School shootings and the right to life
Another week, another shooting at a US school. It is testament to human nature that despite the grim regularity of these atrocities, they still have the power to shock.
What happened at Parkland on Wednesday illustrates the horror that can ensue when guns are easily available.
As the US and wider world reels once again at the senseless loss of life during what should have been a normal school day, the numbers speak clearly. Only six weeks into 2018 and already there have been five school shootings in the USA in which a gun was discharged and victims either injured or killed, according to gun safety non-profit organisation Everytown.
Presidents can shed tears or tweet their belief that all schools should be safe places – but are the people and the law-makers paying heed?
If people want the right to buy and bear arms, with that comes the fact that their children and loved ones may one day fall victim to a lunatic wielding a gun in school, on the street, at a concert, in the cinema or wherever else he, or she, chooses to wreak their madness.
Presidents may have some power, but in reality it is the people in the community who must buy into stricter gun laws to protect their children.
In December 2012 mentally disturbed Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed 20 children between the ages of six and seven at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
He also murdered six adult staff before he shot himself dead. He used a 45-round semi-automatic assault rifle and a Glock pistol taken from his mother’s extensive gun collection in her bedroom. He also shot her dead. Images of terrified children, like the images from Parkland, send shivers down the spine
Yet, despite nationwide mourning in the US, increased calls for tougher gun control and President Obama breaking down in tears after Sandy Hook, nothing has happened and here we are again.
As Newsweek said on the fifth anniversary of Sandy Hook: “Zero pieces of national gun-control legislation have passed to prevent a similar massacre. But more than 100 have failed.”
No tragedy seems enough for changes in the US federal gun laws. Despite campaigns, two major pieces of legislation – the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, which would have required universal background checks for firearm sales – failed to pass the Senate.
At state level, since Sandy Hook, 210 laws have been enacted to strengthen gun safety, including background check laws in four states that didn’t have them, bringing the total to 18 states and the District of Columbia with background checks in place.
But there are 52 states, a vociferous gun lobby and a belief among some in the US that the right to bear arms is essential for liberty. Whose liberty is a question to consider. Meanwhile, the body count will rise. And mothers and fathers will continue to bury their children. It is too much to bear.