First and foremost let me offer my deepest sympathies to those who were killed, their families and everyone else affected by the mass shooting in Connecticut today. I am angered at a few things, the fact that the media are interviewing kids about the tragedy, is quite classless in my opinion. It has got to be now that things are done to prevent this type of thing from occurring as often as it does.
The people who say this is not the time to talk about gun control are the ones who never want to talk about gun control.
It annoys me when I hear “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. It has an element of truth to it, but quite frankly I see no argument against implementing a ban on guns! It’s beyond depressing that even a tragedy as large as the one we saw today in Conneticut will not be enough to persuade the US to change it’s gun laws.
Someone argued that it could have been a bomb, that the person chose to do this, but the amount of shootings in the US far outnumber the amount of bombings – why in my opinion? Because guns are Legal, bombs are Illegal. If you look at the statistics, this type of thing rarely happens in countries where there are gun laws such as the UK. There are no gun laws in America, and this is not the first ‘mass murder’ in the US this year, or the second. Obviously it is not ‘Gun laws’ alone that will solve the problem.
There are two main steps that need to be taken – and fast.
Free healthcare- It should not be harder to get mental health care than it is to get a gun in the US. This is the biggest issue, there needs to be free mental health checks – or at least when purchasing a gun (If they remain legal). The US need to look after the sick, to save lives and prevent anything like this happening again. Although it inevitably will, it will definitely save lives.
The second is gun control – People can argue all they like that it is their right to own a gun or that banning guns won’t affect things like this. It certainly will, young generations won’t be growing up with the gun culture and the amount of guns in circulation will fall rapidly.
People say we shouldn’t argue over this and leave the families in peace – do these people want this to happen again? The US government need to act fast to avoid anything like this happening any time soon.
Crohan O’Shea @Crohaan