Another week. Another senseless massacre of innocents. These past few days have brought about horrifying news as two mass shootings in two disparate corners of the United States (US) transpired merely hours apart from each other. The first occurred during the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a three-day food festival held every year in the small city of Gilroy in Northern California, where a shooter, armed with a rifle, gunned down three people. The second incident occurred during the Old Timers Event, a local community festival in Brooklyn, New York, where one man was killed in the midst of mostly elderly and middle-aged attendees. Another recent shooting that evoked strong emotions from all across the globe was the tragic Santa Fe High School shooting of May 2018, wherein two teachers and eight students were killed, including an exchange student from Pakistan named Sabika Sheikh.
These aforementioned incidents are the latest examples of a continual mass shooting epidemic that has plagued the US for many decades. Although several factors, including mental illness, racist and anti-immigrant sentiments as well as childhood bullying of the perpetrators, have been repeatedly cited as significantly contributing to this worrying trend, one factor stands out quite conspicuously: gun ownership. The most likely reason that mass shootings are more prevalent in the US is the fact that guns are much easier to obtain in the country, due, largely, to a very powerful gun lobbying nexus led by the National Rifle Association (NRA) as well as a large proportion of Americans who believe that their right to own firearms will be wrongly inhibited by any form of gun control policies.
The most widely accepted definition of mass shootings is offered by the ‘Gun Violence Archive’, which defines mass shootings as firearm violence resulting in at least four people being shot at roughly the same time and location, excluding the assailant. In view of this definition, there have been more than 2,128 mass shootings in the world since 2013, with the US being afflicted by more mass shootings than any other country.
According to a recent study, one-third of the world’s total public mass shootings between 1967 and 2019 have occurred in the US. These facts and figures, as horrific as they already are, still understate the repercussions of mass shootings for the general public. Survivors of mass shootings often suffer from severe mental and emotional trauma, which includes survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These illnesses can have disastrous effects in the long run as witnessed when two survivors committed suicide following the infamous Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
The US recently passed the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licencing and Registration Act in honour of the young Pakistani exchange student who was killed last year
Research into the mass-shooting phenomenon has brought about damning evidence, which concludes that gun prevalence is inextricably linked to gun violence. For instance, data collected by GunPolicy.org shows that there is a direct relationship between the percentage of adults who own guns and gun-related deaths in US states. States like Arkansas, Idaho and Alaska, which have a very high proportion of adults who own firearms, suffer between 13 and 20 gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents each year.
Specialised research in the field of mental health also refutes the claims of proponents of gun ownership who blame the mentally ill for most homicides in the US. Michael Stone, a psychiatrist at Columbia University has stated that out of his database of 235 shooters, only 52 of them (22 percent) were mentally ill, making it entirely fallacious to brand the mentally ill as being responsible for the epidemic. All in all, death and destruction in US schools, festivals and workplaces stems solely from the fact that the US has more privately owned guns than people. According to a 2017 study, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 120.5 guns for every 100 residents.
Understanding the perils of ever-increasing mass shootings, several organisations such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) and Gun Free Kids have been vehemently advocating stronger gun control laws but unfortunately, their chants for change are reaching deaf ears. This is because gun politics has perennially been dominated by the NRA, which has enough influence to rally between 30 and 40 percent of US gun-owning households to rubbish any bill that imposes strict gun controls. While 30-40 percent of a population may seem like a small minority, this proportion of gun-owning, anti-regulation Americans is enough to intimidate any politician, making him/her fear that their political career will end if they oppose the NRA.
Despite the strong monopolisation of gun politics by the NRA, some small successes do trickle through for gun control activists. The US recently passed the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licencing and Registration Act in honour of the young Pakistani exchange student who was killed last year. The bill introduces a comprehensive process for the licencing and registration of guns in the US and could be a watershed, ushering in more bills that could successfully curtail gun ownership in the country.
It is hoped that the US Congress acknowledges the dire nature of the gun-induced mass shootings problem in the country and follows the lead of countries like Australia that have nearly ended all gun-related deaths by imposing restrictions on gun imports and using highly successful federal gun buyback schemes to reduce the number of firearms owned by the general public. How many more innocent lives must be lost before any tangible steps are taken by the US to make its streets safer?
The writer is a scholar at Columbia University