RESPONDING TO THE MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE US

 

RESPONDING TO THE MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE US 

 It is truly beyond my comprehension and utterly heartbreaking to read how innocent Americans going about their daily routine of shopping have been gunned down, by a fellow American, who had the legal right to arm himself with weapons of mass destruction. (Boulder, Colorado)

It’s  beyond  belief and truly disturbing  to me that an American  civilian can legally and openly carry a military assault rifle ( in Colorado)  in time of peace and within seconds can turn happy shoppers into bodies strewn across a  parking lot.  

I started to check the numbers of mass murders occurring in the US and other democracies.  

As a parent,  what I found the most shocking was the number of mass murderers finding their way into schools.

It makes one wonder, why on Earth, did American soldiers journey  to third world countries, like Afghanistan, to protect students  from  terrorist  attacks, when in their  own homeland, over 100 hundred schools are terrorized each year by homegrown American child killers.

  As I read about school shootings, I wondered with profound sadness, how many students would end their academic career, never to return to school again, as the agony and fear is too crushing to bear? Has government agency bothered to keep stats?

 

How can distraught parents ever recover from losing a loving child to such horrible, completely preventable, and senseless tragedy - it will leave open wounds that will never heal?  The overwhelming sorrow experienced by parents and siblings will be so unbearable they might forever remain scarred.

As a student, I cannot imagine returning  to a school where I  had witnessed my classmates, my friends, my teachers mowed down, in cold blood, by a deranged  person armed  with legally acquired  guns, rifle, and assault weapons

The loss of so many young and brilliant minds is so widespread that it is completely impossible to fathom the consequences.

 Would that one brilliant and gifted student, whose life was abruptly ended by a hail of bullets, have been the one, to find a cure for a terminal disease?

Would one of those slaughtered students have become another Albert Einstein, George Washington Carver, Ben Franklin,  Amelia Earhart, Grace Hopper, or Michelle Obama.  We will never know!

Not only are individual families’ lives catastrophically impacted forever, but mass shootings devastate whole communities as they instill daily fear of uncertainty as residents wonder “When and where will the next mass shooting bring its reign of terror?”

Assault rifles like the AR 15 and the AK 47 are military   weapons invented for the sole purpose to be used by soldiers in the time of war.

Since United States has not been invaded by another country, why are citizens, no matter how deranged, able to buy weapons of war???

If this angry, disturbed young man did not have access to guns that are specifically designed to kill; he might have used a knife, a baseball bat, or maybe a vehicle.

However, the aforementioned items were not designed to kill!! If hardware, such as a knife, is used for the wrong purpose, the resultant death, if any, would be miniscule compared to the astounding number of Americans killed by assault rifles.

Vehicles were not designed to kill, but are capable of doing so-that is why driving a vehicle requires following a myriad of strict rules and regulations.

So why on Earth would the US government not pass gun regulations for weapons that have specifically been designed to kill - they serve no other purpose! Enacting common sense gun regulations does not mean that one can no longer buy a gun.

Exactly how many lives have been lost due American citizens’ using their legally owned guns to mow down fellow Americans?

Stat show an average of over  35,  000 innocent Americans, each and every year, have their lives cut short by guns.

At this rate, in 100 years, Americans citizens, not terrorists or enemy soldiers, will have massacred over 3,500,000 fellow Americans!!!

 That means more Americans, will have killed each other, than in all the wars combined (2,758, 196)!

And what is even more heartbreaking is that one half of the American killed were young people between the ages of 18 and 35! How many parents are still grieving for their lost children?    

What chance did the police officer in Boulder, Colorado have with his assigned  handgun  against a deranged shooter, legally armed to the hilt with a military style assault rifle where one can hold the trigger and there will be a continuous burst of bullets?

  The law enacted in 1994 that made it “unlawful to manufacture, transfer or possess “a semi-automatic assault weapon expired in 2004.

Assault rifles accounted for 403 (85.8%) of the total of 501 mass shooting fatalities reported after the ban was lifted on assault rifles.  (1994-2004)

 

In the worst mass shooting in the history of the US the  killing 58 innocent Americans and wounding, many grievously, 546- a semi-automatic rifle was used. Even if every single victim had carried a hand gun for defense , they had no chance against  a continuous volley of bullets! As a matter of fact semi-automatic rifles were used in 4 of the deadliest mass murders in the US –the Orlando night club massacre, Sandy hook Elementary massacre, and Texas First Baptist Church massacre.

 I believe even a first grade would ask,” Daddy why don’t they stop selling assault rifles?”

It turns out that poll after poll has shown the majority of American favour a ban on assault rifles.

As a Canadian, I simply cannot understand how  a country  can describe itself as “ the greatest  democracy in the world”, iif the elected officials who are supposed to represent the wishes of the people are refusing to act  legislation to significantly reduce the murders  of fellow Americans.

The question that begs to be answered - are there examples anywhere in the world where  the enactment of strict regulations reduced mass massacres?

Yes!

In 1996, Australia had its worst mass murder in their history where 35 people were shot dead and 23 wounded –some grievously.

Australia like the US was a country with a very high rate of gun ownership.

The outrage and grief moved the government to enact common sense gun legislation tightening the rules for gun ownership.

The most stunning result of this legislation was there has not been a single mass shooting murder in Australia from 1996 to 2021!   

There were even more benefits - a 74% decline in gun suicides, homicides by guns plunged by 59%, and robberies using guns dropped significantly.

There are many examples of the relationship between gun regulations and shooting deaths around the world.

In Canada there were 3 mass shootings in schools from 2000 -2014. Canada has strict gun laws and the government is constantly working on making the regulations ever tighter. Canada has an average of a little over 200  shooting  deaths per  year compared with the US which has over 35,000 shooting deaths per year! 

The tiny country of Switzerland is third in the number of guns owned per 100 residents in the world. But their murder rate by guns is very low - less than 100 per year. They have not had a mass shooting in 18 years. (4 deaths or more)  But, they do have extremely strict gun laws and regulations.

When US legislators can learn from a stream of endless examples from countries all around the world why are they not listening?