Raise your hand if you’ve heard an anti-gun voice say that mass shootings are a “uniquely American” thing.
Good Lord, that’s a lot of hands.
That’s not surprising, though, because it’s a common enough sentiment, one that’s typically driven by a somewhat Amerocentric view of things. They tend to forget that there is the rest of the world most of the time, or, when they think of it, they don’t actually spend much time making sure what they’re claiming is accurate.
Mass murders happen all over the world, including many that involve a firearm.
Including one in Thailand earlier today.
A gunman killed five security guards and wounded one other person in a mass shooting at a popular fresh food market in Thailand’s capital on Monday, police said.
The suspect opened fire with a “gun-type weapon” at the Or Tor Kor Market in Bangkok’s Bang Sue district at 12.31 pm, the Royal Thai Police said, before taking his own life.
“Police are investigating the motive. So far it’s a mass shooting,” Bang Sue deputy police chief Worapat Sukthai told AFP.
In particular, police are looking to see if there’s any link between the killer and the current border tensions between Thailand and Cambodia.
Now, let’s understand that Thailand has very strict gun control laws. All guns must be licensed, and that’s for each firearm. There’s no case of just having a license and buying as many as you like. They deny permits to anyone without a job or who is disabled–and no, that doesn’t appear to be limited to just some kind of mental disability–among other things.
There doesn’t seem to be great enforcement of those laws, but they’re there, and we’re constantly told that our own poorly enforced gun control laws are insufficient and we need more, so it’s not a stretch to see the comparison between Thailand and us in this matter.
Still, this person got a firearm somehow, then used it to kill five security guards–a strange choice of target, at least to me–and hurt one other before offing himself.
And some still think this is “uniquely American” in any way, shape, or form?
Well, some people think the Earth is flat and the moon landing was faked, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that there are stupid people out there who still buy this nonsense.
Yet Thailand is most definitely not the United States. Not demographically, economically, or culturally. It’s as different of a place as you could potentially find out there in the world, and this still happened.
Sooner or later, we have to address the fact that this isn’t an American phenomenon, but a human one. It’s something that happens all over the place. It might look different than here, but is it really different? An African warlord slaughtering people at a Christian village in the middle of the continent is still a massacre just the same. The drive to slaughter innocent people is the issue, and we don’t understand it.
In Thailand, five families are mourning their loved ones in the ways appropriate to their culture. I remember mourning my friend when she was killed in a cafe in Seattle, and did so in a way that is appropriate to ours.
But the laws still don’t stop these things from happening. They never will.
Editor’s Note: There are plenty of countries around the world with more restrictive gun laws than ours and higher rates of violent crime and homicide.
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