How US became a garrison state of armed citizens

By Kaveh Sharifian

One could argue the United States is basically a garrison of armed citizens where guns outnumber people and per-capita gun ownership is highest in the world. According to modest numbers, there are almost 90 guns per 100 citizens in the US, the second being an underdeveloped war-ravaged country like Yemen where 55 civilian firearms per 100 residents exists. Other estimates put the number of civilian-owned firearms at much higher rates at about 332.7 million guns, thus outnumbering the US’ population of 321 million.

Earlier this month, Nikolas Cruz, an ex-student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, opened fire with one of those millions of firearms, killing 17 people in his former school, making the bloody incident the second-deadliest shooting at a public school in US history after the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where a 20-year-old fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members. The shooter had killed his mother before opening fire with his AR-15 assault rifle. The Florida shooting was also the 18th school shooting since January 1 in the United States, which loses around 33,000 people to gun violence every year.

The Florida high school shooting has once again reignited a worn-out debate, where after another shooting there is another gun debate that usually results in a stalemate until a new tragic incident happens contributing to the vicious circle of inaction and prolonged debates in civil society, the government and the US media.  

As a journalist I know the drill after every shooting in the US: You write about what you know so far, repeat and renew gun-related numbers and probably write an already heard about cliché analysis, thus this article is not fundamentally an exception to the above trend.  

This said, I intend to take a quick glance at how the US reached this point where guns are an ordinary commodity along with other commodities like bread and butter in the daily lives of Americans. Also, there are signs that the shooting in Parkland is different in the sense that students and activists are speaking out and organizing unprecedented mass events. US students who survived the deadly mass shooting in Florida are calling for a march on Washington, DC, next month to demand political action on the gun violence epidemic in the US. Student organizers of the protest, dubbed the “March for Our Lives,” told US media that they are determined to use protests to make the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas a “turning point” in the national debate over gun control. Aware that mere activism, without institutional pressure that results in policy outcomes, is a futile endeavor, the organizers said they will demand members of the US Congress to pass gun control legislation, which has always been opposed and foiled by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobby group that advocates for what it calls gun rights. Time will show whether the Florida shooting and the bloods spilled will have the fate of the thousands of other annual shootings or will they be a significant turning point in the years-long US gun debate.

How did the US become the heaviest armed state on the planet?

Many historians and experts of the early American Republic agree that the “Founding Fathers” of the US had a particular attachment to the Greek and Roman republics. When writing the Federalist Papers in defense of the second US constitution and the federalist system, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote under the pseudonym "Publius" because it echoed the founder of the Roman Republic. The founders even believed “they could find the key to inoculating America against the diseases that infected and destroyed past societies,” in the histories of Greek democracies and Roman republics. However, the history of guns in the US, is more in line with a Spartan ideal of politics and citizens, where the public is always armed and ready to go to war. Adult Spartan males had legitimate personal ownership of military weapons, which they would typically store at home when not on active service.

The founders of the new American Republic, consciously or unconsciously, engrafted such a model in the Bill of Rights of 1791 as the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. The text of the Second Amendment reads in full: “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 Second Amendment is almost identical to the wording of the constitution of the founding 13 states of the US, thus an indicator that the right to arms was already enshrined in the daily life of colonial America and the later initial states.  

Many early Americans, because of their fear of the British crown and what they believed was his tyranny, believed that governments use soldiers and weapons to oppress their peoples. Thus they advocated that the federal government should only be allowed to raise armies when facing foreign threats. For all other purposes, they believed, it should turn to part-time militias, or ordinary civilians using their own weapons. Some also argued that armed citizens could curb the dictatorial tendencies inherent in humans who acquire power and influence and thus confront the government if it becomes tyrannical. This sentiment is one of the main arguments and themes of pro-gun activists and institutions.

For example, powerful NRA chief Wayne LaPierre on Thursday dismissed street protests and mounting demands to tighten America's exceptionally lenient gun laws and said they come from freedom-hating "European-style" socialists and tragedy opportunists who use gun control as a “shield for government tyranny.”

Six weeks after the 2012 shooting in Newtown, LaPierre stated the same remarks in a senate Judiciary Committee hearing on what to do about gun violence and in response to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s inquiry about whether he would agree with the point of view that people needed firepower to protect themselves from the government?:

"Senator, I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny," LaPierre said.

