IT was a bright, sunny morning, 56 years ago, in 1966. Charles Whithorn made his way toward the main gate of the University of Texas.

Lying that he was there for a demonstration exercise, security guards ignored his big bag and waved him through. Whithorn made his way to the main building and mounted the stairs until he reached the tower. Then, after a few seconds of taking in the panoramic view, he got down to business. In his bag were several guns. He made himself comfortable, looked down, and started firing, picking off students as if it were a skeet shoot. He had killed 16 before security got to him and ended the carnage.

Tuesday evening, after another mass shooting in the same state, media houses described the Whithorn 1966 shooting as the first mass shooting. But that is not quite so. There have been mass shootings in the US from as far back as 1891. Two that year, in fact, just a month apart. And both were directed at students.

Media personalities and politicians express consternation at the country’s propensity for violent gun attacks and contemplate its origins. We, who are old enough, remember the most popular comic books coming from the States depicting every male resident going about his business with two guns strapped to his hips. My father claimed that comics with the titles Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid should be banned. So I also bought an Archie comic to switch to when I saw him coming. The Two-Gun Kid was my childhood hero.

America is struggling to explain the phenomenon of gun violence and mass shootings. There are 214 mass shootings in the US this year — more than the number of days already gone in the year. In 2020, 45,222 Americans died from gun attacks. More than half of this number were suicides. America is unique in this respect.

On March 13, 1996, a Scottish scoutmaster, long suspected of having paedophilic proclivities, loaded a bag with four handguns and 743 bullets before heading off to a local elementary school where he fired at five and six-year-olds gathered at a gym class. Some 16 died, and 17 others were injured before he turned the gun on himself. Teddy bears flooded into the village of Dunblane from across a shocked world. One week later, Parliament met and a commission of inquiry was established.

The commissioner wrote in his report that the safety of the public could be better ensured by focusing efforts on the sale and availability of guns rather than on the fitness of potential buyers, and despite long-standing uneasiness over the shooter’s behaviour, laws intended to exclude potentially dangerous gun buyers would be unlikely, on their own, to prevent a future massacre. He also recommended that handguns be disabled and kept in sports clubs when they were not being used for sports purposes.

Britain acted on these recommendations.

Since then, in the US, Columbine took place three years later, and Sandy Hook a decade later. Yet a decade after that, 17 people were gunned down at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. The 10 in Buffalo and the 20 in Texas are almost 30 years later.

Thousands have died from gun violence in the US since 1996. However, Britain has had just one such shooting since. Why? The answer is in money and politics.

More than half of congressional incumbents get money and organisational help from the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA). Many have long-standing financial relationships with the NRA that date back years. In addition, the NRA has a vested interest in keeping gun and ammunition sales high.

In the 2018 election cycle, gun rights groups, including the NRA, outspent the competition by more than 40 to 1.

The overwhelming majority of contributions have been made to the Republican Party, which votes as a group to block any law designed to create the conditions that now exist in countries like England and Australia, where these events just do not happen.

On the day of the last mass shooting in Texas, Governor Greg Abott attended a fund-raiser for his re-election. On May 28, the NRA held its convention in Texas. VIP guests included former US President Donald Trump, the governor of Texas, Senator Ted Cruz, and many other Republican officials.

After the latest shootings, reporters wondered why it was taking so long for parents to collect the bodies of their dead children? And why were DNA tests required from the parents? I will take the long route to explain.

The weapon of choice for all these shooters is the AR-15. This weapon is not for sporting or hunting. It is a weapon for war. It is designed to kill many people quickly. When a bullet from an AR-15 enters a child’s body, it does horrible things to that body. Worse, if it encounters a bone, it will ricochet wildly. It is very possible that these little children were not identifiable without DNA tests.

The shooters in the last two mass shootings were both 18 years old. If either went into a store to buy a can of beer, he would be held by his ear, hauled out of the building, scolded, and sent home to his parents. Yet this same person is able to walk into a gun shop and purchase high-powered weapons of war and strut around on the streets with it openly, legally. Isn’t something wrong here?

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his Government was introducing new legislation to implement a “national freeze” on handgun ownership and prevent people from buying and selling handguns anywhere in the country. He said: “The day this legislation goes into effect, it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns in Canada. We did it because it is what responsible leadership requires us to do…Other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives.”

Canada banned the sale and use of some 1,500 models of assault weapons, like the AR-15 rifle, two years ago. The new legislation, Bill C-21, also proposes taking away the firearm licences of those involved in acts of domestic violence and criminal harassment, such as stalking. In addition, a programme is about to be launched to buy back and compensate owners of such weapons.

Canada’s rate of firearm homicides is 0.5 per 100,000 people, while, in contrast, the US’s rate is 4.12 per 100,000, according to a 2021 analysis by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics.

In the final analysis, the ball is in the court of the American people. The country is a limping democracy. But it is still a democracy. Opportunities have presented themselves for these charlatans to be voted out of office. But, unfortunately, it has not happened in sufficient numbers to send a strong message.

With 4.5 per cent of the world’s population, Americans own 55 per cent of all privately held guns globally. There are now more guns in the US than there are people.

Over the past 11 years, I have written several times about American culture and politics. I have often ended with a statement which I will repeat here: The United States is busy sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

Glenn Tucker is an educator and a sociologist. He is also a past president of the Mico Historical Society. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or glenntucker2011@gmail.com.