Polarization in the US has hit “red”, ahead of the crucial and still highly ambivalent elections in November.
Many even wonder if the specter of a new civil war should be considered possible post-election. Especially if the electoral result is marginal.
After all, the memories are fresh from the invasion of the fanatical mob of supporters of Donald Trump in the Capitol, in 2021, after his electoral defeat at the time.
Sticking to the unproven allegations of a “stolen vote”, the Republican former and would-be next US president is threatening again that he will not accept the election result if the election is not “honest”.
In this case, Trump argued as early as last May, “we have to fight for the law of the land.” Two months later, in July, he narrowly escaped being shot by a 20-year-old gunman who attempted to kill him at a campaign rally with a semi-automatic AR-15.
A “favorite weapon” of mass murderers in the USA and a best seller in the hands of civilians, it was the same type that was used the other day by a 14-year-old student in Georgia (the Christmas present from his father) causing a new – the most – massacre in an American school.
It was only in June meanwhile that the rapidly increasing number of gun deaths and injuries prompted US Chief Medical Officer Vivek Murthy to take the unprecedented step of declaring gun violence a “public health crisis”.
That said, in the only country in the world where civilian gun ownership per capita exceeds its population, one would expect the issue of gun control to be at the top of the campaign debate, along with inflation, immigration and abortion. Is not.
In the absence of a bipartisan consensus to tighten the legal framework and due to the strong political influence of the arms industry – one of the major donors of the Republicans – the scourge of gun violence was passed over in the “small” even in the long-awaited debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
The US vice president and Democratic presidential candidate has pledged that the need for stricter controls on the sale and use of weapons will be high on her agenda.
In the hunt for votes, however, it has taken a back seat, as Harris makes the fight against inequalities and the defense of reproductive rights her campaign “flag”.
Her only mention of gun ownership in the debate came when, toward the end of the 90-minute televised showdown, Trump attempted for the umpteenth time to portray her as a “far-leftist,” telling Americans, among other things, that his opponent “wants to confiscate your guns and will never allow fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing to extract hydrocarbons).
“Tim Walsh and I are both gun owners,” Harris said, referring to her running mate. “We are not going to take anyone’s guns. So stop lying about it all the time.”
Republicans, for their part, are content to express disgust at each massacre, without touching on a “totem” issue of the hard-line Christian Right. And not only.
From ultraconservatives and far-rights to the gun lobby, the main counterargument to tightening gun control is the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
Uniquely relevant in today’s developed world, it was approved in the distant 1791, at a time when muskets and bayonets were the main weapons.
In the year 2024, according to many, it is open to a new interpretation. But it ultimately rests on the US Supreme Court, where ultra-conservatives outnumber progressives (6 to 3).
It directly concerns the interests of more than 300 American companies, which produce weapons and/or ammunition and have been doing golden business for a long time – with the political “blessings” of Washington.
Not only inside, but mainly outside the American borders.
Either through exports, or as fuelers of destructive wars, as is the case today in Ukraine and blood-soaked Gaza.
