"...to see the US struggle on the subject of personal arms is akin to watching a friend with an addiction. Anything I say will not make the slightest difference." This was a comment from a reader that appeared below BBC correspondent Mark Mardell's article "Obama v NRA". Many people can make the educated guess that nothing fundamental will change, even after Newtown, as the patient won't listen.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA chief executive, would appear to embody the patient. The answer to the problem of gun violence is apparently even more guns. This idea, if it may be called that, would in one sense work. If schools in the US all have an armed guard each, it could indeed stop future massacres.
What it would also end up doing would be to militarize the childhood of many school pupils. Guns could come to be viewed as "normal" objects, further entrenching gun culture in young minds. It's one of the few ways the vicious circle could get even tighter. But where many see an idea that would exacerbate an errant culture, others see no problem in the first place.
It seems to me that gun culture is the disease with gun access as its chief symptom. Perhaps though it's more the virus that causes the ailment. All the other aspects are also important and get discussed (mental health problems, etc) but it's only now that some have been shocked out of their stupor, and deem it worth even considering taking a mere look at gun control. It takes a lot for an addict to wake up, and at the same time many never will, which sadly will be to the highest cost possible for some.
Just like many are religious simply because their parents taught it to them at a very young age, so there are those who believe that gun ownership and related liberal laws (a different way of using the word "liberal" to be sure) equate to freedom. Dogma and teaching of it at a young age means that many never question much of it objectively.
At its heart, NRA hardliners believe that everyone has the right to be armed to the teeth for "protection", when really the current path, especially when the armed guards at schools idea comes in, is going in the direction of that Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
So is the patient even curable? It's certainly hard to see it given that the only proposals on offer are the closing of a few legal loopholes and a ban on assault weapons. That would be a start, but more measures would ultimately have the required effect, but the above question is really about an intervention: forcing the patient to take the right medicine, and the will to do the forcing.
In the end, the answer maybe lies in another question: To what extent will President Obama and lawmakers be able to force through some cold turkey to break the cycle of handing down delusional ideas of the nature of tyranny and also freedom?
