American gun laws need to change with the times

THE attack by Stephen Paddock on a Las Vegas concert was, as President Trump put it, “an act of pure evil”. As the investigators discover more about the circumstances surrounding this atrocity our hearts go out to the families of the dead, the hundreds who were injured and the countless Americans who have been left fearful and afraid by the worst mass shooting in their country’s history.

Britain shares deep ties of kinship, culture and history with the USA. It is impossible for us not to sympathise with the plight of ordinary people who went out to listen to some music and never came home. What is harder for us to understand is the approach America takes to the ownership and procurement of guns and ammunition.

The US constitution’s second amendment, ratified in 1791, famously protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”. It is the commitment to these words, interpreted in different ways by the different states, that has made it so easy for the likes of Paddock to lay waste to innocent life.

And he is far from alone. With 273 mass shootings having taken place in the first 275 days of this year, mass murder carried out at gunpoint has become almost a daily occurrence in the US.

The American people are right to take their constitutional rights seriously. It is staggering though that so many consider this more important than the lives of the innocent people routinely gunned down with weapons of a power and capability unimaginable to those who wrote the Bill of Rights back in the 18th century.

Times have changed, American gun laws need to change with them.