On October 1, the United States was rocked by a mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas. With at least 58 dead and hundreds injured, the Las Vegas mass shooting has been called one of the deadliest in modern American history. Only 16 months before that, on June 12 last year, the same was said about a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. At the time, 49 dead and 53 injured seemed an unthinkably high number of casualties. To me, there could never be a worse shooting. Finally, America would change its tune about the Second Amendment and implement the gun control it so desperately needs.
But no—of course not. The moment politicians broach the subject of gun control, the National Rifle Association (NRA) rears its ugly head and demands that representatives leave their guns alone. Gun lobbyists cry that they have the right, as law-abiding American citizens, to bear arms. In the wake of the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that left 20 children and six adults dead, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre argued, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”
According to a study entitled Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use by the Violence Policy Center, this is simply not true. During the period encompassing 2013 to 2015, only 1.1 percent of victims of attempted or successful violent crimes and 0.2 percent of attempted or successful property crime victims used a firearm in self-defense. As well, it’s been proven that having guns in the home increases the risk of gun homicide and suicide, regardless of how the guns are stored.
In my opinion, it’s astonishingly clear that the United States needs to halt the proliferation of guns amongst its citizens. There is no sane way to justify a civilian owning an assault rifle; it is completely unnecessary. The existence of the Mass Shooting Tracker website speaks to how out of hand America’s gun problem has become and how many people have been affected by lax gun control laws. How many more mass shootings will it take until Congress actually does something about them?
For Australia, it only took one worst mass shooting in the nation to make a change. After an April 1996 massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania left 35 dead and 23 wounded, the government knew that it was time to strengthen gun control. Although they faced vocal public opposition, the Australian parliament banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons, instituted a mandatory 28-day waiting period to buy guns, tightened licensing requirements, and established a national gun registry. The government also destroyed over 600,000 civilian guns surrendered in a buyback scheme. As a result, zero mass shootings have occurred in Australia since Port Arthur.
Unfortunately, the solution to America’s gun problem may not be as simple as creating stricter regulations. In spite of Australia’s successes with gun control, it is estimated that the number of guns in the country is equal to the level it had around the time of Port Arthur, although the level of gun violence is no longer as high. Four out of the six Australian states have waived the 28-day waiting period to buy a gun after applying to purchase one. This goes to show just how difficult it is to implement long-lasting change on divisive issues such as gun control.
Getting gun control to stick in the United States would be particularly challenging. It is estimated that the country contains 310 million guns, which is only 13 million shy of its population. Carrying out a buyback program would be an enormous logistical and financial task, made even harder by the Second Amendment and the gun lobbyists who uphold it so ferociously. The 50 states tend to have wildly different laws that even contradict federal law at times, such as how marijuana is legal in eight states and Washington, D.C., but is illegal under federal law. It is likely that gun control measures passed at the federal level would be undermined by laws in individual states.
There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to America’s gun control problem, mainly because of gun culture and the Second Amendment. Hopefully, America can sort it out before the next worst mass shooting in its history. Just don’t hold your breath.