悪いのは誰?

承前*1

Arwa Mahdawi*2 “Who are the right blaming for the Texas shooting?” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/25/right-wing-blame-uvalde-shooting-transsexuals-immigrants-parents


テクサス州ユヴァルディ市の小学校襲撃・乱射事件。米国の右翼にとって、悪いのは「銃」ではない。
では、誰(何)が悪いのか? 共和党のポール・ゴーサー(Paul Gosar)下院議員*3は、犯人は「トランスセックスで左翼な非合法滞在の外国人(transsexual leftist illegal alien)」だとツィートした(後に削除)*4。また、悪いのはウクライナだと言う者もいた。政府は学校の武装強化に使うべき金でウクライナに武器を援助したから? さらに、悪いのは殺された小学生の親だという論に行き着いている。つまり、銃撃事件の犯人に子どもが殺されたのは、セキュリティのしっかりした私立学校ではなくセキュリティの甘い公立学校に子どもを通わせた親の自己責任であるという。
政府の責任にせよ親の自己責任にせよ、セキュリティを物理的に強化したりセキュリティ意識を高めたりすることがはたして最善なのかと、Arwa Mahdawiさんは問う。


Schools should not resemble prisons. They shouldn’t have to be fitted with barriers and staffed with armed guards to keep kids safe. Parents shouldn’t have to buy their children increasingly popular bulletproof backpacks*5. Kids shouldn’t have to go through active shooter-drills the moment they get into preschool. Not just because these sorts of measures are completely dystopian but because they aren’t actually effective. The vast majority of public schools – 96% in 2015 and 2016 – now conduct some form of lockdown drill. Rather than preparing kids for a shooting, some experts warn that they are just anxiety-inducing security theater.

Staffing schools with police officers is not the answer either. Since 1998, the government has invested over $1bn to increase police presence in schools; according to one study only 1% of schools reported having police officers on-site in 1975 but by 2018, about 58% of schools reported having a police presence*6. There were already armed school district police officers at the school in Uvalde and they did not stop the shooter, who was wearing body armor. A sergeant with the Texas department of public safety told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “there were several law enforcement that engaged the suspect, but he was able to make entry into the school”*7.


If guns made people safer, then the United States would be the safest place in the world. How many more children have to die before the right accept that the answer to bad guys with guns is not good guys with guns, it’s getting rid of guns.