Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference, on Thursday morning a week after the Parkland
Florida school shooting, the National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne
Lapierre stated.
And there is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms,
the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive.
Its not bestowed by man, but granted by God, to all Americans as our American birthright.
Gun rights are sacred is the underlying message he gives.
The NRA and the American far right believe that God and individual rights are inseparable
from the right to bear arms and thus oppose almost any kind of gun control, even on military
grade automatic weapons.
Now joining us to discuss the politics swirling around the Florida tragedy is Gerald Horne.
Thanks for joining us, Gerald.
Thank you.
So, Gerald Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moore Chair of History and African American
Studies at the University of Houston.
His latest book is The Counter-Revolution Of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins
of the United States of America.
So Gerald, how did gun rights become such a critical part of the American far right's
religious faith?
Well, it begins with European settlement in the 1600s.
Recall that a number of the initial European settlers hailed from what is now Great Britain,
and they were religious dissenters, as you well know.
What you may not know is that many of these dissenters were actually theocrats.
They came to what is now the United States with firmly-held, even rigid religious beliefs
that basically ruled out the kind of religious faiths that, say, the indigenous population
wanted to practice.
And then when there was the revolt against British rule in 1776, what happens is there
is installed a so-called Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is
now the fountain head for this now religious devotion to gun rights.
And you can't understand the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution without
understanding that the settlers wanted to continue moving westward, seizing the land
of the Native Americans and stocking that land with enslaved Africans to endure free
labor.
And that involved, as they saw it, arming the European civilian population.
Since that time, particularly in recent years, the US Supreme Court has ruled that there
is an individual right to gun ownership even though the much debated Second Amendment speaks
in terms of a well regulated militia.
And on top of that, you have a National Rifle Association, a gun lobby, which is highly
funded and, in fact, is only part of a well-funded firearms industry that includes private enterprise,
which spends heavily in buying the affections and votes of elected officials, such as Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida.
And if you mix all of those factors together, you begin to understand why we have this tragedy
recently in South Florida and why it is likely, if not probable that such tragedies will continue
to persist.
Now, the offensive of the NRA calling people calling for gun control "opportunists" and
such, even in the face of such an alarming moment, and one must say a somewhat inspiring
moment the way the youth of that school have risen up and demanding action, not just gun
control, but really it's a cry of young people against the decay, I think, of the whole society
and the extent of how violent and how much people, this NRA woman at the CNN Town Hall
calls this boy that did the shooting a "monster."
I don't believe that this insane monster should have ever been able to obtain a firearm.
But this is essentially calling someone who's mentally ill a monster, then why are there
so many monsters running around the United States?
They don't want to answer that question.
But this idea that this right to defend yourself with a gun is so linked to the issue of your
belief in God.
Laura Ingraham has this phrase about what the belief system is, "God, guns and country."
Talk a little bit more of the sort of ideological, sociological roots of this kind of tying these
things all together, especially guns connected with God.
Well, first of all, I think it is important to connect this mania about gun rights to
the origins of settler colonialism in North America.
However, I don't think its complete explanation otherwise we would have difficulty in understanding
what happened in Australia in 1996, which had had occasional bouts of such gun shootings
in public places.
And then there was a concerted attempt in Australia, which has a history similar to
that of the United States, insofar as it too is a settler colonial country.
But since the Australian government moved to try to limit the proliferations of assault
weapons, youve had a virtual curtailment of that kind of mass shooting that was just witnessed
in Florida.
So, I think we need other explanations, and amongst those explanations is the fact that
Australia has many fewer European settlers than the United States.
The total population of Australia is about 25 million.
The total population of the United States is about 330 million.
And so, therein you begin to see why we have such a problem with this question of gun proliferation
when you combine the origins and history of this country with a thriving gun industry
and an energetic gun lobby in the form of the NRA, which by the way, has been somewhat
inconsistent in its promulgation of gun rights.
Recall that at the heyday and the time of the Black Panther Party, the NRA was not necessarily
opposed to limitations on certain kinds of weapons because they were opposed to the putting
of weapons in the hands of black people.
But now, that the Black Panther Party has virtually disappeared, they have returned
to the original gospel of arming Euro-Americans because as they see it, this is the final
frontier in case a government is installed that happens to go against what this ultra
right wing demands.
And I wonder if part of this is not, when you talk about the gun lobby, essentially
a kind of bill of goods people have been sold.
I mean, I remember it used to be a violation of people's rights to even suggest that smoking
causes cancer.
It was a violation of people's even constitutional rights, it was suggested at the time, that
people would be forced to wear seat belts in cars.
I mean, you have enormous financial interest behind a lot of the stuff that dresses itself
up as rights and about belief in God and country and so on.
You have it now with climate change and the amount of fossil fuel money that's paying
for an ideology.
In fact, denial of climate change is very closely linked in this whole belief system
to big government conspiracy, thus I need my guns because the government may come and
get me.
God is an underlying idea here.
But all as a kind of front for some real corporate economic interest.
Clearly.
