On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant walked into the Christchurch Mosques in New Zealand and killed 50 people and injured 50 more. He is an Australian who reportedly traveled to New Zealand to "clean up" the Muslim population there that he viewed as "invaders".
Tarrant carried out the shootings with a host of weapons: two semi-automatic firearms, two shotguns, and a lever-action firearm, all of which he purchased online. He possessed a firearms license.
Within 72 hours of the massacre, the prime minister announced that her cabinet has voted to ban assault rifles throughout the country. 72 hours and everyone had agreed that something must be done to protect their people from experiencing something else like this.
After one mass shooting, they are revising their gun laws.
According to MotherJones, there have been 111 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2019. 111 times someone opened fire on a public mass of people. And the American government still hasn't done a thing.
Although I am the kind of person that doesn't want to own a gun or understand why people value guns over human lives, I know that not everyone has the same perspective as I do.
I know that some people feel more secure when they have a handgun in their house, just in case. I understand that some people like to hunt, even if I will never understand why.
What I don't understand is why semi-automatic weapons are legal to obtain and why it is so easy to get a gun in the first place.
Federal law does not require states to run background checks on potential gun buyers, and even when a background check is done, rarely does it ever consider mental health records.
Even people who can't agree regarding guns can agree that the mental health system in this country is broken and too many mentally ill people cannot get help. And those same mentally ill people can obtain guns without anyone knowing they are mentally ill.
Furthermore, you do not even have to know how to use a gun in order to purchase one. A lot of gun owners exist that don't even know how to properly handle their weapon. This is just an added problem to the already long list of things wrong with the gun industry here.
There are no laws prohibiting the hoarding of weapons, even when we have seen that many of this country's mass shooters have had a whole arsenal of weapons and, obviously, intended on using them to hurt and kill people.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 and has not been renewed since. Someone, please explain to me why a citizen who is not military personnel would need to own an assault rifle. It's major overkill for the self-defense argument. Most people don't hunt with automatic weapons.
The small number of people that go to shooting ranges and collect weapons for no other purpose other than liking them but never using them should not be prioritized over the thousands of people that are killed in this country due to gun violence. Why should we protect an amendment that was written in the 1700s to the extent that innocent people die every day?
Are we really that nationalist, that full of ourselves, to we think we have the right gun policies over the rest of the world, given that other countries can't understand why we stand behind guns the way we do?
America, please take note of what New Zealand is doing. Please follow in their footsteps. We have had enough violence and death. We need a change. Badly.
