Massacre won’t force reforms
YOU can have all the vetting in the world but it only takes one psychotic episode to make a law-abiding gun owner into a mass-killing monster.
The availability of guns in the United States, particularly assault weapons including semiautomatic firearms, means the horrors of Las Vegas will be repeated again and again.
We still don’t know what motivated 64-year-old retiree Stephen Paddock to open fire on thousands of country music fans, but it seems certain this was no spur-of-the-moment act. It looks like a calculated attack that was weeks, perhaps months, in the planning.
The man responsible for the worst mass shooting in US history had managed to amass a substantial cache of weapons and ammunition without setting off any alarm bells.
Police found 23 firearms, including AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles, plus a mountain of ammunition in the hotel room.
Another 19 guns and several thousand rounds of ammunition were found in the killer’s house. Police also confirmed explosives had been found.
If you are going to amass that sort of weaponry, then Nevada is the place to do it.
There are no mandated waiting periods and you can buy as many firearms as you like. Gun owners do not need a licence and are not required to register their weapons.
Nevada does require licensed dealers to complete background checks and bans criminals, mentally unfit individuals and drug users from buying guns, but the problem with that sort of vetting is that the likes of Paddock slip through the net.
Before he slaughtered dozens of people, Paddock was, on paper at least, a model citizen, a university-educated accountant and a licensed pilot with no history of criminality or mental illness. He was apparently a quiet man who lived in an upscale retirement community with his AsianAustralian girlfriend. His only vice appeared to be gambling.
If Paddock’s act of evil was in any way motivated by religion or politics then it should be labelled domestic terrorism, but thus far authorities have not released any detail on the killer’s motivations.
There is no simple answer to the US’s gun fetish and it’s naive to think an Australian-style gun buyback could ever happen in a country with an entrenched gun culture.
Only about a third of Americans own a firearm, but the number of guns is almost equal to the country’s population of 325 million.
It is now difficult to buy an automatic weapon legally, but still available is plenty of semiautomatic weaponry better suited to the battleground.
There are currently about 630,000 machineguns registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including law enforcement weapons.
But why would an ordinary citizen need a machinegun? Are the deer that hard to kill? And surely a revolver is sufficient for self-defence.
I understand why many Americans feel they need to be armed to protect their homes and families given the crime rate in some regions and the ease with which criminals can obtain firearms. But there has to be some sensible middle ground.
The Second Amendment – which states “a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” – is sacred to some and the Constitution is not a document that can be readily altered. But that doesn’t mean gun reform is an impossibility.
Gun reform has long been a topic of discussion in the US but that hasn’t translated into meaningful legislative change and, sadly, is unlikely to in the near future.
A poll by the Pew Research Centre conducted this year showed the overwhelming majority of Americans are concerned about the level of gun violence but only 47 per cent believe stricter gun laws will reduce mass shootings.
In the past 18 months there have been more than 500 mass shootings in the US in which four or more people have been injured or killed.
One fears there will be many more unless the pro- and anti-gun lobbies find a way to negotiate sensible reforms.
THERE IS NO SIMPLE ANSWER TO THE US’S GUN FETISH AND IT’S NAIVE TO THINK AN AUSTRALIAN-STYLE GUN BUYBACK COULD EVER HAPPEN
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist Regular columnist Julian Tomlinson will return October 12