America’s aversion to gun controls

Maybe this time will be different. Maybe the sheer number of people killed will finally lead to some common sense restrictions on guns.

Because the age and innocence of the victims at Sandy Hook school didn’t make a difference. Because the transformation of the Virginia Tech campus into a killing field didn’t make a difference. Because the 12 people slaughtered in a Colorado, movie theater five years ago didn’t make a difference. Because the nine people gunned down by a white supremacist at a Charleston church two years ago didn’t make a difference.

This year alone, more than 11,700 people have been killed by gunfire. Almost two dozen children are shot every day in the United States.

But those with the power to stop the killing have no interest in doing so. “I will never, ever infringe on the right of people to keep and bear arms,” US President Donald Trump vowed in a speech to the National Rifle Association at its national conference this year.

The NRA spent three times as much on political ads for Trump as it did for Mitt Romney in 2012.

More than 100 gun control proposals have been introduced in Congress since then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011.

Every time a massacre takes place, the gun rights advocates shift the blame. It’s mental illness. It’s domestic violence. It’s racism. It’s allegiance to Isis. It’s simple evil. “It was an act of pure evil,” Trump said yesterday. Yet there is only one thing these mass shootings all have in common: guns.

The shootings are getting deadlier, with the number of victims increasing. Why? Are gunmen getting crazier, more abusive, more racist, more radicalised? Or is the access to guns designed for war getting easier? Paddock would not have been able to kill 59 people with a knife.

It’s time for common sense — not manufactured fear — to make a difference.