America's Controversial Second Amendment
Losing the vote on gun control in the Senate last week was a huge political blow to President Obama. While 90% support the Second Amendment and only 49% of the population support tougher gun laws, the president pushed through with his proposals regardless.
Blaming the NRA did not help his cause as polls showed that the Manchin-Toomey bill was voted down because it would have had no impact on gun crime or future mass-shootings. It only made more legal gun sales subject to federal databases, but did nothing about illegal gun sales or mental health or any of the issues actually related to gun crime and mass shooting.
Obama's defeat was equally a defeat for the pro-Obama media, who unashamedly does his bidding. Instead of educating the public about the complexity of the debate and the history of gun ownership, the mainstream media was more intent on placating the president than educating the public. So, with the large-scale media support, why did the president lose the Senate vote?
He lost a golden opportunity to bring rational debate to a country where gun ownership is a constitutional right. Had he convened a cross-sectional group of advisors to investigate whether gun controls are properly applied, the outcome would have been less divisive. Keen to win, he railroaded this bill through Congress with tactics that boomeranged in his face rather embarrassingly.
The Sandy Hook massacre propelled Obama into action in a way that his hometown, Chicago, with its excessive gun killings, failed to do. Why? Gun killings in Chicago is mostly black on black violence whereas Sandy Hook was about a young white man who killed a number of white teachers and children in a gruesome attack.
How better to put the National Rifle Association (NRA) on a guilt trip, often tarred as racist and right wing. The NRA pre-empted this by proposing a federal plan, supported by the Sandy Hook community that would arm and train security guards to stop assassins from targeting schools.
To add insult to injury, Obama used Gaby Giffords, his former party colleague who was a victim of a near-fatal shooting, and the Sandy Hook victims, to grace the halls of Congress to play on the emotions of those opposed to his proposal.
When five Democrat Senators voted against Obama he threw a hissy fit, unbecoming of a president. In a fit of rage, one of his minions, Organizing for Action (OFA), promised to harass those Senators to alienate them from their constituencies, with a view to the 2014 elections.
This fit of pique, ignores the history of gun ownership in the USA and how it ended up as the Second Amendment in the American Constitution. If Obama is really keen to transform the law, then he should start a public conversation and take some lessons from SA's first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela.
A unifier par excellence, Mandela knew that the two hot potatoes of his presidency - the death penalty and abortion - could potentially leave deep fissures within an already divided society. His tactic was to enhance conversation rather than shut down debate.
Using Parliament in its true Socratic sense, he opened up these ideological powder kegs to the public and invited all constituencies to make submissions and debate the death penalty and abortion in public. He turned Parliament into a veritable demonstration of multi-party participation and consensus building.
Perhaps the time has arrived for the USA to open up this powder keg for rational unemotional debate. How it is done is the trick. Meanwhile those who judge Americans harshly for clinging to their Second Amendment, spare a thought for those saved by guns.
Apropos the USA's gun control laws, some perspective on their crime rates is instructive. While the USA's murder rate per capita is the highest in the developed world at 8 times higher than similar economically and politically developed countries which are on average below 0.5% and none over 1,0%, with a population of 313 million, its murder rate is 15 200 of which 9,960 are firearm related.
The gun-related death rate per 100 000 is 3.2. South Africa with a population of roughly 50 million has a murder rate of approximately 17 000 of which 6,400 are firearm related. Gun-related deaths per 100 000 account for 12.8 persons.
Lest we become arrogant and judge the USA, a close look at SA, should let us hang our heads in shame.
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