Gun violence and US foreign policy
By Han Dongping (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2013-01-25 17:22
In the wake of the school shooting in New Town, Connecticut, the U.S. Government and the American public have been engaging in a very serious debate about gun violence in the U.S. Some people have blamed the NRA's intransigency on Gun Control for the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. The president of the NRA believed that the solution is to provide every school with armed guards. In his own words, "the best way to fight the bad guys with guns is good guys with guns." Still, others blamed gun violence on the prevalence of mental disease in the U.S. They believe that the best way to fight gun violence is to provide treatment for the mentally sick people. There are also people blaming the media and video games for the spreading of a culture of violence in today's society. President Obama appointed Vice President Biden to lead a gun violence task force to find a solution for the gun violence epidemic in the U.S.
Recently, New York City has passed some very tough gun control measures. The president has also signed some tough gun control measures through his executive orders.
It seems that gun violence is a very complicated issue. It will not be easy to find a solution for the problem. The NRA's argument that it is the people not guns that kill people makes general sense. If people wanted to kill people, they can kill without guns. China may have the toughest gun control in the world. People were not allowed to have any types of guns without a license. However, there are several incidents being reported where criminal elements or mentally sick people armed with kitchen knives were able to kill and injure dozens of people. The US constitution provides for the citizen's right to carry guns. But gun violence was not a serious problem in the early days of American history, and it has become increasingly a problem only recently.
However, one can argue that guns do make killing easier and more efficient. If a person is determined to kill, but is only armed with a knife, or other kinds of primitive weapons, it would be easier to stop him, or he may not be able to kill as many people so easily. Therefore, banning guns, while it will not eliminate killing altogether, may significantly reduce the number of deaths.
The video games industry will not take the blame either. The argument that the violence contained in video games may actually help players release and take out their violent impulses so that they are not inclined to resort to violence in real life makes sense. It is very hard to pin point the gun violence on the violence contained in video games anyway.
We will never be able to list all the factors that may or may not have contributed to gun violence in American society directly or indirectly. It is also doubtful that the gun violence task force headed by Vice President Biden will ever be able to find a solution to the problem either.
However, it can be argued that one of the reasons that gun violence has become an epidemic in the U.S. but not in other countries is the U.S. foreign policy, which tends to use war and violence to solve problems as opposed to more diplomatic methods. According to UN statistics, the U.S. has fought more wars since the end of WWII than any other country on earth. Professor Joe Andrea of John Hopkins University published a comic book entitled Addicted to War (Andrea, 2004), discussing the numerous wars in American history. He believed that the American Government is addicted to war. He also blamed the American deficit on U.S. over spending on the military, which took many resources away from domestic programs. But he failed to make the connection between U.S. foreign policy and domestic gun violence. It seems a possible connection between the two warrants our attention.
As a foreigner at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, I was shocked to see Saddam Husain's portraits on sale as targets, with the caption wanted dead or alive. I asked myself what would be the message a product like that was sending out to the young kids in America. One can kill somebody if one does not like that person. The message that one can resort to violence against someone with whom one has a disagreement is dangerous for American youth.
In March, 2003, right before the Iraq War, I was sitting in a mall, waiting to pick up my son at a bus station. A young girl, aged about of 9 or 10, approached me. She asked me if I knew Saddam Hussein. I asked her what about him. She said that he was a devil and that President Bush was about to kill him. I asked her how did she know Saddam Hussein was a devil, and she told me that everybody knew he was, and therefore he should be killed. I found her words troubling. There was no way that she could have had any in-depth understanding of who Saddam Hussein was, or what connection he had to her life in the U.S., and yet it was her belief that labeling him a devil and killing him was the right thing to do.