The same “fear of the government” argument is made by other mostly conservative gun lobbyist – for example the “Gun Owners of America.”

"I think principally the Second Amendment deals with keeping the government from going astray in a tyrannical direction," Larry Pratt, the group's executive director says.

NRA influence on arming civilians

Besides the tradition of gun-ownership manifested in the second amendment, the National Rifle Association, known as the NRA, has had an enormous role in arming the US. Ron Elving in the NPR, implies that the NRA is a main driving force in arming America, especially after 1971 when hard-line members took over the NRA after an NRA member was killed by federal agents. Before the killing of the NRA member, the organization had even seen instances of advocating gun control and assisting the government to identify illegal weapons.

Founded in 1871 by two former Union officers who were frustrated of the poor shooting skills of Northerners against Confederate soldiers, the pro-gun group now has about 5 million members and is among the most feared and effective players in Washington and 50 US state capitals, where it lobbies, raises money and prepares field campaigns.

Harlon Carter, the legendary leader of the modern combatant NRA had once said that the NRA would become "so strong and so dedicated that no politician in America, mindful of his political career, would want to challenge our legitimate goals."

It seems his prophecy has come true.

Decline in hunting and the rise of deadly military-style weapons

Many fewer Americans participate in hunting activities in recent years and this fact logically leads to a decline in sales of traditional hunting firearms. If you are not Donald Trump Jr. boasting your big-game trophies, chances are animal rights outreach and a change in cultural trends puts you among eighty-six percent of American respondents that disapprove big game hunting, with six out of 10 of them saying it should be illegal. In 1970, over 40 million Americans purchased hunting licenses. Today, the number is 12.6 million. This trend is likely to continue. Almost 50% of hunters are over age 47.

Faced with such changing trends and the declining revenue accompanying such changing times, arms manufacturers had to find – better say create --  new reasons for Americans to purchase firearms.

Sidney Burris of the Gun Sense blog writes,

“The argument the gun-lobby made was fairly simple: you don't buy shotguns nowadays to shoot quail; you need military-style weapons to repel the hordes of heavily armed invaders that are currently planning to trample the borders of our country, our homes, our schools. An essentially militaristic advertising campaign and the fear-baiting that provided its fuel—it struck home with many Americans, and the gun industry began to recover its losses.”

Such propaganda geared towards the ordinary American has been so effective and has become so mainstream that when faced with the bloody Florida shooting, US President Donald Trump this week cast citizens with weapons as a solution to shootings. Trump also suggested arming school teachers with guns during a meeting at the White House last Wednesday.

The president then doubled down on the proposal Thursday, both on Twitter and at a subsequent White House meeting.

"Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!" Trump said.

"If a potential 'sicko shooter' knows that a school has a large number of very weapons talented teachers (and others) who will be instantly shooting, the sicko will NEVER attack that school."

The proposal of bringing even more guns to US schools to confront mass shootings has long been championed by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby.

“Evil walks among us and God help us if we don't harden our schools and protect our kids” NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week.

“The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us less safe is completely ridiculous,” LaPierre emphasized in line with the post-1971 general policies of the NRA to sell guns on the pretext that guns protect individual freedom and security.

When will the chaos of guns end, and what can be done?

For now and the near future the answer to the first question is NEVER soon. It seems two main obstacles impede any real reform in gun laws in the United States. The first obstacle is the powerful NRA that as its modern founding father Harlon Carter said, is “so strong and so dedicated that no politician in America, mindful of his political career, would want to challenge” it. The second obstacle are pro-gun politicians in Washington. Both these obstacles can be addressed via an effective anti-gun lobby organization.

The NRA is probably the most inflexible barrier to any true gun regulation in the US, however, and on the bright side, the NRA is also a very good model for anti-gun activists to follow. Anti-gun reformers and activists need to organize and build their own NRA style organization that would lobby politicians in the same aggressive way, of course in the opposite direction. We know that in the US many representatives will simply work for the highest bidder. It’s time to challenge the NRA as the highest bidder. This can only be done through an effective organization oiled by appropriate funds by activists, the green energy industry, philanthropists and anyone interested in doing something to avoid seeing 1,800 people being killed by guns this year alone. Solely protesting gun violence on the streets is not enough to take on the NRA or change the minds of Washington politicians.  

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