After the mass shooting in Las Vegas, we offered prayers, blood donations, moments of silence, health outreach — all of which lead to a stunned nation that is mourning yet again after a preventable event.
This country doesn’t need a “deadliest mass shooting” year after year. It doesn’t need more Stephen Paddocks killing countless and injuring hundreds of people. It doesn’t need a growing collection of high-powered rifles inflicting traumatic memories on the living and leaving tragic endings for the dead.
Today, this country needs political leaders with enough common sense and empathy to begin the process of removing semi-automatic and automatic weapons from the hands of civilians.
The average citizen doesn’t need an AK-47 or an M16; if it were up to me, guns would be restricted to the absolute. Realistically, I know that’s beyond possible; however, there can be and needs to be regulations on the types of weapons that are allowed to be purchased — specifically, semi-automatics.
Neither the arguments of self-defense nor hunting allow validity in owning weapons used by terrorists. Yet, we’re told by Republicans this isn’t the time or place. A mass shooting isn’t an appropriate time to discuss the effects of gun violence.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and supporters of gun control suggest that this tragedy doesn’t permit a debate on such discussion, at least not right after the turn of events. What’s needed instead are intangible, watered-down virtues, such as patience and gratitude, while the president, who is much too busy blaming Puerto Rico for his budget problems, is posed as a strong and unmoving supporter of the Second Amendment.
For a large portion of our Congress, there will never be an appropriate time to discuss gun control. The topic translates into a loss of support and money from the National Rifle Association, the all-powerful organization dedicated to putting the lives of those affected by gun violence behind their financial motives. According to OpenSecrets, a site that tracks money spent in politics, the NRA spent more than $3 million on lobbying in 2014 alone.
This shouldn’t be about the right to bear arms; this should be about ending the cycle of horrific massacres by removing weapons specifically designed to kill large groups of people.
The shooting left me in shock, but also hopeful. Maybe our elected officials, the NRA and anyone on the political spectrum who stands by their beloved Second Amendment would see that change is needed. The 59 people killed would be an amount worthy of some movement that would bring common sense into motion.
Then I thought about Orlando. And Sandy Hook. And Virginia Tech. And Columbine. The number of casualties grew and grew, yet the redemption of those lives has been halted by legislative inaction.
In June 2016, following the Orlando massacre, Democrats and even Republicans voted in four integral bills that could have strengthened gun restrictions and increased background checks on suspected terrorists. These potential laws wouldn’t by any means stop gun violence from occurring, but they’d been produced by the responsible, though somehow idealistic, idea that they’d reduce the amount of mass casualty events.
That responsibility was thwarted.
We’re left with the never-ceasing debate over gun ownership. The conversation needs to be redirected from this hyper-American viewpoint that gun ownership is a liberty just as any other. Our culture thrives on destroying any restraint that comes its way, and that includes restraints on this romanticized and treasured notion of gun ownership.
Instead, we should be discussing how to restrict gun ownership correctly. There are arguments against Democrats who introduce legislation on gun control that isn’t linked to these mass killings, and that’s fair. There are also arguments against Republicans who introduce legislation that would be ineffectual in all regards other than their personal relationships with gun lobbyists. That’s also fair.
What may help is the removal of semi automatic weapons, or the ability to create them.
“At least a dozen of the 23 firearms recovered in Las Vegas were semiautomatic rifles legally modified to fire like automatic weapons, using an alteration known as a bump fire stock,” Washington Post writer Alex Horton said.
Gun legislation already includes major regulations on fully automatic weapons, but by removing the ability to create them would be another integral move to stop massacres like that in Las Vegas from occurring again.
Looking through the videos and pictures of those who returned home and those who never will left me confused, frustrated and terrified. I know that regulation is possible, and I know that it doesn’t mean that it’ll guarantee gun violence prevention.
But regulation would place us in a better position than we are now.
I don’t understand how we can sit back over and over again and let an event like this hold our attention for a few days, maybe weeks, followed by months of apathy. Because of the repetitive cycle of tragedy and inaction, we’ve become a group of desensitized bystanders who allow gun lobbyists to run this country, as they dictate our lives and maybe even our deaths.