U.S. and Global Weapon Surge Continues To Spark Crisis
The week has been filled with the results of our addiction for weapons.
What has made it so scary is the increasing use of weapons of all sorts for the wrong reasons — for gain, advantage, perceived revenge or for no reason at all except having the ability to use them.
In the name of self-protection, individuals and nations are looking to pursue arms wars that create panic by themselves and clearly spread the threat of widespread death.
In the same week marking five years since mass killings at that Parkland, FL, high school, we saw shootings at a Super Bowl celebration drawing thousands that resulted in one death and 22 —including nine children — wounded, random shootings inside a Houston mega-church and the shooting of four students outside of an Atlanta high school.
We all see that the idea of a gun at a public celebration makes no sense, even one with 800 cops assigned to security duty. But we continue to allow guns to proliferate, even denigrating those who want just minimal gun registration or checks for sales.
In Washington, congressmen were baying in near panic yesterday over unreleased intelligence reportedly warning of new space weapon development by Russia to knock out our satellites, and blind defenses to Earth-bound drone and missile attacks. In Ukraine, the weapons involve manpower as that desperate country weighs a giant mobilization to send hundreds of thousands to the front, even as Donald Trump and House Republican leadership resist renewal of aid to address both military and humanitarian aid.
Whatever your views on Middle East developments, to see in Gaza, Israel Defense Forces with weapons bristling, break into the largest remaining functional hospital in Rafah, Gaza — where civilians have been hiding — killing orthopedic patients in medical treatment rooms, was appalling.
Rising Violence
Political candidates, prosecutors and judges are getting death threats on a regular basis, and providing security has become an identifiable national cost center. Presumably otherwise good-meaning people say they are worried about attacks by criminals, gangs, racists and anti-racists —people who don’t accept their way of life. Forget inflation, it’s fear that is on the constant rise.
It feels as if there is no time between the awfulness of weapons-related events even for the usual thoughts and prayers in lieu of action on gun control or arms control. The numbers of mass shootings show that we have accepted a gun out-of-control ethic amid national and international values that demand more and more guns, missiles, space weapons — whether to keep the peace or to threaten partisan opponents.
It’s hard to know what personal or even national security and safety look like.
The one guarantee seems to be arming for strength and military advantage at all costs. Trump’s pro-Russian criticisms aired anew in the last week about NATO really are about nations ponying up enough for member nations’ defense as to take any believed burden from the U.S., even though that’s not how NATO or even its financing works.
We already have millions more guns in circulation in this country — with a healthy proportion being semi-automated, military-style weapons — than we do people. And the daily deluge of mass shootings is only persuading us with each that gun ownership is not providing safety. The idea of personal security is failing in the practical rise of emboldened, lone, mentally deranged individuals trying to make their mark by shooting whomever they consider enemies.
The rising number of practical problems for law enforcement to know even how to protect crowds that are legally enabled to carry weapons on the street, into churches, into theaters and arenas, only complicate matters.
So, too, does the prevalence of politics that condones or encourages violence. It was striking that viewers of Sean Hannity got to see live retribution by a self-appointed street defense group in New York City against what turned out to be a misidentified “migrant” whom that group had targeted wrongly for having attacked a NYPD cop in Times Square.
The Arms Races
One guy reported as fleeing the Kansas City shooting was Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who had a phalanx of protectors. Parsons, of course, is against gun controls. Congress and state legislatures remain loath to pass even titular gun control laws out of political reelection fear. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority consistently support loosening gun regulations that make it into local law.
We recognize that arming ourselves is not working, but we double down. For years, we blamed the influence of the National Rifle Association and other lobbyists, but it’s become apparent that this is the way that we Americans want it — a gun in the home because we distrust government, because we hate The Other, because a weapon, whether financial or steel, is the mistaken as the path to winning. Whatever that means.
The result is more and more weapons — for individuals and for countries. The United States is not only the biggest arms consumer, but the biggest global weapons exporter, accounting for 40% of the total volume of international arms transfers between 2018–2022.
Our desires for Middle East peace hang on the idea of a separate Palestinian state, even as Israeli officials in the current, right-leaning, coalition government in Israel refuse that possibility. With some justification, they point to neighboring Lebanon, a separate state, or Syria, both with active Iranian-backed military groups that we label as terrorists regularly attacking Israelis.
A Hamas-led independent Gaza will be just as hot a cauldron for violence against Israelis as a territorial Gaza.
A Russia bent on rebuilding territorial mastery in eastern Europe will continue to develop whatever arms it believes will give it leverage. So too do Iran and North Korea insist on developing a nuclear bomb, and China is sending harassing flights and setting up naval obstacles against U.S. and western forces to make sure we stand back from their territorial desires.
Beneath all of it is the spreading fear of destruction through weapons. And so, we see America, whether under internationalist Joe Biden or isolationist Donald Trump, re-committing to new arms races in our own nuclear weapons, expanding our sea navy, our stealth aircraft and our desires to control space arms.
Even our public language about border enforcement and economic competition is filled with warfare references and weaponry, from barbed wire to eliminating the enemy of the day.
We are consumed with the ability to maim and kill one another.