US should revisit its gun policy
Shootings like the one in Florida are changing public opinion
The latest school shooting in Florida, which has killed 17 people, is the eighth gun-related incident this year. The shooting will have no immediate impact on US gun control regulations. With the Republican Party in power in both houses of Congress and a president, Donald Trump, who campaigned on opposing any limits on the
“right to bear arms”, the status quo will remain on the legislative front. Last December the Congress saw an attempt to further dilute the already weak gun control laws.
The more positive development is that these repeated incidents, however gradually, are beginning to change public opinion in the US. Gallup, which has monitored US attitudes towards gun control for decades, showed last month that the number of Americans who support stricter gun control has risen to 60%, steadily increasing from a low of 44% in 2011. Those who feel the rules should be loosened even further are down to only five per cent. Support for tighter regulations has surged after a number of major shootings, most notably the Las Vegas hotel killings in October last year which resulted in 59 deaths. The Florida shooting should garner more support for legislative action.
However, no one should hold their breath. The Republican Party’s white working-class base has long ago merged restrictions on gun ownership with a larger narrative of a big city establishment that has pauperised them economically, overridden their more conservative social views in areas like gay rights, and demeaned their religious views and ethnicity. Gun control can only be separated from this larger sense of alienation if the US is able to bridge what has become an enormous divide within its society – a divide that directly fed into the surprise presidential election victory of Donald Trump. The bizarreness of gun policy in the US can be seen with the Congress. It has repeatedly passed legislation approving millions of dollars in spending to beef up security in US schools – acknowledging there is a shooter problem. But it has sought to simultaneously reduce gun controls overall. The Florida shooting will not be a tipping point, but each such incident seems to be moving the US in that direction.