In the American tradition
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington Much progress has been made: the films of the shooting of President Ronald Reagan are much clearer than those of the killing of President John Kennedy. Even before the victim had reached the operating table the networks were showing us our President being gunned down in colour, at regular Speed and in slow-motion, with stop-action and freeze-frame. Eighteen years ago it Wasn't nearly as good. The emergency rooms were ready. We Were repeatedly assured that it was particularly fortunate that the President was shot in a major urban centre near a hospital that routinely treats gunshot wounds in the Chest,' They are equally well practised in treating gunshot wounds to the head, the liver and the stomach so that the families of the other wounded men, and the nation, have c.ertain small blessings to be grateful for. American medicine is at its best stitching up bullet wounds, knife wounds, automobile accident wounds, war wounds. We are the world's undisputed champions at traumatic injury. The attack found Walter Cronkite, the recently retired news-reader celebrity, in Moscow whence he broadcast the standard set of vacuities about what the Russians must think of us. More to the point is what we think of ourselves. Our great ones managed to avoid having any thoughts on that subject during the last celebrity shooting, the murder of John Lennon. The soon-to-be next victim, Ronald Reagan, Passed off the incident with the minimum of expression of sympathy consistent with frosty good manners. This occurrence is being ranked not as an incident but a tragedy, which should not be taken to mean that we are yet able to comprehend the barbarism of our civil life except that murder is but one more expressIon of 'American individualism*. This last irkelm a university professor who rushed to the microphones to help explain ourselves to ourselves. From the mouth of another savant-on-the-air, we were interested to learn that the manufacture of the gun was a signal development in the history of the industrial revolution as it unfolded in our land. The perfection of its mass production in America gave it a special place in our national life. Why, it is the only tool enshrined in our constitution. There is no Amendment giving us the right to bear vacuum cleaners or electric tooth brushes.
We are given to understand that violence is an American tradition. Just think of all the presidents down the hallway of history who have been shot at: Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, the two Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy and Ford. Four dead and six alive and at least limping. We are not to view it as a dagger thrust at the personal symbol of commonwealth but as an expression of our unique national character. And anyway we don't do anything to our presidents that we don't do to the least among us. Almost at the hour President Reagan was being shot down in the streets of his capital, the authorities in Atlanta were announcing the discovery of the murdered body of yet one more black child, the 21st in this series.
One of the things we do when an important one of us is shot is to re-debate gun control. That has already begun and with it the predictions that once more the measure will fail to be implemented. It will, which is of only symbolic importance since such a law is unenforceable in our culture. What is more dispiriting is that nothing else more efficacious will be done. The death penalty will be re-enacted: the rate of executions will be stepped up; there will be more cries for more psychiatry and more jails, although it is dawning on people that it costs more to keep a homicidal brute in jail
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