Australia's Gun Laws May Show The Way
Gary Briane Tuttle
(Editor's note - the following essay was written by Gary Briane Tuttle, of Waterbury, in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre)
As each passing day brings news of funerals for victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, many of us see our own loved ones in the faces of the victims, and we are all in search of ways to answer the obvious question, “What now?”
The pain we all feel about the tragedy in Newtown is there for a reason. The pain carries with it a message. That message is that now is the time to come together and find out why this type of thing keeps happening in our country, with each incident being worse than the last. Now is not the time for rhetoric, or political games. Now is the time to focus on finding real solutions.
As much as we may want to spend our energy on calling the perpetrator of this horrible tragedy a monster, doing so only pulls us farther from ever finding out why and how we, as a society, continue to produce people who choose to, are capable of, and are empowered to commit these horrendous acts.
Until we learn from it, we are doomed to repeat this terrible history. The perpetrators of these crimes will also keep trying to top each other in their level of horror…as much as that seems impossible to do right now. This unspeakable trend started in my lifetime. It was not always like this.
The only real way to honor the many victims of this tragedy, both those killed, and those who are now and are likely to be forever shattered by this, is to make this the turning point...the point in history that we look back upon as the moment when things began to really change.
We tend to look for one single cause, or for a single biggest cause in our search for solutions to problems. Our world is much too complicated and interconnected for that approach to truly serve us in the big picture, though. We are also not very good at handling slowly approaching dangers, like a diet or a lifestyle habit like smoking that will eventually kill us. The obesity, alcoholism, and smoking death rates in this country are undeniable proof of that.
We need to take whatever action we can to help protect us all, especially children, from any ”immediate threats” that could arise, while at the same time addressing the roots of the issue. That is the only way to reverse this horrific trend. There is a lot of discussion right now about ways to address the “immediate threats”, as there of course should be.
The roots of this, however, are not getting nearly as much attention.
This is like the smoker who gets a diagnosis of cancer, yet continues to smoke while undergoing treatment, and looking for a cure. They are almost certainly doomed to perish from the disease, because they are literally still making cancer at a rate that is at least as high as the rate that got them into cancer in the first place, and there is no treatment that can outpace that.
While we implement stronger security in our schools and public places, we also need to find out what factors in our world push people towards or empower this kind of behavior, and what kind of things can be done that push people away from it, and/or disempower it.
If that becomes our guiding principle, and we do not lose sight of the true effects of our actions, eventually the scales will tip.
There is no number of these tragedies that is acceptable. We need to keep taking steps until the only place any student ever has any chance of encountering the horror of such a thing is to read or hear about it as an event from history from an era before we truly understood the bigger picture.
There are those who say that this is an impossible goal, despite the fact that there was a time within my lifetime when there was no such thing as a mass school shooting in our country. It can indeed seem an impossibly large task to create an environment where these types of things cannot happen, but we, as a people, have made other very similar changes. Less than 100 years ago, the abomination and barbarity of lynching was common in our country, and as recently as 60 years ago blacks and whites could not integrate by rule of law in many places. The children of today rightly see the differences between races as the beauty of diversity, and something that was common only a few generations before is now beyond unimaginable.
There are examples of other societies that have successfully addressed this very problem. One viable shortcut to getting the results we want is the common sense strategy of finding a society who had the same problem, and successfully rid themselves of it. Australia fits the bill perfectly. In 1996, there was a mass shooting in the town of Port Arthur, in which 35 people lost their lives. That event was the catalyst for the change in laws that changed Australia's laws from ones that were very similar to those in the US today, to being a country that has one of the most restrictive set of laws in the world regulating gun ownership.
An Australian police detective adds another firearm to a pile of illegal rifles and shotguns. After the Port Arthur massacre, the government instituted a national buy-back program, ultimately paying around $527 million in exchange for Australians handing in nearly 700,000 weapons.(Reuters)
There have been no mass shootings in Australia since 1996.
