Everybody knows their lines. With 45 mass shootings already this year they have rehearsed them often enough. Indeed, the tragedy lies not only in the trauma of the victims but in the apparent helplessness of the political class and the hopelessness that the deathly cycle might be broken.
On Thursday night, following the shootings in Oregon, Barack Obama once again changed the tenor. Alongside the tone of sorrow and despair there was anger and frustration. “As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said. “It does nothing to prevent this carnage being inflicted some place in America, next week or a couple of months from now. Somehow this has become routine.”
Next time you hear Gun Control Australia or some similarly opaque organisation banging on about our gun laws getting soft just remember — it takes a long time and a significant investment to legally get a gun in this country, and the vast majority of law-abiding, licensed shooters aren’t interested in jeapordising that.
But back to America. Gun reform can and does work. What is broken in the US is the mentality that gun ownership is some God-given right that requires nothing from those who take part in it.
Also broken is the idea that when the second amendment was adopted in 1791, granting citizens the right to bear arms, the kind of weapons and ammunition available in 2015 could not have even been conceived of.
Single shot muzzle loaders were the latest technology in the late 1700s; a far cry from the AR-15 platform available with every possible piece of military grade accessory.
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