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  Gun Control Debate in the US: America's Weapons, America's Tragedy

Gun Control Debate in the US America's Weapons, America's Tragedy

By Marc Pitzke in New York

Part 2: An American Culture of Violence

In the aftermath of Blacksburg, Washington may once again try to crack this tough nut. "I believe this will reignite the dormant effort to pass commonsense gun regulations in this nation," the Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has already said.

Feinstein knows what she's talking about. She was instrumental in getting a ban on assault weapons put into law in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 -- the last nation-wide gun control law that came into effect in the US. However Congress, controlled at the time by Republicans, allowed the ban to expire in 2004.

It is very much in doubt if the new calls for gun controls will be successful. This is not just because of US history and the power of the gun lobby, whose campaign donations in the election year after the 1999 Columbine massacre shot up to $4 million. The new generation of Democrats, who stormed Congress in January, come mostly from states in which the "right to bear arms" is regarded as a civil right. Many of these young Democrats are -- like their Republican colleagues -- against gun control. The question is if Blacksburg will shake up the hardliners.

"We have a bunch of Democratic senators from rural states and gun control is a poor issue for them," says Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist. "Some will say: 'Without the ability to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate, why are we even talking about gun control?'"

"It's a tough sell," admits Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, one of the most prominent opponents of guns in Congress. McCarthy's husband Dennis and five other passengers were shot by a gunman on a Long Island commuter train in 1993. McCarthy is now working on milder measures which she hopes will be more palatable to the gun lobby, including immediate background checks on gun purchasers.

Hunting for votes

Even the presidential election campaign is unlikely to push forward the issue in the long term. Of course all of the candidates -- including the Republican Mitt Romney -- were quick to place condolence banners on their Web sites and to cancel all appearances that day. But none of them has gun control as a burning campaign issue.

Quite the opposite. "I am shocked and saddened," said John McCain in his statement on Blacksburg. Further down on his Web site, however, he states his position: "John McCain believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right that we have a sacred duty to protect." Come on, let's go get those swing voters in the gun states!

Gun control is the third rail of US election campaigns -- it helped to break Al Gore in 2000. Two thirds of all Americans are against a gun control. That is why in 2004 the Democratic candidate John Kerry made his way through the undergrowth with a shotgun for the benefit of the photographers. And why Romney is now boasting of being a member of the NRA gun lobby and of having been a hunter "his whole life." A claim that unfortunately he had to qualify later: He had only been hunting twice -- once when he was 15 and once last year, when he went quail hunting.

Culture of violence

But are lax gun laws alone to blame? Those who dig deeper hit a much more complicated problem: America's much derided "culture of violence," as the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama calls it.

The causes for this are as diverse as they are disputed, and they happened to have been on the agenda for a summit on media violence Tuesday in Indianapolis. Activists and local politicians discussed unemployment, poverty, Hollywood movies, video games, rap music -- as well as the brutal winner-takes-all society in the USA, where the losers, outsiders, and those who are different or who don't fit in are trampled down mercilessly.

There is no end in sight for this debate and, above all, there is little likelihood of a solution. All that is left is the ritual of dismay -- and the real dismay. CNN anchorman John Roberts burst into tears yesterday, as he reported on how the victims' mobile phones had all started to ring at the same time. "I'm sorry," he said. "As a father that hits me really hard."

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