Juliana Kichkin
In the gun control debate the greatest loss we stand to lose is the loss of rationality
Provocative images recently surfaced online of Democrats staging a sit-in on the floor of the U.S house in a move they have called, “unprecedented.”
This comes in the wake of the greatest mass shooting the U.S has ever witnessed with gun control bills failing to pass the Senate on Monday evening.
In an age where social media and politics increasingly mix, the Democrats used social media platforms to rally support and encourage a wider conversation.
Using various hashtags like #NoBillNoBreak, #goodtrouble and #holdthefloor and streaming the live sit-in available to watch online, gone are the days where politics are an impersonal matter.
Last week, thousands of tweets used #Enough to support the Senate filibuster, showing that the political process and change is increasingly an embodied process, or in this case a matter of a tweet.
But does social media equate an open political conversation or does it drive a political climate characterised by fear that the online universe cannot contain?
The New Yorker declared in June, “More American civilians have died by gunfire in the past decade than all the Americans who were killed in combat in the Second World War.”
Fear means high revenue for the gun business. The New Yorker reported, “in recent years, in response to three kinds of events – mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and talk of additional gun control – gun sales have broken records.”
When President Obama announced measures to tighten control over access to guns in January, by the end of that day, the share price of Smith & Wesson, the largest U.S. gunmaker, had spiked to $25.86, the highest its ever been. After the attack in Orlando, shares of Smith & Wesson climbed 9.8 per cent overnight.
Former N.R.A lobbyist, Feldman reflects, “It is fear, but it’s not a fear that the gun industry is promoting. It doesn’t have to.”
The tragedy on June 12, where 49 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando is steeped in an irreconcilable irony. It was the largest mass shooting in American history and the hundred-and-thirtieth mass shooting so far this year.
In a culture dominated by a knee-jerk arms race to self-defense it is not that the physical control of guns that accounts for the greatest loss, but the lapse of rationality.
“It’s not about the government coming after you. It’s about terrorists taking out the electrical grid.”
