The Normalisation of Gun Violence in America
‘If someone breaks in my house, they’re getting shot’. On the 19th of September, Kamala Harris made this strong comment on the Oprah Winfrey show, in the context of her gun ownership.
Said between laughter and followed by jokes that such a remark would be dealt with by her aides later, Harris vocalised the culture of gun violence in the United States succinctly—drawing the line that American gun reform would never cross.
This comment followed a series of campaign speech lines and statements by Harris and her running mate Tim Walz about their personal gun ownership. Both have repeatedly affirmed they are ‘not trying to take everyone’s guns away’ as the election rapidly approaches.
This campaign tagline is continuously spoken even as mass shootings occur during the campaign cycle, with Harris and Walz even acknowledging the families and victims of these tragedies before their rallying speeches (and even in the audience of Winfrey’s show, moments after this comment). The absolute moderate stance that the Democratic Party refuses to budge from is emphasised repeatedly: gun violence is here to stay. We just need to control where it happens a little better.
In 2024 alone, there have been 385 mass shootings (classified as four or more people being killed or injured *) in the United States. In 2021, 20,985 homicides committed in the US were gun-related, and more than 50 people are killed each day by firearms.* Each day in the US, twelve children die from gun violence.
The sheer numbers alone are startling. But to anyone from the US, those victims have become numbers and their lives, statistics. The horror of gun violence has become an everyday acceptance to many Americans.
At a rally in North Carolina recently, Harris remarked, ‘We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red-flag laws’.
As necessary as a ban on assault weapons may be, it in no way creates an America in which all can ‘live safe from gun violence’—44 per cent of guns owned in the United are handguns, and many other firearms owned by Americans would not be classified as assault weapons.
The Democratic Party’s nominee’s stance on the pertinent reforms to improve gun violence demonstrates the fundamental refusal of either party or any major political figures to recognise that culture is a massive factor underpinning the vast majority of gun violence in the US.
Harris’s comment at its core states that Americans have a right to harm, to kill, another person using a firearm. The issue of gun violence is no longer about gun ownership under the Second Amendment to the Constitution, notably written in the vastly different context of 1791. The license to own a gun has become understood as a license to use a gun.
As such many would reason that homeowners have a right to defend themselves from a home invader, an attitude reflected in related legislation. ‘Castle doctrine’, allowing one to injure or kill an intruder in your home if you felt your life was under threat, and the so-called ‘stand your ground’ laws, which extend the sphere of defence to public spaces and are increasingly prevalent across the US.
The reality is that gun violence is not colour-blind. All Americans are fall victim to the ubiquity of gun violence, however, Black people and minorities suffer disproportionately. As we accept the gun violence we see around us, we so accept the continued violence inflicted upon marginalized and structurally discriminated groups. This increasing acceptance of the ‘right to harm’ statistically plays out as the right of white people to harm people of colour with the immunity of ‘self defence’.
In ‘stand your ground’ states, a study by the Urban Institute found that 44.71 per cent of firearm homicides committed by white people towards Black people are ruled as justified, in comparison to the 11.10 per cent of homicides of white people committed by Black people.
Consistently, a homicide is six times more likely to be ruled justifiable if committed by a white person, as seen in the case of Trayvon Martin’s murder, a Black teenager shot dead by George Zimmerman, an older white man who claimed self-defence in his Florida trial. These statistics only scratch the surface of gun violence towards Black and minority ethnic communities, fully excluding the festering issue of gun violence by police against these communities, revealing how far normalised such violence and death has become.
Kamala Harris’s statement potentially garnered wide agreement with an American audience. In an election cycle as contentious as this, the values of not only each party, but also underpinning American society, are clarified through what is emphasised on the campaign trail. It can be far too easy to accept what is as commonplace as gun violence for Americans. At this critical juncture in US politics, Americans can take pause for a moment and truly consider how much harm to our neighbours we wish to be permittable, how the rights we hold are not equal for all, and who suffers in return.
*Data as of 5 September 2024.
Image courtesy of AP via Free Malaysia Today, ©2024. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
