Always look on the bright side of life

The year started off quite bad. At least four robberies (a transport with money to a bank in Stockholm, a jeweler's shop in Södertälje, another transport with money to a bank in Huddinge and a bank in Täby) has taken place in and around Stockholm during the first ten days. Moreover a sports hall in Västergård, Södertälje, was burnt down (the cause of the fire is not yet clear), there has been another school shooting in the U.S. (this time less deadly than the one in Newtown in December), and the conflict in Syria is escalating and except for the horrors of the war itself people starve. I could go on and on with wars, conflicts, violence, starvation, etc but I think you see what I mean.

"Always look on the bright side of life" gets a quite bitter ring to it after these, and similar, events, but still there is something in it. We read all these negative news - and actually, it is almost as if "news" are defined as negative events. Positive news rarely reaches the first pages of newspapers. What does it turn us into when we see the society through the glasses of the negative events reported in media? To get a proper picture, there is also a need for news about things going in the right direction, be it international treaties that advance an issue, national changes in legislation or policies that have positive effects, or local improvements and positive examples. Often, I think, such news are considered less important, and some of them probably don't even qualify as "news".

As for myself, I know that I more often write a post about something that upsets me than about something that makes me happy. I can list a number of rational reasons for that - but at the end of the day my way of selecting what I write about confirms media's picture of what is importan. Thus, I will end this post with two positive news (one from December, which I never got time to write about when it appeared).

In December, the EU fisheries committee finally decided to make EU fisheries more sustainable after hard work by Swedish MEP Isabella Lövin and others - now it is the EU Parliament and the EU countries' fisheries ministers that have to transform the decision into law and practice. Commentary in DN here.

Suggestions from vice president Joe Biden for how the U.S. plan to curb gun violence will soon appear. Of course there are no easy solutions, and the perspective need to include not only guns and restrictions regarding them but also how to help people before they get so desperate that they plan shootings, in schools or other places. (SvD, DN)

I am well aware of that these two positive news are not final results in their respective fields - there is still a long way before they are implemented. In Europe, nations with strong interests in fisheries are likely to try to act against restrictions in fisheries, while in the U.S. the NRA has already made clear that they will try to prevent any new gun laws. But at least, these two have opened for changes that were formerly more or less unthinkable.

Obviously, there are others that also see the need for positive news. Here is a website which only add links to positive news (in Swedish), which I found through a friend when expressing my frustration regarding the recent news record.

The US gone mad

While the fireworks went mad outside the house I got some time to think about an article from today's newspaper. It is about free weapons training for teachers in Utah, which attracted hundreds of teachers (two hundred were admitted) in response to the latest school shooting in Newtown, which I have written about before, both in English and in Swedish. I also mentioned in the post yesterday (in Swedish) that one of my wishes for 2013 is that this year will bring changed gun laws in the USA so that the risk for children being shot down in schools will be reduced. I must say I was disappointed when I read this morning that instead teachers learn to handle guns to be able to open fire against people entering schools to shoot children and teachers. The world, or at least the US, must have gone mad! Do y ouwant to have war in the schools!? Do you expect people to feel comfortable because their children's teachers learn to handle guns - and bring these guns to school, and into the classrooms!? Do the teachers appreciate adding a new specialist field to their subjects: I teach history - and I am able to shoot anyone threatening my class?

In The Vancouver Sun one of the Utah gun instructors, Clark Aposhian, comments:

"Schools are some of the safest places in the world, but I think teachers understand that something has changed — the sanctity of schools has changed."

 It seems that Aposhian has not noticed that schools in the USA have not been particularly safe for some time due to the amount of guns available. School shootings are still rare, but the school shooting in Newtown was neither the first one, nor will it be the last if nothing is done to make it more difficult to access weapons for people in such despair that they want to inflict as much pain as possible to others. And hey, school shootings are not supposed to occur at all! Don't get too used to them, making they seem inevitable tragedies, because they are not. Furthermore, it seems Aposhian has not noticed that there might be some problems with teachers carrying weapons in schools. In USnews on NBC news the teacher Kerrie Anderson (stating herself being "pro-gun") observes some of the difficulties:

"How would I keep that gun safe?" she said. "I wouldn't carry (it) on my person while teaching, where a disgruntled student could overpower me and take it. And if I have it secured in my office, it might not be a viable form of protection."

