Number 6 in NEWS 1130’s Top 10 of 2017

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – 2017 was a singularly deadly year in the United States of America, as mass shootings once again dominated news coverage.

But the gun is hardly a new entrant on the great American stage.

At the outset of modern US history, the muzzle-loading musket was neither particularly accurate nor easy to wield.

The mostly British-made guns would eventually be used against their creators to fight a long war of violence and attrition with the ultimate goal of freedom.

And so the gun took its place among the hallowed objects in the American ethos – that with equal parts gunpowder and parchment, the fruit of freedom was shaken from the tree of liberty.

Its place as a defender of democracy and decency would be enshrined in the scant Constitution, and the ever-evolving rifle and pistol would come into play as the Union battled slavery, and would take a turn as Americans slaughtered native people wholesale on their own land.

And it remains a powerful influence over the present-day landscape of politics: so much so, that in spite of at least 536 deaths this year from mass shootings this past year, politicians seem unwilling or unable to develop concrete solutions.

Listen: Peter Wagner brings us Number 6 in NEWS 1130’s Top 10 stories of 2017

 

Las Vegas

Jason Aldean had just taken the stage at the Route 99 Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Peering up from the urban darkness was the golden Mandalay Bay, where Stephen Paddock was readying semi-automatic rifles with an addition that essentially made them automatic.

In the crowd below, 58 of them would never go home again.

More than 500 would suffer wounds and an everlasting trauma.

The sound of Paddock’s gun firing bullet after bullet in a rhythm the nation’s founders could never have comprehended sounded at first like fireworks to people in the crowd.

It took on the rhythm of sparklers, hissing and popping in the night air.

But the crowd soon realized what was happening, and panic began to spread up and down the famous Las Vegas Strip.

Jenny from Vancouver eventually called NEWS 1130 from the Excalibur Hotel, where she and a friend frantically sought to find a place to hide.

“We thought we could hide behind this big pillar behind the customer service counter, but when we got back there we saw that there were people there,” she told us from a cupboard.

But there were already people back there.

“Some girls, just laying on the ground crying on the phone.”

Jenny figured they must have come from the concert.

Eventually, the gunman would be dead and the violence would be over, for now, in Las Vegas.

Dangerous Freedom

This violence would not limit itself to the great urban centres of America.

It would touch the people of New Iberia, Louisiana.

And Sandy, Utah.

A church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where the youngest to be slaughtered were children.

But not unlike the tired rehashing of some ancient play, American leaders haven’t been able to find solutions to the problem of mass gun violence.

Many across the political spectrum have tried, from limiting access to automatic weapons, to trying to ban the type of addition used in Las Vegas.

But each time the discussion is broached (and there is often a discussion of whether or not it’s the right time or place to have such a discussion), it must circle back around to infamous 2nd Amendment:

“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 particular wording of this singular sentence has been the subject of legal review and critique since courts found the authority of judicial review in the late 18th century.

Originalists believe the intent was to give an unimpeachable right for people to own guns not only for their own protection, but to once again unleash force to ensure liberty.

“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery,” former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a fellow founding father.

Gun control advocates, however, argue that there must be reasonable restrictions on the rights of gun ownership, and point to other countries with strict control laws that don’t experience the volume of mass shootings visited upon Americans.

And so Americans do what they have done for centuries – they weigh their rights against their safety.

In the way that history has a unique ability not to repeat itself, but rather to echo, Americans find themselves in a similar argumentative position as they did at the constitutional convention.

How sacred is the gun to American society?

If the body of laws are any indication, the gun will retain its idol status so long as a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” doesn’t perish from the Earth.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today