Tragedy in the US has lessons
for every nation
On Friday, in tranquil, prosperous Newtown,
Connecticut, a
20-year-old killed
his mother and then unleashed a reign of terror
at a local
elementary school
. Most of the victims, as President Barack
Obama said in
expressing the nation's
pity and grief, were "beautiful little kids between
the ages of 5
and 10 years old.
They had their entire lives ahead of them - birthdays,
graduations, weddings, kids
of their own." At least 28 people were killed,
including the
gunman.
Given US politics, grief and horror will give way
all too soon
to yet another debate
over gun control. On right-wing news broadcasts,
some
zealots even argue that
arming teachers and fortifying schools could
prevent such
disasters, a notion of
unsurpassed, surreal lunacy.
And yet mass shootings are not only a US
phenomenon,
although loopholes in US
gun laws make such assaults worse.
(In China's Henan
province on Friday, a man
with a knife injured 22 at a primary school;
all survived.) But
even though the US
appears to have recorded far more such
killings than the rest
of the world combined
, deranged "lone wolves" have killed students
and teachers in
comparable attacks in
Scotland, Canada, Norway, Germany, Brazil,
Argentina and
Azerbaijan, among others,
in the last two decades; many of those jurisdictions]
have
restrictive gun laws.
The phenomenon appears, then, to involve
something more
universal than slack gun
control. In the 1920s, Sigmund Freud wrote in
Civilisation
and its Discontents that modern life,
for all its benefits, imposes a
conformity that
can drive individuals to
neurosis - and beyond. No place can think itself
exempt.
As in other aspects of life, full security is illusory.
But a
society can take some
steps to reduce the risk of attacks like Friday's.
Gun laws are
a good place to start,
but are not sufficient. While schools cannot be
"hardened"
like army bases, teachers
can be trained in emergency-response methods.
Police
quick-response plans can
be fine-tuned.
As usual, however, prevention is the best cure.
Studies done
after such attacks often
find that somebody knew the killer was in a bad
way
psychologically, but remained
silent out of family loyalty, friendship, misplaced
"
honour" or
fear. Sophisticated vigilance
in schools, public education and an unashamed
understanding of mental health issues
could help reduce the frequency, if not the horror,
of these
attacks on the innocent
SOURCE NATIONAL EDITORIAL
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