Furthermore, more guns in the society will certainly increase gun related violence - how can more guns in schools be expected to decrease gun related violence? Children understand why it is not a good idea. When I talked to my kids, six and ten years old, about teachers having weapons training and the idea of teachers bringing guns to school they just stared at me. "Mom, we will never move to the US and go to school there, will we?", they asked. "Probably not", I told them. "Good", they replied. They did not say that when we talked about the Newtown school schooting, but when faced with the idea that there might be schools to which adults bring weapons, every day, to avoid new school shootings they had had enough. We do understand the frustration you face when people have been shot down without any chance to protect themselves. But you seldom solve problems of violence through violence, and least of all you reduce gun violence through adding guns. Children understand this. I thus repeat my wish for 2013:

Let 2013 be the year when the USA finally begins to move towards restricted availability of weapons to reduce the risk for school shootings. We've had enough of these tragedies!

Where children die in vain

Due to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, I have been looking a little into US gun laws for different states and I am litterally shocked! I did know there is a lot more to accomplish in this field, but I did not know that it was so bad.

Connecticut, where the latest school shooting took place is actually one of the few states with more restrictive gun laws. They have earned three stars, according to the rating made by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which makes them end up number five in the nation. Still, they only scored 58 out of 100 points (where 100 is the most restrictive and with the lowest risks for gun violence). Thirtyone states have no stars at all, eight states have only one, five states each have two or three stars, while only one (California) made it to the four stars level with 81 out of 100 points. Admittedly, the organisation doing the ranking is campaigning to prevent gun violence and hence has a more restrictive view on guns. However, something must be wrong when the citizens in one of the worlds' most powerful nations feel that they have to arm themselves for protection and voices have also been raised for changes in the gun laws after the tragedy in Newtown.

I find it difficult to compare with Swedish laws, and it would be interesting to have Sweden ranked in the same way by the Brady Campaign to see how we fared. After the tragedy at Utöya in Norway 2011 there were demands for changes in Swedish gun laws, something that was never accomplished as far as I know. So far, Sweden has had no school shootings but (at least some) psychologists and psychiatrists believe it more being a question about availability of guns than there being no one inclined to carry such things out.

On the other hand, the US now has a tradition of school shootings occurring far too often. I try to explain to my children and I hear their disbelief. There is absolutely no sense in letting this historical idea of having the right to arm oneself for protection lead to case after case with desperate people shooting children down. If there were similar systematic disasters related to aeroplanes, car traffic, whatever, the society would make strategic plans to see to that they ended, or at least were reduced. It is not even a war zone we are talking about, for which we are saddened but used to have tragic news about unnecessary deaths. No, this is the United States of America and full of sorrow we keep on watching the US letting their children die in vain, for the sole reason to be able to go on with the American dream and everyone's right to possess a gun.





Footnote: I am writing this in English since I began my reading on the gun laws pages of the Brady Campaign. Unfortunately most other links are to sites in Swedish. I will probably mix Swedish and English henceforth, though hopefully not in the same post. The English posts will at least appear sometimes when writing about books I read, which is something I have been planning to do recurrently and eventually.

När rätten att försvara sig själv innebär dödshot för barn

Att återkommande skolskjutningar är alltför vanliga fenomen i USA är ingen nyhet. Men det blev extra påtagligt i DN:s rapportering från Obamas tal efter den senaste händelsen i Newtown. Obama sa bla att det är fjärde gången under hans tid som president som det händer. FJÄRDE gången under några futtiga år! Det är helt vansinnigt och bortom allt förstånd att man inte systematiskt jobbar med att minska riskerna för att skolskjutningar sker. Två områden framstår för mig som centrala: tillgången på vapen, där man kan hoppas att tiden nu äntligen är mogen för en förändring trots att vapenlobbyn fortfarande motsätter sig ändrade vapenlagar och hur man bäst fångar upp ungdomar som mår så psykiskt dåligt att de är beredda att meja ner elever och skolpersonal. Det sistnämnda är säkert relevant att jobba med för många länder i världen, inklusive Sverige. Vad gäller vapenlagarna utskiljer sig USA som en nation där rätten att kunna försvara sig själv med automatvapen går före det dödshot det faktiskt innebär för barn och ungdomar.