Is the problem Facebook? Guns, sport and macho mentality

‘In 1987 there were six gun massacres, 32 [people] were murdered with guns. Most murderers held their guns legally. Soon, most Australian jurisdictions made stricter gun laws resulting in a significant lowering of gun homicide and gun suicide rates.'

‘In early 1996 a dedicated shooter murdered six members of his family at a suburb of Brisbane and on 28 April [that year] 35 were murdered by a young man…at Port Arthur in Tasmania. In the following year or two stricter gun laws were introduced by most Australian jurisdictions resulting in further lowering of the gun homicide and gun suicide rates.’

Yet in Australia and globally, the major gun problem lies not outdoors but closer at hand.

In 2010 the first international campaign was launched to protect women from gun violence in the home. Introducing the campaign, IANSA (the International Action Network on Small Arms) noted that ‘most shockingly’, the greatest risk of gun violence to women everywhere is ‘not on the streets, or the battlefield, but in their own homes’: ‘Women are three times more likely to die violently if there is a gun in the house. Usually the perpetrator is a spouse or partner, often with a prior record of domestic abuse. Gun violence can be part of the cycle of intimidation and aggression many women experience from an intimate partner. For every woman killed or physically injured by firearms, many more are threatened.’

For this reason, IANSA launched a campaign ‘to demand policies which would keep women safe from gun violence’, the main goal being ‘to ensure that anyone with a history of domestic abuse is denied access to a firearm, and has their license revoked’.

By 2012, the ‘Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence’ was already entrenched in activist diaries and NGO campaign notebooks and calendars throughout the world: ‘Participation during the Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence (WoA) 2010 grew to 267 IANSA members in 102 countries confirming that the Week of Action is now synonymous with CSO [Civil Society Organisations] solidarity on the issue. Last year saw a wide variety of successful activities in over 80 countries, including many focusing on the UN Programme of Action on small arms, the Arms Trade Treaty and the Disarm Domestic Violence campaign…’

Returning, then to guns, swimming and the Olympics, defending D’Arcy and Monk, one team mate has queried the authenticity of the AOC and SA’s reaction in light of recent history. The charge is one of ‘hypocrisy’. What is ‘all the fuss’ about, asks this fellow swimmer, when some five years ago (in 2007) SA ‘took the team to a Canberra rifle range as part of a bonding session’. Interviewed on television, the Olympic athlete said D’Arcy and Monk ‘haven’t really done anything wrong’. In any event (echoing what others have said), the two were simply ‘boys being boys’ and 'Shooting is an Olympic sport and shooters don't get into trouble for posing in their speedos.’

The AOC responded by saying the gun range visit ‘had nothing to do with the AOC’ as it was ‘an initiative’ of SA and those participating ‘were not members of any Olympic Team at that time’. Thus, it ‘has absolutely no bearing on the decision taken by the AOC at the weekend’ in relation to D’Arcy and Monk.

That SA should see guns and shooting as a means of ‘team bonding’ may well raise questions, at least in some minds, as to the capacity of decision-making occurring within that organisation and, apparently, at its top levels. In this light, it may be unsurprising that some team members, at least, see guns as items for play and showing off, despite the dangers inherent in them. Guns are, after all, designed and manufactured for ending lives.

But what of the fundamental question, namely the way in which the matter has been addressed by both SA and the AOC. Surely the issue goes way beyond Facebook and Twitter. In his Agearticle, Michael Coulter drew attention to how sporting standards have deteriorated way below what was originally envisaged by and in the Olympic movement, effectively making an impassioned plea for a return to what the essence of sport and performance was intended to be.

Sadly, a macho mentality imbues competitive sport with the perfect setting for promoting an ethos consistent with lionising gun-culture and seeing a visit to a gun shop as ‘fun’. The contention that shouldering weapons affirms one’s manhood (‘boys will be boys’, ‘men will be men’) is not just questionable, when statistics on the use of guns are in issue. The idea that ‘manhood’ is somehow acknowledged or enhanced through gun-clutching images permeating the Internet and clogging the airwaves is not only risible, but frightening.

Ultimately, the AOC and SA have missed the point entirely. The role of social media in pubicising the swimmers’ actions is in a very real sense a plus, not a minus. After all, in this instance it allowed the public, through the mainstream media, to know what ‘our’ Olympic prospects get up to when overseas. It highlights the nature of some Olympic prospects, at least, along with their apparent lack of appreciation of the realities, and the horrors, of gun-culture.

Yet perhaps this is what the AOC and SA really have in mind: that conduct that may be publicly deplored should not be made known to the pubic – no matter what goes on behind closed doors or in gun shops.

As the U.S. feminist Gloria Steinem says, mass media dissemination of images vilifying women have at least alerted women to the depths and breadth of this woman-hating culture. Facebook, Twitter and their counterparts can equally alert us to a disturbing culture at the heart of Australian sport.