Let that sink in for a minute. There was a truly horrible mass shooting in 1996, which promoted changes in the laws, and there have been no mass shootings in Australia since. As I write this, it has been 16 years, and there has not been a single mass shooting. Not one.
It is well within our power to truly fix this, and we can do this within the lifetimes of many of the survivors. Lets do the only thing that can begin to truly honor their loss by making this a turning point in our history.
| Login or register to post comments | Tags: Australia, Gary Briane Tuttle, gun laws, Newtown shooting
(editor's note - the following response is from Tom Feff. The Observer website has been hacked by Chinese spam experts and we're having difficulty sorting through 1000s of spam to find legitimate comments. Thanks for being patient)
Firstly, there is no question that the tragedy that occurred in Newtown was emotionally devastating. You are correct in pointing out that this is something that must addressed. I read your editorial and felt obliged to respond. You do a disservice by not explaining the Australian model yet proposing we adopt it. What are their laws?
From what I can see from the photo provided it looks like long guns of the pump and bolt action type on their way to becoming cars or refrigerators. Did you know that in the U.S. you are more likely to brained to death than killed by a long gun, this includes what some people refer to as “assault weapons”. So, semi-autos, pumps, bolt and break away actions don't add up to hammers, bats, ashtrays or any other device used to take a life in that manor. I was astonished to find this to be the case.
Hand guns, some of their owners use them to cause the overwhelming majority of murders in America. They are also most often used by citizens to to engage criminals in the act of their crimes. Centers for Disease Control gun related death figures state mode/death correlation in 2011 to be... accidental discharge 851, suicide 19,766, homicide 11,101, undetermined intent 222. Now, I am inclined to put the accidental discharges, homicides and undetermined intentions together, the suicides less so. Suicide is an act by an individual inflicted on said individual not a choice made by one for another or an incident of negligence. I have a suspicion you may disagree with me on this point so, gun deaths 2011, 31940
There are widely varying estimates of defensive gun uses a year. I have seen the numbers range from 2.5 million to 108,000 defensive gun uses a year. Cutting the outliers, the number seems to be somewhere over the million mark. So lets call it 1 million defensive gun uses a year. That's a > 31x favor to defensive vs. offensive use of a fire arm with figures affording the “offensive” a greater benefit of doubt. I think a person committed to ending one's life would find an alternative method if a gun was unavailable to them.
Gun ownership is a right that comes with a very heavy responsibility. I would not be opposed “license plates” on gun safes proving that one can secure a firearm when one is purchased. Not a shortcut but a real solution would be guards or satellite police stations at schools. The most expedient way to protect our children is to actually physically protect our children. From what little we know of the attack, several people died lunging at the fiend in Newtown and they were armed only with a huge amount of courage. That should never be the case again.
I find the assertion that we follow Australian model repugnant. Why not the Swiss model? Perhaps Stalin's or Pol Pot's thoughts on the subject could be considered. One simple reason, one great thing impedes such folly. The framers of our Republic's Constitution acknowledged the fact that there are basic rights an individual is not granted by an authority of law but are guaranteed possession of simply by virtue of the state of one's being.
If the constitution spoke of slings and arrows I might give it to you, not likely though. Reference to "arms" in the constitution are contemporaneous arms not antiquated. Looking at the words of our forefathers, it is clear what was intended... "...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." (George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380).
Patrick Henry, at the Virginia ratification convention June 5, 1788, argued for the dual rights to arms and the resistance to oppression: "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."
Now, I am not sitting here waiting for Uncle Sam to kick my door in and burn my favorite books but did not every dictator worth his salt follow the philosophy of getting arms out of the hands of his citizen/subjects?
It is not a “viable shortcut” to carve up our Constitution on a jerky knee! No, indeed not.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin was a man with an undeniably forward gaze. Please consider that for more than a minute before cheering as our rights are in the process of being usurped. Your heart is in the right place but I feel misguided. I do understand that you wrote this shortly after this nightmare in Newtown.
I mean you no disrespect only strong disagreement and a warning. The Second Amendment stands with the First to guard the rest; without the Second Amendment, the First is neutered.