We are constantly learning about yet another mass shooting in the US. However, these tragic events have recently been occurring with such rapidity it can be difficult to keep track. As a result, Aussies have largely stopped paying much attention.
But I am not implying this is callous – or even unusual. Precisely the reverse. It is an entirely understandable reaction. We are all constantly watching ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ waving guns about on our tele, so it is disturbingly easy to push all of these ‘stories’ about mass shootings and the proliferation of guns into this same frame of reference. I do it all the time.
I read an awful lot of American newspapers. Yet even so, I normally just ‘blip’ over the many local ‘crime’ stories about gun crime and mass shootings as they are simply too disheartening. But sometimes, when the debate regarding the regulation of firearms bleeds into the political press and election coverage, it becomes a little difficult to ignore the topic. Hence this article.
But I am not writing about gun crime in the US per se. The ultimate aim of this short muse is to consider how discussion of this matter – as well as many others – has now drifted into the realm of the absurd, and why and how this is dangerous. But one thing at a time.
This is initially a story about the new emergency order that the Democratic Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, recently issued. An emergency health-order that suspends the right to carry firearms in public, in and around Albuquerque, which is the state’s largest city.
The Governor explained that she had issued the order in response to a recent spate of shootings, including a suspected road rage incident outside a minor league baseball stadium that killed an 11-year-old girl standing on the sidewalk and critically wounded another in a vehicle; a 5-year-old girl fatally shot as she slept in a motor home; and the murder of a13-year-old girl, by a14-year-old boy, with his father’s gun.
Before considering the response to the issuance of this order, it is helpful to closely examine the claims being made by the Governor. Certainly, these tragic murders are horrific. But does the current situation warrant such an intervention? I went looking for a bit of context.
Albuquerque is not a large city, especially by American standards. With a population of about six hundred thousand it is comparable in size to Newcastle (if you add the Maitland district). Also, while Albuquerque is a more dangerous place to live than is commonplace in the USA, the same is also true for Newcastle. Over the last two years, Newcastle has generated a murder rate that is five times the average for the rest of NSW. In total, there were five murders in the Newcastle district in 2021, while in the preceding year there were four.
These statistics have generated concern but nevertheless, Australians are not generally too worried about getting shot. Even those living in Newcastle. And when the stats are interrogated, this seems a perfectly rational response. The total number of murders in Australia has been in the range of 300 to 350 per year (for the whole country) for the last two decades, with guns being involved in only about 21% of these homicide incidents.
Then there is the situation in the similarly sized city of Albuquerque. In recent years there has been a recent surge in homicides all across the USA. While arrests for most forms of criminal activity have either been static or falling, instances of murder by firearm have become almost commonplace most towns and cities across the USA. Albuquerque is emblematic of this trend.
Just like the rest of the country, Albuquerque has also been experiencing a murder by firearm ‘surge’. So, as the Wall Street Journal observes:
Despite the largest single-year increase in homicides on record, the overall violent crime rate in [in Albuquerque, in] 2020 remains relatively low by historical standards.
In fact, Albuquerque police records indicate that in 2023 alone, there have already been 73 homicide cases opened, involving 77 victims. Moreover, 83% of these murders involved the use of a firearm. This indicates a murder by firearm rate that is at least fifteen times that of Newcastle.
Consequently, it is evident that the USA is, oddly, both the most rigorously policed country on the earth, as well as being very near the head of the pack in the both the rate of gun ownership and death by gunshot. Yet while any other relatively unbiased observer would thus likely conclude that there is – more than likely – at least some connection between these factors, that does not seem to be the case in much of the commentary in the US. The New Mexico Governor certainly makes such a connection. Additionally, I would suggest that any reasonable observer would likely deem her response as being modest.
The order issued by the New Mexico Governor is only for thirty days, and only applies to carrying weapons in public in Alburquerque. Nothing else. Yet the instant response was dozens of highly armed citizen protestors, marching into the Civic Plaza in the centre of the city, carrying high powered rifles. All before the New Mexico Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, publicly declared that he would not uphold the governor’s public health order, or defend it in court, thus immediately sparking a political war within the local Democratic administration.
The order instantly provoked both partisan and interparty criticism. Some of it ludicrously passionate. Some of it just ludicrous. Mostly it has become a story about the traducing of constitutionally enshrined rights by an overzealous public officer. One picture (published by the Associated Press) features April Polichette, at a ‘Second Amendment Protest’ meeting in Albuquerque, holding a sign that asserts boldly that: ‘The right to bear arms is what keeps us all safe.’
Which brings me to the crux of this missive. Which is that it is evident that much of the media coverage in the US, of a great many topics, is passionately unhinged. I suggest that we have to guard against a similar situation developing in Australia.
