidence.
Both sides of the debate are able to produce numerous
statistics to support their claims. It is the perception of the public and the
reaction to gun crimes which has more of an impact on how the stories are
reported, however. Part of this public feeling is based not on the number of
incidents of individual gun crimes but on the scale of them.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the International
Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in October the US Attorney General Eric
Holder highlighted the rapid growth of mass shooting in America. His speech, delivered
on the same day as 12-year-old Jose Reyes killed two people and wounded two
more at a middle school in Sparks Nevada, warned that the average number of
mass shootings had risen sharply since 2000, from an average of five per year
between 2000 and 2008 and 12 in 2013.
Although picked up rapidly the prevalence of these stories
means that they are just as quickly dropped in favour of other news by media outlets.
A mass shooting in Europe, however, leads to questions rather than soundbites
because it is not such a regular occurrence. The legality or illegality of the
weapons used plays actually very little importance in the effect of the story,
it is how they are dealt with. When guns are treated as part of daily life then
the use of them must also be treated as such. For some the mass shootings which
have left so many men, women and children dead over the years are the price you
pay for the freedom to own a deadly weapon.
Boiling mass murder down to simple facts and figures fails
to take into account that the emotions involved and the impact which perception
of gun crime has upon the national consciousness. The old saying “guns don’t kill
people, people do” is used by the gun lobby as a reason why people should be
allowed to carry guns, without seeing the irony that if the people did not
think that firing a gun was their civil right then they would not have so much
drive to do so.
