Opinion | Amid rise in deadly mass shootings, the US cannot hold the same promise for young Chinese
- In a few decades, mass shootings in the US have gone from near unheard-of to tragically common, while politicians point the finger and meaningful gun control measures remain elusive
- Those same politicians boast of America’s superiority to China, yet Chinese pupils do not fear going to school and never coming back
I came to the United States to study in 1949, inspired by the stories of my father and brothers. I marvelled at the wealth that seemed to spring from the country.
My studies brought me to Washington, DC, which I made my home for the next seven decades. The sense of domestic peace was shattered sporadically by incidents of violence.
The prominence of guns and the seemingly inevitable tragedies that accompanied them were a cultural phenomenon I had to adapt to, even though I was no stranger to violence or gun ownership.
China was at war for most of my childhood. Private gun ownership expanded during the class war between the Nationalists and Communists, and following the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937. Most privately held weapons were foreign-made and came to China from Western traders and smugglers.
My father, a general in the Nationalist army, was gifted a handsome ivory-handled revolver from his friend, the “Young Marshal” Zhang Xueliang, who reportedly received it from Hitler. My father let me have the gun, which was intended to be used for suicide in the event of capture.
When the Communists secured control of China in 1949, the new government sought to rein in the proliferation of firearms. In the early 1950s, it imposed laws prohibiting the purchase, sale, and private manufacture of guns. Here the US and People’s Republic of China’s origin stories diverge; after the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers enshrined the right to private gun ownership in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
