US must rid itself of gun culture

Two incidents of mass shootings in less than a week in the US underscore yet again the constant threat of gun violence in American society. Last week, a gunman shot dead eight people, six of them women of Asian-American descent, at three spas in Atlanta. Then, on Monday, a shooting at a supermarket in Colorado left 10 people dead. Monday’s was the seventh mass killing in the US just this year. As with previous incidents, the recent killings have evoked grief, horror, anger and terror. It has also triggered a heated debate on what prompted these killers to go on shooting sprees. Some are describing the Atlanta killings as a hate crime that was driven by anti-Asian racist feelings. Others are drawing attention to the killer’s frame of mind; the assailant was reportedly a sex addict. Still others maintain that even if the underlying reason was a mental health problem, racist stereotypes that associate Asian women with hypersexuality resulted in the perpetrator venting his anger against women of Asian origin. No matter what the motivations were, what enables these mass shooting sprees is the easy availability of automatic weapons to the general populace.

The right of citizens to bear arms is granted by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, arising from a conception of how to secure the right to personal security, liberty and private property from another age – 1791. Many Americans believe even today that the right to bear arms is the ultimate protection of their individual rights, even of democracy. Over time, it has transformed into a deadly ‘gun culture,’ going from pistols and rifles for self-defence to many now owning military-grade automatic assault weapons.

While the Second Amendment forbids federal and state governments from impinging on citizens’ right to bear arms, gun ownership laws are badly in need of reform. It must start with banning automatic weapons and strictly prohibiting individuals with criminal records or the mentally ill from owning any guns at all. Some measures – such as background checks and restricting sale of automatic weapons -- have been put in place in recent years, but these have not been hard to bypass. The powerful National Rifle Association and the Republican Party have prevented much positive reform. But Democrats now control both the House and the Senate, and President Joe Biden has called for stricter controls on assault weapons and background checks. The President and the US Congress must determinedly move America from 1791 to the 21st century in this respect.