GUNS? NO THANKS

The United States eh? What to make of ’em? The world’s most ad­vanced coun­try? Some of their con­ceited pro­pa­ganda would have us be­lieve so, es­pe­cially under the cur­rent pres­i­dent. And yet the in­sis­tence on the right to bear arms would con­tra­dict that in so many peo­ple’s view, given that one of the prin­ci­pal mea­sures of a coun­try being civilised would be for its cit­i­zens not to blow each other away when­ever the feel­ing takes them.

Why does any of this mat­ter here in Cat­alo­nia? I’ll tell you why. Be­cause US em­bassies around the globe have re­cently taken to ad­vis­ing Amer­i­can schools, no mat­ter where they are lo­cated, to have armed guards at their gates. And one such school in Barcelona - I haven’t yet done the re­search to de­ter­mine whether it’s more than just one for the mo­ment - has fol­lowed this ad­vice and now has se­cu­rity guards tot­ing guns at the en­trance to the school. In other words, Amer­ica has brought its trig­ger happy cul­ture to our city, and it’s been al­lowed to hap­pen.

Why should you care about this? Per­haps you don’t. Why do I? Be­cause my son hap­pens to at­tend a nearby school, whose par­ents - un­be­liev­ably to me - are now pe­ti­tion­ing the school board to adopt the same mea­sures. “If the Amer­i­can school guards have guns, we should have them too” seems to be the rea­son­ing. I call it rea­son­ing, but of course it’s noth­ing of the sort, it’s blind fear dom­i­nat­ing these par­ents’ think­ing. Can I blame them? Yes, I can, but first I must ques­tion why the Amer­i­can school is al­lowed to bring its dan­ger­ous cul­ture to our com­mu­nity.

Many times over the years of writ­ing this col­umn I have ar­gued the case for im­mi­grants - whether rich or poor - need­ing to adapt to the so­ci­ety they have adopted, even if they are only here for a short pe­riod of time. That’s not to say that the na­tive cul­ture should not be en­riched by in­flu­ence from other cul­tures, of course it should, and that must also be en­cour­aged, but we must be ex­tremely care­ful as to ex­actly which cul­tural in­flu­ences are wel­comed. The right to bear arms can­not be one of them. I, like many oth­ers, shake my head in dis­be­lief when I hear the trag­i­cally all-too-com­mon news of school shoot­ings in the US. Not to men­tion the use of guns in other crimes such as rob­beries often lead­ing to the loss of life.

If Amer­i­cans need guns to de­fend against at­tacks on their premises around the world, per­haps they should be ask­ing them­selves why they are com­ing under at­tack rather than spread­ing their dan­ger­ous val­ues of the right to carry a lethal weapon to so­ci­eties who do not be­lieve in such val­ues them­selves.

If other im­mi­grant na­tion­al­i­ties were to in­tro­duce cus­toms that are against the law here, there would rightly be an im­me­di­ate clam­p­down on it, as hap­pens with re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance, gen­der vi­o­lence, ho­mo­pho­bia, abor­tion due to gen­der, and so many other prac­tices un­ac­cept­able in our lib­eral but sen­si­ble cul­ture. The in­tro­duc­tion of guns into Amer­i­can schools in Cat­alo­nia should be dealt with in the same way.