For example, the carrying of firearms in public is a constitutionally protected ‘right’ that was invented by right wing activists during the nineteen sixties. All of the jurisprudence up to this date indicates that the second amendment is (as the plain text of the amendment indicates) all about ensuring that the various US states could have their own little armies if they wanted them. Not a great idea, but certainly not as stupid as the idea of allowing every individual citizen to carry around an assault rifle in public. Thus, when I comment that this ‘right’ to carry arms was invented in the modern age, I am simply stating a fact. It does not exist before nineteen sixty. The second amendment does not say that everyone should have the right to carry a gun. The writers of the amendment did not intend for the second amendment to mean that everyone could carry a gun. Nor did those who voted for the amendment ever think that this might be the case.
But more significantly, just because the Supreme Court decided in District of Columbia v. Heller, to entirely renovate the interpretation of this amendment, does not thereby mean that the whole of American history and jurisprudence has also been altered. Nor does it mean that reality has been suddenly re-ordered in accord with right wing ideology.
Yet all of the responses to the order by the New Mexico Governor, from both the right and the left of the political spectrum in the US, has nevertheless been focused on the removal of these ‘rights. The whole basis of the discussion thus implicitly cedes to the right wing the ability to rewrite the past and be shielded from scrutiny. Consequently, I suggest that any discussion of gun control in the US should always commence with a simple acknowledgment that these ‘rights’ are manufactured, for political purposes. That the Federalist Society first stacked the US Supreme Court with partisan political figures and these individuals changed the interpretation of the second amendment to suit their personal political predilections. Yet even though all of this is undoubtedly the case, going by the coverage that is usually provided this issue in the US, the right wing have largely succeeded in rewriting history. Orwell would be astounded at their audacity, yet it seems to work.
In all the US press the proposition that the second amendment protects the right to own and carry a gun – any sort of gun – in public, is now simply assumed. Even though, throughout the ‘wild west’, virtually every town had a law that strictly prohibited the carrying of arms in public. So, all that the Governor of New Mexico is proposing is a return to the status quo circa 1880. A return to the good old days where a similar, quite commonsensical measure was ruthlessly enforced, for the good of everyone in town. (Those paying attention will likely understand that just such a town ordinance is at the centre of the story in the Shootout at the OK Corral.)
Yet the wholesale rewriting of American history and jurisprudence is rarely even mentioned in the mainstream media in the US. Or the takeover of the Supreme Court by a partisan group of religiously inspired nutters. Which brings me to the moral of this essay, which is that we need to reign in the more egregious, ideologically inspired claptrap that often passes for commentary in our media, in Australia; before it is too late to even engage in such a discussion.
The toxic impact of a purely partisan ‘mainstream’ media environment is made manifest in America. It should stand as a warning. The American press is now cut into two separate parts and a similar chasm is developing in our country. It will result in a situation here, just like in the US, where all of the press is chock-full of partisan ideologues, lecturing their partisan audience, on exactly why they should be outraged and regarding exactly how outraged they should be (ie, always very very outraged).
We are already seeing a similar disconnect between reality and the media narrative in some parts of the media in Australia, especially regarding topics such as the upcoming Voice referendum. For example, Marcia Langton labelling much of the recent coverage of the Voice debate in Australia as being racist is nothing more than stating the bleeding obvious (see The Great Australian Gaslighting). Yet instantly, the entire media pack in our country have descended on poor Marcia. Just for describing reality.
I do not want to pretend that the mass media has been better in the past. But I am asserting that we can, and should, aspire to a more nuanced and fact-based media narrative. More importantly, I suggest that we collectively need to revisit the idea that press agencies in our country are expected to be politically aligned. It seems to counter to the public interest that the many different press agencies in the west have decided to not only cover politics but also become politically active.
That these aspirations seem to be naive simply serves to illustrate how low our common expectations have sunk. But unless we begin to look at the coverage of news and current events as being a core and important issue, and take steps to stop our current slide into partisan nonsense, then our Australian media environment may very soon become as hopelessly gridlocked and fractured as in the US.
This is why the current discussions regarding curbing the instances of misinformation and disinformation in our media are both necessary and should be applauded by all Aussies, regardless of their political bent. But these regulatory measures can only be viewed as a starting point. There is a need to move to decentralise our media and unwind the massive monopolies that currently exist. The good health of our democracy depends on cultivating a healthy press environment.
The stakes are high. Big Brother is not just a scary tale. Nineteen-eighty-four is not in our rear-view mirror. Just as in America, very soon parts of our media may also become so utterly detached from reality, that half our population will begin agitating for renovations to our law, in accord with a brand new and improved history of Australia; fashioned just for us out of whole cloth, by News Corp, the Evangelical Church, and the Industrial Arms complex of the United States of Australia.
Have a nice day.
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