The Aurora, Colorado, tragedy of the last couple of weeks, has raised great debate about guns and gun laws in the USA and inevitably, has resulted in comparisons with other countries and their particular levels of violence and attitudes towards weapons. So as an Australian looking on and now living in this amazing country, it is an interesting and fair to say - emotionally charged debate.I grew up on the land where guns were generally a part of life but a part that had a very specific and very functional purpose. In that rural community, as a rule, guns were only used for practical farm related activities. Certainly, guns in homes or in Utes, trucks or on other farming machinery were a common sight.
Then of course, our own tragedy occurred with the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania and Australia’s gun laws changed, and hopefully for good.
So getting ones head around the USA gun culture has been challenging. An ex-police officer in Houston advised me that its best to assume that everyone you meet is carrying a gun and therefore treat people with courtesy and respect! Isn’t that how people should be treated anyway – gun or no gun?
One does have to admire the determination and will of Americans to protect their Constitution and the rights it affords. However, given the most recent tragedy, I am left wondering whether the rights of the innocent have been lost in the debate. On one hand, Australia can be very regulated and perhaps sometimes ‘nanny statish’ but here; it’s the extreme opposite. There must be a point somewhere in the middle. I pick up the Sunday paper here and instead of reading the usual waffle that I consumed in Perth’s Sunday papers, I now get flooded with coupons and sales brochures – and yep, last week there was a sale on AK47s for $179 dollars at the sports store around the corner!! Something just doesn’t sit right.
All this gun talk and the stories one hears when coming to the US can sound frightening but I think that it’s somewhat of a beat up and unfair to characterize Texans as gun toting trigger happy cowboys. Without a doubt, you can go into sports stores and Walmart etc and along side kitchenwares and bathroom linens you can also buy pretty much any kind of gun. And yes people openly tell you that they carry a gun (even in their handbags!) but no – not everyone supports this absolute freedom or right to bear whatever weapon you want and the number of gun deaths either by shootings or by accident, are not everyday occurrences. In truth, while I do certainly read about murder or murder/suicides and officer-involved shootings here, when I think on Australian news reports of recent times, it was not uncommon back home to read about similar tragedies or random shots being fired or even about drive-by shootings between gangs and OMCGs.
What is different and difficult to get used to here, is the everyday references to weapons; the carrying of guns; the advertising of and easy access to guns in shops; and the concept of ‘stand your ground’ laws that enable the ‘reasonable use of deadly force’. What one considers ‘reasonable’ is entirely relative and subject to individual perceptions!! If anything, that is the frightening part – people and how people view the world around them.
