United States: No More Guns!

The time  is over for excuses, elaborate arguments, and traditions that talk of personal security. Time and again, these collective murders. Time and again, children and adults sacrificed while, as is also the case with drugs, no one dares to challenge the status quo.

The immense business behind these habits, which moreover is the jurisdiction of each State, cannot continue to maintain itself with additional sacrifices on the altar of those “vested constitutional rights”. The United States cannot continue to offer such a bad example (as it likewise does with capital punishment) claiming that this isn’t the federal government’s jurisdiction.

No more guns! In large collectives there will always be people who are mentally deranged. But to the extent possible, it is the task of the government to ensure the safety of its citizens.

I trust that the horrendous massacre at the school in Newtown, Connecticut will prompt reconsideration among the authorities and representatives of that great people who, due to unspeakable interests, are subjected to these anachronistic “customs”. Some of them, under pressure from the National Rifle Association, are incapable of reacting even in the face of so many dead children, due to the immense benefits that they obtain. Others, unable to express their opposition, walk the tightropes of close congressional votes. But what is certain is that the United States cannot continue to set these too frequent examples for the world that they should be leading.

As underscored in the press “the killer followed a terrible pattern set in other similar massacres. He carried four weapons and was wearing a bullet-proof vest”.

According to “El País”, “this year to-date the national system that monitors the weapons trade has detected 16,300,000 sales” (but an unlimited number of firearms may be sold in each “sale”). Last year, of the 14,000 murders committed in the United States, 10,000 of them were due to firearms. In 2009 there were almost 600 accidental deaths attributed to firearms and some 19,000 suicides committed by the same method.

President Obama “with a father’s gaze” and tears in his eyes called for taking “significant action”. Take that action, Mr. President, without so much as a second thought for those who observe these events with dollar signs in their eyes and continue to defend the indefensible and inadmissible. Amend the Second Amendment behind which the accomplices of this tragedy hide.

And then fix your gaze, with firmness and determination, on the children who die each day anonymously from neglect, the thousands of children who die of hunger each day… while our satiated society looks the other way.

Take advantage of this tragic occasion to confront this disgrace, this collective shame.