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THE massacre in Las Vegas last weekend is made so much worse by the nature of the attack — a massive spray of bullets into a crowd gathered 32 storeys below Stephen Paddock, or somewhere in the vicinity of 350 feet. The fact that no motive is clear or can even be speculated upon greatly intensifies the magnitude of the tragedy (which is not to suggest that ideologically driven murder can in any way be condoned).
The outrage has been such that even the National Rifle Association, which has never before budged from its advocation of Americans’ right to carry arms and pours vast funding into chosen politicians’ campaigns to ensure this, has indicated a slight shift. Last week, it said guardedly that perhaps modifiers known as ‘bump stocks’ ought not be so legally and freely available.
That gadget is crucial to the horror unleashed by Paddock. Machine guns, or fully automatic weapons that continue to fire whilst the trigger is held down until the ammunition is used up, are prohibited or outright banned in most countries (except for military use, on the battlefield). Semiautomatics are less capable of rapid fire. While reloading occurs automatically, the shooter must pull the trigger separately to fire another round. Thus, the rate at which bullets can be discharged are limited by human capacity.
Almost everyone has a story to tell about the time they were robbed.
To estimate how incredibly lethal automatics are consider this: AK-47s are semiautomatics, as are Uzi submachine guns.
Bump stocks replace a rifle’s standard stock and allow a semiautomatic to fire nearly as freely as an automatic. Of the many stats that were published in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, one figure especially encapsulated the magnitude of what occurred: as a result of bump stocks, a semiautomatic becomes capable of firing anywhere between 500 to 800 rounds a minute. And of the massive stockpile of weaponry found in the hotel room used by Paddock, 12 of the rifles had been modified with bump stocks.
This was not the only stat to stand out. The numbers for guns in citizens’ hands in many countries are periodically compiled by UNODC and the Small Arms Survey. Though the information is somewhat patchy, it is nevertheless telling. Using these sources, The Guardian compiled a World Firearms Murder and Ownership spreadsheet. The US, it seems, has the highest gun-ownership rate in the world, an average of 88 weapons per 100 people. The country coming in second, Yemen, has significantly fewer: 54.8 per 100 people. (The US, however, does not have the world’s worst firearm murder rate — that ranking belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. On this scale, the US comes in at number 28.)
Pakistan, going by the World Firearms spreadsheet, has some 11 weapons in civilian hands per 100 people. That doesn’t sound like much, but here’s the catch: the figures compiled cannot take into account all the illegal and unlicensed weapons that the country is awash with, many of them smuggled or even manufactured here, so the real figure is likely to be much higher.
Certainly, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest this; it is most visible in Karachi, where the open display of firearms is as blatant as street crimes involving guns — street crime as ho hum as citizens being stripped of their wallet and phone as they wait for a traffic light to change in the middle of the day, amidst a throng of hundreds. Almost everyone here has a story to tell about the time, or times, they were robbed. In the case of one couple, the looters took not just phones and wallets but also the box of doughnuts and a pineapple that were being taken home as a treat.
In Karachi’s case, I believe that many of the street crimes are opportunistic, a result of the sheer number of guns the streets are flooded with; young men who would rob don’t necessarily go looking for a weapon; they decide to rob because the weapon is already available, in the pocket or at home. And several policemen I have spoken to say the motive can be something as humdrum as cash for cinema tickets.
It would follow, then, that reducing the number of guns in society will bring down rates of homicide or mass shootings. The NRA has always argued that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. But Australia is a case in point: in April 1996, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a gunman opened fire on tourists, killing 35 and wounding 23. The government announced gun-control measures. Since then, there has not been any mass shooting in Australia; overall gun violence has fallen by half.
Is Pakistan, or for that matter the US, listening?
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2017