And as your comment suggested, you have to understand the kind of psychotic fear that
is quite prevalent in the United States of America.
And despite the fact that the president prior to Donald J. Trump fundamentally ruled as
a centrist and in many ways carried out a right wing agenda when it comes, for example,
to the bombing of Libya in 2011, that has not prevented the Trump base, 63-million strong,
from fearing that their country was slipping through their fingers when you had the election
of Barack Obama.
And that helped to reinforce this notion of having an armed citizenry in case another
kind of president takes office that they are opposed to.
Now, I know that this may sound a bit loony, but don't blame me, blame those who are promulgating
and espousing these loony ideas.
I mean, it's completely loony and ridiculous to think with the state of modern weaponry
that citizens even with automatic weapons are going to stand up to the US Army or the
militarized police forces across the country.
That just ain't the way resistance to tyranny is going to happen.
If it gets to that kind of level of shoot out, the difference in fire power is ridiculous.
So, the idea that these guns are to reject tyranny is just that.
It's a selling of an idea, a notion where the real agenda, which is I think part of
this fueling this agenda, in this case selling guns and the guns industry and tying it to
the other economic things like fossil fuel and other such things.
But it's also this underlying thing of the fear of immigrants and create the fear that
maybe some crazy white kid shot some white young people and yes, that's horrible, but
you could turn schools into fortresses because our need to defend ourselves against brown
and black people that are going to come and take our stuff, that is more important than
anything that might happen to kids in schools.
Well, to go back to the vignette about the Black Panther Party, perhaps if the shooter
in Parkland in Florida had shouted in Arabic, "God is great," we may have had a different
debate ensuing with regard to gun control.
But since he apparently was not a Muslim and apparently and evidently was not of Arab heritage,
we are then stuck with the debate that we have today.
At the same time, of course, it's heartening to see the protests of young people.
This distinguishes the South Florida event from the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando,
Florida and from the Las Vegas shooting some months ago or from the Texas church shooting
some months ago.
That is to say now you have these energized teenagers who are willing to go to Tallahassee,
willing to go to Washington.
It's helping to ignite national similar kinds of demonstrations on the part of young people.
And let us hope that this is the beginning of a national mass movement that can push
back successfully against the National Rifle Association and its minions on Capitol Hill.
I mean, the NRA may have overplayed its hand here, because as we know, the NRA isn't just
about gun control.
They're very active in a whole range of right wing issues, their defense of Trump just on
a straight political level, the woman that was on the NRA Town Hall has been doing these
videos, which the NRA's promoting on YouTube and other places, which is just a straight
defense of the Trump presidency and denouncing people that are opposing Trump.
We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president and the people who voted for
him and the free system that allowed it to happen in American history.
From the highest levels of government to their media, universities, and billionaires, their
hateful defiance of his legitimacy is an insult to each of us.
But when young people rise up on this gun issue, they may also rise up on some of the
other issues the NRA cares about.
And given how closely associated Trump is with the NRA, this may become somewhat of
an upsurge against the far right.
A lot of people that before this never even thought of participating in such a thing.
Well, we can only hope so.
Certainly, the ideas coming out of the White House are quite frankly ridiculous.
For example, Mr. Trump now is talking about arming teachers.
And it would be, it's call "concealed carry," where a teacher would have a concealed gun
on them.
They'd go for special training and they would be there, and you would no longer have a gun
free zone.
10 to 40% of teachers will be packing heat and be given paid bonuses if they choose to
do so.
The problem is, what kind of heat will they be packing if you start going into the weeds
on this ludicrous proposition?
If they have a handgun and they're going up against someone with an automatic assault
rifle, I don't like the odds of the teachers surviving that kind of confrontation.
And in any case, the-
Well, let me just add something to that.
It's reported today that there was an actual cop who got to the school just as the shooting
began.
The shooting's going on and this armed police officer stands outside the door and doesn't
go in to stop the shooting.
Now, he's since resigned.
I think he was about to be fired, so he's since resigned.
But there you have a trained cop with a gun, doesn't want to take on this shooter inside,
and we're to think the teachers will.
It's obviously ludicrous, and speaking as a teacher, I have to say that it makes me
a bit nervous.
As you know, I teach in the state of Texas where students are allowed, supposedly, to
be able to bring guns on campus.
And I have to say that that does not necessarily help to ignite and initiate a rather free
and open debate in the classroom.
And I'm rather fearful of what will happen if 10 to 40% of teachers in public schools,
K through 12 begin to carry weapons.
These weapons can go off without the teacher necessarily pulling the trigger, bouncing
bullets around the classroom and causing mayhem.
Of all the terrible ideas that Mr. Trump has come up with, this one certainly takes the
cake.
Well, the problem with what you're saying, Gerald, and it's a serious problem is that
it's logical and this isn't about logic.
This debate with, unfortunately, too many people is a debate about faith and this issue
of God and guns is too wrapped up in religion.
And the logical arguments about what might make society safer, I don't think bear much
weight with too many people.
At any rate, thanks very much for joining us, Gerald.
Thank you for inviting me.
And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.