The news of the church massacre has stunned America and shocked the world. The fact that it has happened at all flies in the face of everything America stands for and believes itself to be. An exasperated and deflated President seemed powerless to do any more than ring his hands. And no wonder. This is apparently the fourteenth time he has had to comfort America in the aftermath of a massacre of innocents at the hands of a nutcase with a gun.
America is the only developed country in the world in which the citizens are lawfully armed against their neighbours and have the legal means to purchase weapons to launch such attacks. The perpetrator of this attack was given the gun which he used, as a twenty first birthday present by his father. That gift would have been a crime in the UK. Yet every attempt to control guns is thwarted by the country’s most powerful lobby which sees the means to kill at hand in the home or pocket a constitutional right which is synonymous with freedom.
But it is now getting worse. Racism is back. This latest tragedy is the murder of black people, among them men and women of distinguished public service and unimpeachable integrity, by a white man full of colour prejudice and hate who killed not because of who his victims were but because of the colour of their skins. Few crimes can be worse nor their motivation more perverted. It comes after several incidents of police shooting unarmed black people for little if any reason, which has inflamed tensions and caused riots.
America is now presenting an ugly aspect of itself which disgusts the world and diminishes its authority. The great irony is that America is the country which sets the bar of excellence highest, champions freedom above all others and seeks to do the most good. Sadly the weaknesses of its foundations, built upon slavery determined by race when all men were said to be equal, and resolved by conflict in one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, rather than by dialogue in a country claiming to be the most complete democracy in the world, have become fissures which have not and cannot heal unless there is a national awakening that things cannot go on as they are. Only when all its people are, are said to be and are treated as truly equal and of equal value will America be truly free. And only when the citizens are disarmed by law and the constitution amended to prohibit the unauthorised ownership of guns will Americans be safe.