This case examine is an excerpt from McGlinchey, Stephen. 2022. Foundations of Worldwide Relations (London: Bloomsbury).
On the morning of December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mom Nancy, a instructor, earlier than grabbing an assault rifle, two handguns and a shotgun and driving to Sandy Hook Elementary Faculty in Newtown Connecticut. Lanza shot into the college, killing 20 youngsters and 6 adults, earlier than turning the gun on himself. This wasn’t the primary mass taking pictures in the US, however the victims are among the many youngest to this point. In whole, fewer than 4,000 individuals have been killed in all recorded terrorist incidents in the US. By comparability, there are tens of hundreds of deaths every from shootings yr, even together with youngsters, as the instance above reveals. A statistic like this begs the query why terrorism is without doubt one of the most contentious safety points in the US, typically dominating political debates, but killing far fewer individuals than gun violence. As we grapple with this query, we would wonder if America’s gun legal guidelines and controls needs to be thought of a safety downside, since weapons kill extra individuals than terrorists.
Reasonably than dwell on the home aspect of this challenge, one thing that falls throughout the scope of the American authorized and political methods, we will look to Worldwide Relations for solutions and evaluation. For instance, by making use of the Duty to Shield, the US has demonstrably did not take accountability for widespread struggling and lack of life (Pillar 1) and failed to guard its residents (Pillar 3). Because of this, if we learn the Duty to Shield actually and attempt to apply it evenly, the worldwide group could also be able to intervene in the US.
Nevertheless unlikely it’s that another state would convey such a problem to the United Nations, the adoption of a human safety framework does counsel that their endemic gun violence is a safety downside. To unravel this downside, gun violence in the US happens inside a number of domains of human safety. In line with definitions of human safety, weapons are maybe most clearly a menace to non-public security, with an emphasis on bodily threats. We might argue that gun violence is a priority for kids based mostly on their vulnerability as a result of so many incidents happen in faculties. Even exterior of colleges, girls in home violence conditions usually tend to be killed by a firearm than by another methodology, and gun possession will increase the chance of murder on this scenario. In lots of circumstances, the lads who obtained these weapons did so legally, elevating questions on whether or not current U.S. regulation is ample to make sure human safety.
Human security additionally features a provision for the protection of the group. Past the college context, threats to the group additionally embody the disproportionate hurt inflicted on Black individuals by police shootings. For instance, in 2014, a 12-year-old black boy named Tamir Rice was killed by police in a playground. On the time, Rice was holding a toy gun; he was shot by police as quickly as they exited their automobile, with out taking any time to acquire additional data. Ohio, the state wherein Rice was killed, is an open-carry state that enables residents to show weapons in public.
From 2013 onwards, the US has seen widespread protests and demonstrations beneath the banner of Black Lives Matter, which goals to boost consciousness of the extent of police killings of black residents – as first explored in Chapter Three. Right here the state is seen to be answerable for the hurt completed to its individuals because of the acceptability of weapons as a regulation enforcement instrument and the way in which this escalates all police encounters. This has a disproportionate impression on some communities, who typically fall beneath unequal suspicion or profiling and subsequently should take care of the police extra typically. When including to this the undercurrents of racism which can be typically seen within the police and judicial system in the US, the precarious nature of life for some teams inside American society actually reaches an space outlined by debates about human safety.
The examples above assist us take into consideration why some points have traditionally been seen as safety issues, whereas others haven’t. Why, for instance, in the US is the border crossing of tanks typically seen as an even bigger downside than the widespread lack of life attributable to firearms, particularly amongst schoolchildren and black residents? Following one more college taking pictures in 2018, Wayne Lapierre, head of the highly effective foyer group the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation (NRA), addressed requires gun regulation, saying:
they care extra about management, and extra of it. Their purpose is to abolish the Second Modification and our gun freedoms to allow them to eradicate all particular person freedoms… They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Modification, they hate particular person freedom.
Lapierre just isn’t the primary to view efforts to limit gun gross sales as an assault on freedom, and he most likely will not be the final. Constructivists assist clarify this, arguing that interpretation is what actually issues once we take into consideration security as a result of it determines what we determine to do in regards to the issues that come up. Two constructivist ideas are helpful right here: articulation and interpellation (Weldes 1996). Articulation is the method of connecting concepts about completely different matters (reminiscent of “the NRA” or “Individuals”), objects, and concepts. On this case, the ideas of freedom and gun possession are linked. Interpellation is the way in which wherein persons are ‘known as’ to a sure id. Right here that is achieved via Lapierre’s use of the time period ‘our’, which assumes that there’s a sort of ‘us’. Insights like these assist open the theoretical area for a extra nuanced debate on this matter.
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