New Zealand’s Response To Mass Shooting Feels Surprisingly Different

Last month, two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, were subjected to terrorist attacks caused by a white supremacist armed with assault weapons. While massacres like this are rare in New Zealand, we here in the United States have tragedies like this with depressing frequency.

Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, there have been at least fifteen other mass shootings here in the United States that have made the deadliest modern mass shootings. The deadliest shooting on that list happened in Las Vegas two years ago. The two most recent American shootings to have made the list happened last year and took place at American high schools.

Even after twenty years of mass shootings, little has been changed to prevent more incidents like this from happening in the United States. Some groups, like the March For Our Lives last year, have been calling for change. These changes have gone unheeded.

That’s quite different from New Zealand’s reaction last month. Last month’s massacre, which was the first mass shooting in New Zealand since 1997, resulted in an almost-immediate change to their gun laws. Just three days after the events in Christchurch, the New Zealand government passed legislation to include a ban on military-style assault weapons. The United States does not currently have such a law.

Should the United States be following New Zealand’s example? Some students think so.

Senior Andrea Benavides is one of them. “We should be taking their example,” she says. She would like to see the American government take action to change gun laws, but she believes it would need to happen in bits and pieces. “We would have to have a gradual implementation because many people want their guns [in the United States]. I think the US should take New Zealand’s approach on gun safety, but it would be a hard process to do so.”

EHS senior Bryant El isn’t as convinced. “I think the US should see if New Zealand’s laws work,” he says. “If there is a solution already out there, then federal laws should be changed to accommodate those laws.”