The United States has an obsession with guns like no other developed country in the world. Whether a mass shooting is in the news, America needs to confront its gun epidemic.
Let's start with some facts. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but, according to a Congressional Research Service study in 2012, our country owns about 48 percent of the world's civilian-owned guns.
Between the years 1966 and 2012, the United States had 90 mass shootings. The next closest country is the Philippines, which saw 18 shootings.
After every mass shooting, there is a division of opinions. Some say immediately after a tragedy is an inappropriate time to discuss gun control. However, in my view, that is
Some say there is nothing we can do about these shootings, but the United States is the only developed country to see mass shootings at a high frequency. What has happened at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and many more schools warrant a discussion now about what we can do right now.
Maybe we can look at what other developed countries have done to combat gun violence.
A popular example is Australia. After a young man killed 35 people and wounded two dozen others, the government pushed fundamental changes to the country's gun laws.
The National Agreement on Firearms put strict regulations on automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles, mandated licensing and registration and instituted a temporary gun buyback program.
Over 650 thousand assault weapons were bought by the government and took out of public circulation. Many analysts say that these gun control measures have been highly effective in the declination of gun death rates since 1996.
In Great Britain, following a mass shooting in 1987, Parliament passed the Firearms Amendment Act, which expanded the list of banned weapons, including certain semiautomatic rifles and increased registration requirements for other weapons.
Unfortunately, no other country has a gun lobby quite like the United States does. While polls have shown a majority of Americans support new gun control measures like stricter background checks, entities like the NRA have a stronghold on our government— especially Republican congressmen.
On Tuesday, the Florida State House rejected a motion to even consider banning many semiautomatic guns and large-capacity magazines.
Many students from Parkland, Florida, the site of the latest mass shooting, were at the state legislature to protest the current gun laws. This photograph from the Associated Press shows the horror and disappointment in the students' faces when lawmakers rejected the assault weapons ban.
With Republicans controlling Congress, substantive change seems as though it will be incremental at best.
If there cannot be new gun control measures, then the least Congress could do is allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.
In 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress told the CDC to stop researching firearm injuries and deaths. The NRA accused the CDC of promoting gun control, so the CDC stopped funding gun violence research.
The NRA's grip on our nation's leaders is chilling. This group cannot exactly be pinpointed as the reason why these mass shootings happen, but they are why nothing gets done. It's time for our nation's leaders to distance themselves from the NRA and move forward with common-sense gun laws.