Soldiers on the streets distract from America's most obvious safety problem

Members of the National Guard patrol near the Washington Monument on August 8. Getty Images via AFP

The presence of US soldiers on the streets of Washington is a stark reminder of America’s twisted attitude to crime and safety, and its betrayal of the country’s most vulnerable demographic.

More than 2,000 National Guard troops have been posted to the nation’s capital to tackle the “crime emergency” that President Donald Trump declared last month, and to address the city's “rampant violence”. They also are helping “beautify” Washington by raking leaves and picking up rubbish.

Like everything here, attitudes are split largely along political lines. Democrats and local police say statistics show crime has been trending downwards and assert the military presence is unnecessary, while Republicans claim those numbers are being falsely manipulated and cheer the capital’s increased security and the troops' support to federal agents as they arrest immigrants.

Trump says DC residents 'feel so safe' with National Guard posted

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Mr Trump on Tuesday said he would also send troops in to Chicago, despite stiff resistance from the Windy City, and even after a federal judge ruled that a posting to Los Angeles in June was illegal.

Depending on one’s view, squads of camouflage-clad soldiers, some of them carrying assault rifles, are either a depressing harbinger of America’s continuing lurch towards authoritarianism or a reassuring presence in a city where carjackings and shootings had become common.

But for me, soldiers on the streets serve only as a disingenuous and expensive distraction from the most glaringly obvious security failing: gun crime.

The point was driven home last Wednesday after yet another school shooting, this one in Minneapolis, where an attacker opened fire during Mass at a church near a Catholic school, killing two children and injuring 21 people. To no one’s surprise, the shooter used a legally bought AR-15-type assault rifle. Thanks to broad interpretations of the Second Amendment, it is shockingly easy to buy weapons in the US, where there are now more firearms than people.

Appallingly, guns are now the leading cause of death for American children, and about 20,000 people are killed in gun homicides each year. That's more than 5.5 gun deaths for each 100,000 people, easily the worst statistic for any industrialised nation, with more than another 27,000 people using guns to take their own lives in 2024.

According to The Washington Post, the Minneapolis attack was the 434th shooting at a school since the notorious Columbine High massacre in Colorado in 1999. That means more than 397,000 pupils and students have experienced gun violence at school since then.

The day after the Minneapolis shooting, I took my youngest daughter for her first day of preschool. Images of what had just happened in Illinois were far from my mind as she and her new classmates gathered excitedly in the playground. But on Friday I got an email from the school saying the class would soon be performing its first “lockdown drill”, in which they will practise staying silent while staying away from doors and windows.

Four-year-old children being forced to undergo a mock lockdown speaks to the normalisation of the gun horror that bedevils America. But instead of doing anything about it, or the President declaring a “gun crime emergency”, any conversations about firearms control have been marginalised to the point where even raising the topic has become counterproductive. Any move towards even basic gun control or background checks is swiftly countered by greater and opposing measures aimed at further expanding everyone's access to firearms.

Nowhere can be considered truly safe any more. Hospitals, high schools, primary schools, universities, music festivals, nightclubs, places of worship, businesses, supermarkets, military installations – all have been attacked.

Flooding the streets with soldiers will do nothing to prevent the next mass shooting. Common sense gun control, mental health checks on buyers and assault weapons bans will.

But thanks to a conservative Supreme Court and Republican intransigence on the issue, legislators will continue to tune out gun violence and nothing will be done for many years to come, if ever.

Vice President JD Vance is visiting the scene of the Minneapolis school shooting to “pay his respects” to the victims. If he or Mr Trump actually cared for our security, they would do something to address the greatest threat against us and our children.

Mourners embrace at the memorial outside Annunciation Church after a recent shooting at the church’s school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Reuters