segunda-feira, 17 de dezembro de 2012


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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