Six dead in Iowa. Another American domestic killing spree, another outbreak of the uniquely American species of nihilistic violence. And what do we hear from the chattering classes of my own green and pleasant land?
The same sanctimonious drone: UK policing experts call for urgent review of US gun laws. As if the Second Amendment were a mere oversight, a legislative oversight to be corrected by the gentle prodding of British common sense. Let me save everyone the trouble: it will not happen.
The United States is not a nation that can be lectured into disarmament, because it is a nation built on the myth of the armed individual. The question is not whether America will change its gun laws, but whether American civilisation can survive its own foundational myths. The Fall of Rome was not precipitated by barbarians at the gate, but by a rot within.
And what is the rot here? It is the death of social solidarity, the atomisation of the individual, the worship of the gun as the ultimate expression of liberty. The Iowa killer was a man with a Glock and a grudge, the latest in a long line of lonely, angry men who find in a weapon the only power they can wield.
Britain, meanwhile, has its own problems: a spiritual decay masked by politeness, a vacuous consumer culture, and a police force that cannot even solve its own burglaries. But we have no spree killings on this scale. Why?
Not because we are morally superior, but because we decided, as a society, that the right to walk down the street without being shot outweighs the right to own an arsenal. That decision required a collective act of will, a recognition that liberty without order is merely chaos. America refuses to make that decision.
And so the bodies pile up. The UK experts will return to their seminars, the American politicians will offer thoughts and prayers, and the NRA will intone its gospel of the armed citizen. Nothing will change.
Because nothing can change. The American experiment, once a beacon of hope, has become a cautionary tale. The question is: how many more Iowas before the empire collapses?
