Last week, an 18-year-old “yute” walked into a classroom of 10-year-old students in Uvalde, Texas, armed with an AR-15 rifle, and proceeded to execute 19 of them and two of their teachers. I say “execute” because they were not killed by random fire. He approached them one by one and shot them at point-blank range.

It is perhaps because two of my grandchildren are around the same age that I found it so gut-wrenching. It is unbearably painful when I try to imagine what went through the minds of those little ones as they awaited their turn to be executed.

Without medical evidence, I am reluctant to accept the argument that this kind of atrocity is due to mental illness which is so often used to explain murderous behaviour and demand that more be done to address mental health issues. Too often it is proffered to mask pure badness — and there is such a thing as badness — the kind of badness that our own killers show when they spray bullets at a crowded shop and couldn’t care less who dies.

The other 18-year-old yute who slaughtered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the week before was motivated by his belief that black people posed a serious threat to the whiteness of America that he wanted to see preserved. He is not alone in that thinking. He may be no more mentally ill than others who seek to solve the problem by gerrymandering voting districts and suppressing voting rights, or the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 last year determined to overturn the election results. He may simply have chosen to do it his way — with lethal badness.

In the last five years, 350 people have been murdered in mass shootings in the USA, many of the victims being students in class and worshippers in church. Most governments respond to heinous crimes like these with legislative and law enforcement actions aimed at preventing a recurrence. Not so in the United States.

In Texas, a person over 18 years can legally purchase a gun without a permit or background check and without a record being kept of the sale. This yute purchased two AR-15 rifles three days apart within a week after his 18th birthday. Almost a half of the 50 states have similarly loose restrictions on gun ownership, and despite the increasing number of mass shootings, many Republican-controlled states like Texas, Alabama, Ohio, Montana, Tennessee, Utah, and Florida have been relaxing those laws even further. The sharp correlation between loose gun controls and the high incidence of gun murders committed with lawfully owned guns hasn’t bothered them one bit.

States with tighter gun controls, like New York and California, are swimming against the currents since a person can easily buy a gun in an adjoining state with loose controls. The ease with which guns can be acquired in many parts of the United States has much to do with the illegal supply of guns to Jamaica and our alarming murder rate.

In Jamaica we have strict gun control laws. Hardly any of our murders is committed with a lawfully owned gun. Procuring guns in the US is easy; the only challenge is getting them to Jamaica, whether hidden in containers and barrels or smuggled in by boats.

THE ALTAR OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Opponents of gun control laws ascribe their righteousness to the Second Amendment: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The Americans did not invent this contraption. It was borrowed from the English Bill of Rights of 1689. This had to do with the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics — the Glorious Revolution — which led to the overthrow of King James II, himself a Catholic, who attempted by edict to give the Catholics an advantage by disarming the Protestants.

Yet, although the Bill of Rights specifies the freedom to bear arms for self-defence, Britain has in place some of the most stringent gun control laws in the world. It is almost impossible there to obtain a gun permit other than for hunting and sporting purposes and this would never include an AR-15 rifle.

The context of the Second Amendment is instructive. It says, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The Second Amendment sought to entrench the right to keep and bear arms as a means of defending the state against domination by the federal government and invasion by a federal standing army. In those days, the most modern gun was a musket that, for every shot, had to be muzzle-loaded with gunpowder and a bullet.

The nexus between the right to bear arms and the maintenance of a “well-regulated militia” was severed by the US Supreme Court in the landmark 2008 case of District of Columbia v Heller in which, in a 5-4 decision, the court edited the constitution and affirmed the right of an individual to keep and bear arms unconnected with service in a militia. To their credit, two Republican-appointed judges, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, were among the dissenters.

The US Supreme Court went further in 2016 in the case of Caetano v Massachusetts to declare that, “The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” This includes AR-15 rifles which are capable of firing 45 bullets per minute at a velocity three times that of conventional handguns and inflicting devastating wounds that, at short range, can leave the victim unrecognisable.

The right enshrined in the Second Amendment is not any more sacrosanct than the right to free speech in the First Amendment, which does not protect threats, incitement, or defamation. Indeed, the decision in District of Columbia v Heller stated, “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever or for whatever purpose.” This clearly provided room for the federal government to enact laws to regulate the possession and carrying of guns which would apply to all 50 states, but it has been unable to do that. Why?

The right to own a gun is part of the political creed in America. Resisting gun controls is virtually a litmus test for being a true Republican and it is backed by plenty money. In the 2016 election, the National Rifle Association (NRA) alone spent more than US$50 million in support of Republican candidates at the federal level. Additional amounts were spent to support candidates at the state level where gun laws are determined.

The filibuster and Supreme Court obstacles

Almost all public opinion polls over the last 30 years, even in a gun-toting state like Texas, have shown a majority in favour of stricter gun control laws, although the gap fluctuates, especially after the shock of a mass killing has subsided. On a number of occasions, a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has passed legislation to regulate gun ownership. However, it has been fiercely resisted by the Republicans whose position is influenced not by the voting majority but by the hard-right elements. It has always failed to secure approval in the Senate because of the filibuster rule which requires 60 votes to pass almost every piece of legislation. That’s the American system. Neither party has controlled 60 votes in the Senate in the last 40 years, although the Democrats have held the majority for half of that time.

All efforts to reform campaign finance laws to prevent vested interests like the NRA from buying legislative power have similarly failed.

The filibuster rule could be done away with or a particular piece of legislation could be exempted by a simple majority vote, but even that has proven difficult as some Democrats want to be able to take advantage of it when they find themselves in the minority. That’s the American system.

As I write, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has just indicated a willingness to hold discussions with his Democratic colleagues to explore “the possibility of bipartisan action to address mass shootings”. I am not waiting to exhale. This may be nothing more than heat deflection, and even if it is sincere, it is unlikely to escape the sword of Damocles dangling from Mar-a-Lago or overcome the cheque-book power of the NRA.

Even if a law to regulate gun ownership were to be passed by both Houses, the Supreme Court poses another hurdle because it would certainly be challenged there. In the US, Supreme Court judges are nominated and approved based on whether their disposition aligns with conservative or liberal political views. Nominees are interrogated as to their positions on various issues along this spectrum, especially gun control, and the party that controls the Senate makes the final determination. That’s the American system. Supreme Court judges are appointed for life and the current court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Three of the six conservatives are under 60 years old.

Media commentators speak flippantly of “Republican judges” and “Democratic judges”. I cringe at the thought of any of our judges in Jamaica being referred to as a “Jamaica Labour Party judge” or “People’s National Party judge”. In the same way, I cringe at the thought of the wife or husband of one of our high court judges being a political activist engaged in a nefarious effort to overturn the result of an election to favour a particular party and, even worse, the judge failing to recuse himself or herself on matters that may be connected to the spouse’s activities. That, however, is the American system.

The fate of a federal gun control law, if it were ever able to make it through the Congress and were to be challenged at the Supreme Court, is worrisome because, as Justice Robert Jackson so pointedly declared, “We are not final because we are infallible; we are infallible only because we are final.”

It’s the system, stupid! The stupid system!

Bruce Golding served as Jamaica’s eighth prime minister from September 11, 2007 to October 23, 2011.