Head Girl's Blog: Who is to blame, guns or people?

With weekday news seldom being joyful I often find myself looking at funny or spoof news articles for a bit light-hearted entertainment. One of my favourite spoof news websites is The Onion, an American-based satire publication.

While skim reading the news reels recently I found an article which for me really struck a chord; an article based on gun massacres titled:” ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”. America, arguably one of the most advanced nations in the world, has roughly two mass shootings each month and in the wake of the recent school mass shooting is Roseburg, Oregon leaving 10 dead this could not be more poignant. 

In a moving speech about the shooting President Obama stated “Somehow this has become routine.  The reporting is routine.  My response here at this podium ends up being routine… We've become numb to this”.

The mere fact that I had to research the name of the most recent massacre as there were too many for me to remember proves this fact, in 1004 days here have been 994 mass shootings. Later in his speech President Obama cited Great Britain as an example of the gun laws he is in favour of putting in place. So what is our history with gun laws? After the Dunblane School Massacre in 1996, where 16 children and 1 teacher were murdered, the private ownership of guns was effectively made illegal. Thanks to this the UK can boast one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world with guns only accounting for 2.4% of all homicides.

So when it is so blatantly obvious that gun laws are crucial in preventing massacres what is holding America back from passing them? To put it simply the combination of the pro-gun lobbyists and republicans. They argue that it is the person's fault and not the guns, that in order to make America safer more people need to have guns to protect themselves from this. This opinion is leaving Americas’ gun laws trailing behind other countries to the point of it being embarrassing. For the future we can only hope that future presidents take up the fight of gun laws before more tragic massacres occur.