Tom Sullivan, center, searches for his son who attended the movie. (photo: AP)
20 July 12
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someone who grew up in a place where guns designed to kill people are
more or less banned and where no one feels that some essential freedom
has been lost (on the contrary, freedom from fear is cherished) I often
wonder what it will take for Americans to absolutely reject the groups
like the NRA, all their ideas, and anyone who supports their morbid,
necrophiliac love of an element of the constitution that is
anachronistic, poorly written, unclear, and insanely stupid given modern
weaponry. After which, we could actually start to do something to save
the approximately 30,000 lives lost to gunshot wounds every year, many
of them children.
When I adapted John Grisham's book Runaway Jury,
changing it from a lawsuit about tobacco to one about guns, I met gun
manufacturers who, supported by the NRA, proudly refused to add even the
most basic safety features to guns and resisted any kind of legislation
aimed at preventing negligent marketing of guns to individuals who were
clearly selling them on to criminals. It was the most cynical thing I
ever witnessed, this faux reverence for the constitution. My belief is
that sooner or later a gunman or gunmen with legally acquired weapons
will kill not 12 or 20 people but several hundred children (who no one
advocates arming for self-defense) trapped in some unique location. And
then, maybe, Americans will say, "Wow, I wonder if we should do
something about this arcane piece of constitutional junk and start
bringing America into the modern world."
I dislike reverence in almost all forms, it's usually a
kind of constriction on the intellect, but reverence for old documents
is doubly stupid when, as in this case, and rather unusually, the
writers of the document had the good sense to write in a provision for
changing the thing when needed and indeed encouraged the idea of doing
so! I'm sure, as with so many things, this would have happened decades
ago if America wasn't so arrogantly averse to looking at other countries
where various things function better than in "the greatest country in
the world." And demonstrably so. Just look at the figures for murder by
gun in any other country in the world outside of war zones. Or look at
what has happened in the other city I sometimes live in, Rio de Janeiro.
People say they want to keep their guns in case
criminals with guns come for them, and others say it's an impossible
situation to solve, guns being so entrenched in North American culture.
Well, all of that applies ten times over in the favelas of Rio which
are, or were, much more infested with guns than any slum in America. Up
in some favelas the gangs had guns that could bring down helicopters.
The man who is solving the
gun problem in these favelas, and in the culture of the favelas, is Rio
State Public Security Secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame.
Beltrame came up with the following strategy. He
warned the favelas they were going to be invaded on a certain day and
anyone caught with guns would be imprisoned. He then told the favela
dwellers of an ongoing anonymous-reporting phone line so they could warn
the police of large and small caches of arms.
And he assured them that once their favela had been
taken over, community policing would take over. And -- and here's the
key thing that's left out of all gun arguments in America -- SOCIAL
SERVICES would be provided to help people get off drugs, train for jobs,
find jobs, improve their homes, improve their schools, etc. Given a
choice between a functioning gun-free society or one ruled by fear and
greed, the community turned against those who owned guns, turned them
over to the police, and -- perhaps most inspiringly of all -- accepted
the social services but as a community went way beyond the government
offered gift, taking control and care of their own neighborhood.
Anyone who doubts the possibility of radical and
beautiful social change should see a crop of new Brazilian films that
have come out of the favelas, or visit Rio which has become a different
and so much more pleasant city -- and not just in the favelas. Just as
with drugs, mere punitive action is demonstrably useless and often
counterproductive. Look at the prison population in America while gun
and drug problems continues unabated. Charity doesn't help much either.
There's a thing called government -- we vote for it,
it's us if it's not corrupted by money -- and it can do anything if we
don't constantly pour scorn on it as if it was something detached from
us rather than our best and most just expression of ourselves.
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