It’s time for US president to act on gun control

AMERICANS SURELY cannot avoid talking about gun reform.

After the slaying of 27 people, including 20 tiny, defenceless children yesterday, United States President Barack Obama has four years to leave a real legacy and transform America’s recent history of appalling, sad, senseless and totally avoidable mass murders.

Obama stopped short of doing anything about gun reform after the Batman movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July. In the thick of a campaign for re-election he dared not upset the rabid and powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), which peddles the mantra ‘‘guns don’t kill people, people do’’.

If anything gives lie to that belief it is the contrasting mass attack in a Chinese school in which 22 children and one adult were injured by a man wielding a knife. None of the children died. That would not have been the case if the maniac had been able to get his hands on a gun.

The simple fact is that guns kill people more easily, more quickly and with less discretion than other weapons.

And the more freely guns are available, the better chance one will end up in the hands of an evil or mentally ill man, invariably wearing military-style clothing.

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center found there was substantial evidence that more guns means more murders.

And the indisputable fact is that these mass murders happen in America at a far greater rate than anywhere else in the world. Time magazine showed that of the worst 20 shootings around the world, 11 were in America. Make that 12, after yesterday’s tragedy, the seconddeadliest in American history.

In the past 30 years there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with guns across America, the website motherjones.com reported. In most cases, the killers obtained their weapons legally.

There is plenty of evidence that tighter gun control can reduce mass murders – even in the US where states with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

Yet Americans will not even talk about the problem of guns and controlling their use. It is regarded as political suicide to even raise the issue of gun control.

Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein writes: ‘‘If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.

‘‘Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t ‘too soon’. It’s much too late.’’

Finally, however, Obama seems ready to at least talk about the issue.

In his emotion-laden speech yesterday, he stopped short of calling for tougher gun-control laws, but hinted he might be ready to show real leadership around the issue.

‘‘As a country, we have been through this too many times,’’ Obama said. ‘‘And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,’’ he said, in an apparent reference to the influence of the NRA.

Something dramatic has to be done otherwise America will continue to die against a backdrop of unacceptable silence.

Talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t ‘too soon’. It’s much too late.