Mass shooters are terrorists

Earlier in the week we were obliged to contemplate whether the sport of curling — an oxymoron in and of itself — is or indeed should be drug free. Personally, I can’t bear the thought of curling without drugs and I’m just a casual, barely interested observer. Anything to speed it up a bit wouldn’t go astray.

Then, during a Fairfax photo op at his rent-free residence, our brows furrowed further examining photographs of Barnaby Joyce doing the washing up, which consisted of a thorough scrubbing of two coffee mugs and one wineglass while a shiny new dishwasher stood directly at his knees.

But by far the silliest idea of the week was the notion of arming schoolteachers to prevent the all-too-common shooting sprees and mass murders in US schools.

The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, this week was the 20th shooting event on school campuses in the US this year and we haven’t even hit the northern hemisphere autumn, or fall as the North Americans prefer to call it. Fourteen students aged between 14 and 18 were shot dead. Three adult school staff, including two with responsibility for security at the school, were also murdered.

Aaron Feis, 37, an assistant football coach at the school died from gunshot wounds after putting his body in the path between shooter and students. Another victim, Christopher Hixon, 49, an athletic director and wrestling coach, was head of the school’s security detail. Hixon was a US Navy veteran.

Arm these men and spree shooters will either be deterred from committing mass murder at schools or stopped dead in their tracks if they persist, the argument goes. It’s not a new idea. The “one good man with a gun can stop a bad man with a gun” idea is a common theory postulated by the National Rifle Association, not to mention a staple plot line for Hollywood westerns and crime dramas. The more guns, not less, will make things safer in the US somehow.

When an assailant enters a school armed with semi-automatic weapons and the intent to use them, that school immediately becomes a combat zone. A school is not supposed to be an arena for armed combat. Teachers are not trained to deal with combat situations nor should they be.

Virtually everyone who knew the shooter knew he was a risk. The FBI has acknowledged and apologised for its failures. The bureau was in receipt of a report on the dangers the shooter posed to the community in general but for reasons that have not been adequately explained, it failed to act.

While the students now protesting around the country are doing so on the perfectly reasonable grounds they would prefer not to be violently murdered while attending geography class, I’m afraid to say their simple demands of making schools safe places for children will come to nought.

The time for gun control in the US was 20 years ago when there was some possibility of getting through the myriad conflicting interests in state and federal legislatures.

Another opportunity went begging in 2012 after a mentally deranged 20-year-old used a Bushmaster M-16-style semi-automatic rifle and a Glock 10mm handgun to kill 20 six-and seven-year-old kids at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Six teachers also died in the hail of bullets. The 27th victim, the assailant’s mother, had been shot dead at home hours before the bloody spree.

If the violent deaths of little kids, barely detached from their mothers, their last act looking up from their finger painting or cowering behind a tiny desk only to see a slathering mass-murderer at the classroom door was not enough for legislators to act, then what, precisely, would be?

Blaming presidents past and present is a rather insipid business but already Donald Trump is wearing more flack than Barack Obama ever did. It is possible Obama made a better show of empathy than The Donald does but the facts are that spree shootings kept happening at alarming regularity throughout the Obama presidency and beyond.

Equally true is that presidents have little or no control over who can and does own a gun in the US. A dysfunctional congress will not act and even if it did, state legislatures across America would turn their backs.

By way of example, in the wake of the shootings at Parkland this week, the Florida state legislature in Tallahassee declined to even return to the debate over who could or should carry semi-automatic weapons.

Years ago, while driving through Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, I noticed a chain of stores known as Pawn ‘n’ Guns. They came up on the highway every 50 miles or so. Intrigued, I went into one and asked a few questions. The concept stores allowed consumers to pawn or swap their valuable possessions for guns.

“So, technically, I could trade in my wedding ring for anything on the bottom two lines?” I asked surveying the burgeoning arsenal of pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns behind the counter.

“You can’t because you’re not from around here but anyone with a photo ID who is a Florida resident can.”

Surely, I was not the first person to consider the possibility of escalated domestic violence scenarios alone.

“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”

“Hell, no. There’s a seven-day waiting list on the pump action shotguns and the rifles.”

“But the handguns?”

“Cash and carry.”

It’s not necessarily the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms nor the powerful lobbyists from the NRA driving the US into legislative paralysis. The United States of America has a gun culture like nowhere else in the world.

In Australia we smugly point to our own circumstances and the changes made to gun ownership in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre. Given the number of gun owners and the number of guns lawfully possessed in the US, a gun buyback scheme would cost trillions. It is simply not feasible there.

There are other forces at work. I would argue pound for pound Australia does not have the sheer number of dangerously unhinged psychopaths as exist in the US, whether driven by religious fundamentalism, urged along by some creepy ultra-nationalist militia whose very existence is also protected by the Second Amendment or an apolitical intent to commit mass murder on an unfathomable scale.

Let’s call these bloody events for what they are. Terrorism. The shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School stands charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Any self-respecting prosecutor could mount the case that he engaged in terrorism no matter what political motives he may or may not have held.

A redefinition of spree shooters, defining their actions or intentions as terrorism, would necessarily bring the significant law enforcement resources of the Department of Homeland Security and hopefully prod the FBI out of its slumber to detain these people before they commit their dreadful deeds.

Until then what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will happen again and again in the US. Arming teachers will only make American schools more dangerous than they are today.

This column was first published in The Australian on 23 February 2018