How do values change?

The latest school massacre in the USA - 20 little children and 6 of their teachers shot in cold blood by a deranged 20-year old kid in a quiet town in Connecticut - has justifiably sparked more agonized discussion than any of the previous school massacres in recent years. It's been horrific enough to convert some gun-loving law makers to a more rational view of the need to restrain access to lethal weapons, and to show in stark reality the insanity of a gun lobby spokesman who asserted that if all the kindergarten teachers were armed, they would be able to defend themselves, or better yet, 'take out' deranged attackers before they had a chance to perpetrate a massacre.  The absurdity of this argument is so obvious nobody but a psychopath would be taken in by it - and nobody but a psychopath would offer such an argument in the first place.

Unfortunately the 'right to bear arms' is so deeply engrained in American values that the nation as a whole isn't likely to change its ways.  The moment of truth that Wendy and I experienced in Burlington, Vermont in 1964 when we discovered that we alone among all those present at a large dinner party of seemingly civilized staff people at the University of Vermont didn't keep a loaded handgun in our home, played a part in our decision to reject the USA as a suitable place to raise our children, to choose Edinburgh rather than Baltimore for the next phase of our family's development; that decision was entirely based on values. We simply didn't see the 'right to bear arms' as relevant to our way of life.  Most Americans seem to regard it as  profoundly important: an integral aspect of survival strategy, or akin to religious beliefs, or both. There were other reasons why we turned our backs on the USA in the mid 1960s, but the gun culture, the resort to guns as the best way to solve problems, the last resort in all other civilized nations but the first for many Americans, was a powerfully persuasive reason for Wendy and me to leave behind the higher salary, material comforts, and career opportunities, to embrace instead the rugged, more spartan and financially constrained conditions of academic and social life in Edinburgh. 

If indeed the American people are more hospitable this week than they previously were to the notion of some restraint on untrammelled access to assault rifles, rifles fitted with grenade launchers forsooth, then this will be a vivid illustration of how suddenly societal values can change. It's usually a slower process, but there have been past examples  of sudden value changes when a single event shocks an entire population into awareness that past values and behaviours must change.  The Earl of Shaftesbury and other social reformers in 19th century England achieved success in the campaign to abolish child labour in factories and mines, but it was a slow, incremental process.  In Canada the DNA evidence that proved the innocence of David Milgaard, and the Montreal student massacre had similar success (although the latter, sadly, has proven vulnerable to the ideological blinkers and demagoguery of the present government). It's too soon to say with confidence that Americans have been shocked into a common-sense attitude towards guns by last week's massacre, but present evidence and pronouncements by previously committed supporters of the 'right' to bear arms do suggest that a sea-change in societal values might be feasible in the USA.  If this does happen, it will be interesting to see whether it has any beneficial impact on the Canadian Conservative government's lassaiz-faire values and legislative actions regarding access to guns.