Newtown shooting: when it comes to guns and violence, America is like a failed state

Newtown shooting: when it comes to guns and violence, America is like a failed state
The Newtown shooting has inspired a rare moment of national self-reflection about the second amendment

The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012


In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness the character of Kurtz, at his life's end, has a moment of profound lucidity, which prompts his last words: "The horror."

This weekend in the wake of the latest terrible mass shooting in the US, at a primary school in Connecticut, which claimed the lives of 27 innocent people including 20 children, a similar public mood appears to have taken hold, given its most powerful expression in the moving speech by a President Barack Obama on the edge of tears.

It is early days yet but the first indications are that the Newtown massacre has inspired a rare moment of national self-reflection over what is obvious to outside observers: that gun control in the US has failed with horrific consequences.

In a single year – as Obama articulated – the US has also seen mass killings at a Sikh temple, a shopping mall and a cinema.

In America in the past 40 years, a right-driven agenda has argued for the privatisation of the individual's right to own the means of the use of lethal force and driven an extraordinary proliferation of small arms. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/16/newtown-shooting-america-gun-laws-failed-again