When Jo Cox MP met her untimely death, holding a constituency surgery on 16 June, I mused over the reaction to this tragedy in comparison to the mass shooting in Orlando\u2019s Pulse nightclub four days earlier. Why had this single event, on a small island, provoked such international reaction, in comparison to frequent firearms mass murders elsewhere and in the USA in particular? I believe that, unusually, our responses have not only been emotional, but cerebral and cultural, too.<\/p>\n
Firstly, it felt personal and we could focus on the impact on one person\u2019s world. Like many, she was a doting parent, a young mother enjoying those precious early years of her two children. Those two children have been robbed of this relationship and that is simply not fair.<\/p>\n
Secondly, the targeting of an individual, elected by the people, whilst in the process of serving them has undermined values that we take for granted; democracy is precious and Jo\u2019s single death helped remind us of its importance.<\/p>\n
Finally \u2013 and this is the main point – her murder provoked astonishment because gun crime in the UK is simply counter-cultural<\/em>. We don\u2019t carry guns, we don\u2019t want to carry guns and we can\u2019t understand why other nations want to. We say to ourselves \u2018look what happens there<\/em>, when this is part of a nation\u2019s culture – 49 people dead in one fell swoop\u2019. And we can imagine people around the world saying to themselves \u2018how could<\/em> it happen in the UK?\u2019<\/p>\n In the space of four days, we were exposed to two contrasting horrors \u2013 49 random shootings and one targeted murder. Since then I have been mulling over the contrast between the reactions, but I was only provoked to write this piece as I read about the sit-in, on 23 June, in the lower house of the US Congress, \u2018no [gun control] bill, no break!\u2019<\/em> I don\u2019t believe that this unprecedented event was simply a reaction to the shootings in Orlando; I believe and hope it is Jo\u2019s single death that is the straw to break the camel\u2019s back. That it has become the catalyst for the democratic action necessary to recalibrate a nation\u2019s cultural expectations and make, as in the UK, gun crime an exception, not the norm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why has Jo Cox’s murder provoked an international response; this blog considers the response to a single gun crime incident in the UK, compared to the mass shootings in Orlando.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[38,68,70,101,151,183,188],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinkpiece","tag-cities","tag-crime","tag-culture","tag-government","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alisonseabrooke.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}