I'm afraid I think that this issue might have a certain Clash of Civilisations aspect. In the UK and here in Spain, I wouldn't presume to speak with any confidence about other European countries, gun ownership has no philosophical, political or cultural weight. Owning a gun is something you do if you need to for hunting, pest control or sporting reasons. Gun ownership appears in neither the Spanish constitution nor any of the canon of laws and precedent that makes up the informal British constitution. Added to this, in Britain at least, the idea that gun ownership for personal safety purposes is a quite alien concept, the (unarmed) police are there to protect the citizen and someone who might claim the need to own a gun for personal protection has always been seen as an oddity, a bit weird in fact. And this has always been the case for at least 200 years. I realise that this culture is utterly different from the attitude to gun ownership in the US.
Beause of this culture of scepticism towards gun ownership spree killings seem to be a very rare and therefore very shocking event. The last spree killing in the UK was in 1996 in Dunblane. I certainly haven't been aware of any spree killings having taken place in Spain since I moved here in 2005. I think the incidence in the US is much greater. I'm not claiming any correlation between high levels of gun ownership and high levels of spree killing incidents as I don't have evidence to support such a claim. What I would claim is that the general public attitude towards such a tragic event is usually to support greater control of gun ownership.
When I use the expression "Clash of Civilisations" I mean that attitudes on either side of the Atlantic seem to be diametrically opposed. The same issue, the same set of circumstances seem to elicit entirely different reactions. I'm not going to be so arrogant as to claim moral superiority for our attitude, but I hope US posters won't do the same and might give some thought to the idea that one size of solution might not fit all.
A thoughtful reply, thank you. Yes, I expect there is a dramatic clash of cultures involved. America retains a historically recent frontier mindset, in that the oldest living citizens can still remember when a third of our nation was wilderness and the rule of law was as often enforced by citizens as police. We tolerate a certain level of disorder for the sake of individual liberty, in certain regards, and most of us still have a degree of admiration for the vigilante-icon. Despite eight decades of relative civilization, we retain a high regard for self-reliance and self-determination.
Most Americans, when they first become aware that British police do not normally carry firearms, react with incredulity. It is difficult for us to conceptualize, when millions of
citizens lawfully carry guns on a daily basis, and it is assumed that most criminals will be armed and many of them willing to fight.
We do indeed have a higher murder rate than probably any European nation... but based on evidence that I've gathered from various sources, many of them British citizens, it would appear that we actually have a
lower incidence of overall violent crime and petty theft. There was an intresting article by a Brit journalist who lived in America for a while, on how he actually felt safer on American city streets than on London's. He concluded that there were two reasons: one, that private citizens were armed and able to defend themselves and their property; two, that in America public drunkenness was not remotely tolerated to the degree it is in Britain.
As for the incidence of spree killings in America, I have some points on that I'll address momentarily...
As Andalublue has accurately said this is a very uncommon occurance in this country, and, to be perfectly frank, I do not think I have noticed that having guns has been of much help to people caught in a similar situation to this in the US.
The overwhelming consensus in this country is that we do not want guns, not for ourselves or for our police. I think Andalublue's putting it as a 'clash of civilisations' over this is a very good one. Understand we do not want guns. No one is asking for guns. If there were anyway of having even less guns that is what they would be asking for, but again, in a situation like this, I have not noticed that having guns helps the US one bit and the US has a lot more incidents like this than we do.
To address the bolded sentences: if you look carefully at the details of mass-murder spree-shootings in the USA, you will find that they
almost exclusively happen in what we call "gun-free zones". These are areas that are mandated by State or Federal law to exclude privately-carried firearms. They include schools, universities, churches and so forth. Others are business properties which are posted "No concealable weapons", excluding private citizens with carry permits from carrying a gun on the premises. The corrolary to "gun-free zones" is that only law-abiding citizens obey the ban, and criminals and crazies do not. Mass-murder events almost always occur in these "gun-free zones" and very rarely does any spree-killer attempt to commit mass-murder in a place where he expects to encounter armed opposition by citizens.
This should tell us something right there: the majority of spree-killing crazies have enough sense to be deterred by the thought of armed opposition. Eliminate gun-free-zones and we
might well reduce the incidence of spree-killings to even less than Europe's.
Although I believe people should have the right to own guns, I'm far from convinced that it would make much of a difference in situations such as this. These were people who were just going about their daily lives when this crackpot started shooting at them. If they owned guns, it's doubtful they would have been carrying them or had time to respond.
It's just a horrible incident.
This is a common fallacy. I've addressed the fact that most spree-killings usually happen in "gun-free zones" above, but let me address this bolded sentence. People who have concealed-carry permits vary greatly in their habits of carrying; there are those like me who carry all the time, everywhere it is lawful for me to do so; many are more irregular in their carrying habits; some only carry if they feel they have an "elevated risk" situation.
Whether someone can deploy a firearm in time to stop a spree-killer will be dependent on many things: their own mental preparedness and awareness, in particular, and the circumstances of the event as well. As I've said elsewhere, I teach defensive handgunning to citizens and I heavily emphasize awareness, mental readiness and decision-making as being vitally important.
An example would be the massacre in Luby's Cafe in Texas, one of the earlier examples of public spree-killings in the US...roughly two decades ago now I think. A woman who survived the incident wrote a book on the subject. At the time Texas did not have a concealed-carry permit system that was accessible to regular citizens. The woman in question had a gun, but it was in her car. She told of how she and her companions hid behind a table, and how a considerable amount of time went by as the killer casually strolled around, shooting people in the head or chest at close range. She noted that if she had had a firearm
on her person, she could easily have had time to draw it and opportunity to shoot him from cover while he was otherwise distracted, perhaps cutting the death-toll dramatically. She also noted that she WOULD have had a gun on her person, had it been lawful in Texas at that time.
Incidents like Luby's were part of why 41 states have enacted easy-to-get concealed carry permits. To date, armed citizens have proven to be remarkably responsible and law-abiding.
The whole subject is much more complex than any simple comparison of statistics or listing of incidents. The devil is in the details, as they say.
At any rate, sympathies to our British posters for this tragedy they have suffered.
