US fails to learn lessons

In his first reaction to the Las Vegas shooting that claimed 58 innocent lives the other day, President Donald Trump said the perpetrator of the massacre was a demented man, adding that, "we are dealing with a very, very sick individual.” He also said there would be some discussion about firearms legislation later.

The sooner the Americans do it, the better for the country it would be. The authorities have not yet identified the motive of the killer as to whether he was radicalised, which is not the exact question here that the Americans should be asking themselves now. The gun culture that dominates the society and the refusal of the National Rifle Association, an organisation with vast resources and a wide base in the society, to see reason is at the root of
this tragedy.

Even if the authorities go ahead and find out that Stephan Paddock was an ultra, it still does not absolve the NRA of its role in the tragedy. The 'demon' as Trump described had dozens of high calibre weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The problem with NRA is that it is a highly politicised organisation. Founded in 1871, shortly after the Civil War, its political activity became more active with the assassination of Jack Kennedy. It refused to abide by the Gun Control Act claiming it caused a great deal more trouble for the law-abiding public.

Today it's money that controls the government as the NRA grades candidates who run for local and state offices on how they stand on the right to keep and bear arms and follow them through their jobs as city councillors, mayors or Governors and when they run for Congress, spending a great amount of money getting voters out.

The US keeps fomenting trouble throughout the world for sustaining its business interests forgetting that it is breeding terror in its own courtyard in the name of public safety. The US statecraft lacks in morality and hence it trusts only in the convergence of its military and business interests but not those of societal interests and governance.

No living man fails to pursue, more or less effectively, the goals he is able to construct, nor does any living creature fail to flee destruction, or at least, whatever it can recognise as destruction. And the process of flight and pursuit seems, in most cases, to be rationalised by the concept of personal guilt and personal responsibility for one's acts. Sadly, this does not happen in the case of America.

It is time the American society bares the mask of the NRA and also of all those senators and representatives in the Congress sent by it to reveal the demon beneath. Trump presented himself, in the elections, as a champion and promised evil will be bloodily suppressed and all anxieties of Americans would be melted in the heat of his policies. America talks of terror havens while breeding one in its own backyard! Pity the society.