- Pakistanis can be victims as well
Donald Trump being given the seat of the president of the United States generated a wave of prolepsis all over the world regarding his long-lasting impact on the face of the globe. The first thing Pakistani students underwent was the change in policies of its Fulbright Program which was originally managed and funded by the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan but later only managed under Fulbright policies and regulations. There does not seem to be any ostensible difference between the before and after situations but surely reflects the other side’s seriousness to continue the programme the way it was established. Becoming hostile towards Pakistani students was, perhaps, their way of telling us that the United States of America is no more safe for us, for if you send your children to that country, its shady policies will turn them into lifeless bodies and return them to you in coffins.
The dark law, however, is not a problem of the Trump regime. It dates back to 15 December 1791 when the Bill of Rights comprising ten amendments to the US Constitution were ratified. The second one stated: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Being a pivotal element of the canvas, the Second Amendment is most widely debated on its de jure role of protecting all Americans’ individual right to bear arms and its de facto position of acting as an obstacle on how far it can be regulated. The fact that this privilege has caused imbedding of gun culture in the US is not unknown. And the main problem exists in America not realising the seriousness of the situation.
Donald Trump’s initial speech following the Parkland, Florida shooting in February 2018 included a vague reference to “gunfire” which was his only mention of guns. Despite promising to work “with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health” the matter has never really been taken up. The real solution is to first acknowledge that the problem is guns, not mental illness.
Attempts to create soft corner for the culprits, the father of the 17-year-old Santa Fe shooter calling him a “victim” and the incident a result of bullying for example, is as absurd as turning blind eye to gun laws of the country and blaming family system and violent video games for increasing number of incidents. Humans all over the world get into arguments with family, friends and strangers but in America, the probability of getting into an argument and pulling out a gun and killing someone is very high.
The latest incident has consumed a Pakistani exchange student’s life as well, a 17-year-old girl who intended to return home in a few weeks’ time
A research conducted in Columbia University in 2015 suggests that only 52 out of 235 killers in the database, approximately 22 percent, had mental illnesses. The researcher concluded: “The mentally ill should not bear the burden of being regarded as the ‘chief’ perpetrators of mass murder.”
The nature of the problem that has resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives is two-fold: America having far higher levels of gun ownership than any other country in the world, and it having way more gun deaths than any other developed nation. According the Human Development Index data compiled by the Guardian, as for 2012, the US the highest number of homicides by firearms per 1 million people, the figure resting at 29.7 as compared to 5.1 for Canada and 1.9 for Germany.
According to an article titled “How US gun culture compares with the world in five charts” published by CNN, “The US makes up less than five percent of the world’s population, but holds 31 per cent of global mass shooters”.
Also, as reported by the Washington Post, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US had reached as high a figure as 88.8 guns per 100 people by 2007.
If we are still unable to establish an obvious link between the two then we better wait for the figures of gun-owners and victims to rise. If this is not an alarming situation for America and the world, then God knows what will be.
Researchers quote the 1996 mass shooting in Australia and the legislation that followed to prove that gun control can produce fruitful results. When a 28-year-old man killed 35 and wounded 23 people in Port Arthur using a semiautomatic rifle, Australian legislators banned automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns by introducing the National Firearms Agreement and confiscated 650,000 such weapons through a mandatory buyback programme. As a result Australia’s firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates declined by approximately 42 and 57 percent, respectively, in seven years after the law was passed, as stated in Firearms Research Summaries provided by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 banned the ability to “manufacture transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon,” unless its possession was lawful “under Federal law on the date of the enactment of this subsection” for a period of ten years. Multiple futile attempts have been made to renew the ban, with President Barack Obama delivering his final State of the Union address before the Congress with an empty seat in the first lady’s guest box as a tribute to victims of gun violence still resonating in our minds.
The latest incident has consumed a Pakistani exchange student’s life as well, a 17-year-old girl who intended to return home in a few weeks’ time. She was killed by an American in America and the world is silent. Not being a targeted victim justified President Donald Trump issuing a general statement regarding the shooting without any mention of the loss a Pakistan has suffered at the hands of an American terrorist. Of all the identities Sabika Sheikh possessed – a Pakistani, a Muslim, and an exchange student in America – the world is highlighting the last one because Dimitrios Pagourtzis did not carry out targeted killing. Then why is it that when an American commits a similar crime and is found to have the first two tags is identified only by the labels ‘Muslim’ and ‘Pakistani’? Why aren’t mental illnesses or contributory factors from the American society taken into account in those cases? Why is their crime always associated with entire communities from which they originally hail?
Perhaps, Sabika Sheikh had to die in order to prove to the world that Pakistanis can be victims as well, our lives are as precious as of Americans and our loss is as big as America’s.
