Tucson's message to Britain
When I lived in the United States in the mid 1980s, I remember the shock of discovering that the murder rate in Washington DC (population then around 1.2 million) was 1,100 per year. At the time the murder rate in Britain (population then 58 million) was 680 per year. In those days there was talk radio, there was strong rhetoric and there was the legal gun. And of course, there was insanity.
All those ingredients seem to have been present in the fatal mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona at the weekend. Jared Lee Loughner, bought his semi-automatic gun and a pistol legally at a gun store on 30th November 2010.
A note found indicates that Loughner made plans to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The local Sheriff says that Loughner was mentally unstable. His loner life seems to suggest something of that.
Sarah Palin has been blamed for identifying Ms Giffords as a target. Others have put her face in the cross hairs of a gun with the slogan “don’t retreat, reload”.
Ms Palin is part of the Tea Party movement. Three of the key public speakers on the Tea Party campaign team are major presenters, or in Ms Palin’s case, commentators, on the Fox News Channel – the most widely watched TV news in America. Ofcom and BBC regulators insist on balance.
No one seriously believes that Palin, Fox, or the pro-gun lobby in America shot and killed all those people in Arizona. But many in America see the violence of rhetoric, the availability of guns, and the increasingly personal attacks transmitted in the American media upon politicians as unhealthy.
That’s why so many people in Britain support the continued tough regulation of guns, and why so many broadcasters support a regulatory system which some in America might regard as close to censorship. We upset media ownership and our regulatory system at our peril. What America and Berlusconi’s Italy tell us is that when owners accumulate power they can affect regulation. It has happened in both those countries, we must be vigilant in insuring it does not happen here.
When America pauses for one minute to remember Tucson’s dead today, she will also pray for the survival of Gabrielle Giffords. We should too, for if she lives, she will become a great rallying point for us all as we bid to find balance and decency in our public lives.