Guns, we’re going there
A 64-year-old man just brutally murdered 58 people and injured 527 others, accountable for compiling 23 weapons within the last year. This is the 273 mass shooting our country has seen just this year alone, under the definition that four or more people were killed in a public place. We are the country with more mass shootings than any other country in the world, but many people continue to ignore how dangerous semiautomatic and automatic firearms are. People are fighting for their gun rights, but what reason do they have for purchasing firearms built to kill in mass numbers? Politicians are divided on the issue, half urging to evoke a conversation about guns, while the other half would rather put it off longer.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN after the Las Vegas shooting, “There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country. It would be premature for us to discuss policy.” It’s confusing as to why politicians would rather ignore the issue after a crisis than deal with it. Are they waiting for more fatalities before realizing the need for reform?
Five of the deadliest shootings in the United States have occurred in the past 10 years alone: Las Vegas, Nevada; Orlando, Florida; Newtown, Connecticut all within the last five years. If there’s a time to be talking about it, it’s now.
Patterns in gun demand show each time there is a high profile mass shooting, the number of gun sales increase. People in the U.S. own about 270 million guns collectively. That’s more than any other country. It is typical for American mass shooting cases for the shooter to have more than one firearm; whereas, global mass shootings report only one gun typically.
Since our country owns the most amounts of guns and has the deadliest mass shootings it’s safe to say there may be a connection between the two. 74 percent of gun owners say their firearm is essential to their freedom, but does that freedom require owning a semi-automatic or automatic gun? I don’t believe individuals should be restricted from all guns but I think it’s time our citizens evaluate which guns belong in homes. People can fight off an intruder without an automatic gun.
Guns, like the ones used in mass shootings, are designed to kill large numbers of people in a short amount of time. There is no reason for an ordinary citizen to be in possession of something capable of that much catastrophe.
When mentally ill people go to buy a gun, there is no background check. Often times shooters who have killed numerous people, are linked to mental disorders like Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook school shooting. He was a 20-year-old man with a variety of impairments, including Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. When President Donald Trump and his administration scrapped Barack Obama’s required background check, it affected 75,000 beneficiaries. Those people suffer from a mental illness so severe that they are unable to manage their own finances, but now they can walk in a store and get a gun?
If we wish to treat mentally impaired people the same as everyone else, we would be making an effort to ban automatic guns all together rather than seeing incidents as a rare act from an insane person. That’s not to say that all guns should be banned, but it is time to put a stop to the ones meant to kill in large numbers.
There are no signs to tell when someone will use these weapons to kill. Politicians like Sanders continue to let these horrific events happen each time they choose not to address gun reform. The real question we can ask ourselves is, why do we continue to let this happen?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/health/mass-shootings-in-america-in-charts-and-graphs-trnd/index.html
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/las-vegas-shooting-everything-we-know-so-far-w506525
