Why Doesn’t The US Have Gun Control?

 

Last Friday, November 3, 2023, yet another shooting incident took place in the US, this time at Cincinnati. A sick person driving a dark sedan fired 22 rounds in quick succession at a bunch of people, mainly children, standing at an intersection. One 11-year old boy died and four other children and an adult were injured. Two of the children attended Cincinnati Preparatory Academy, including the boy who was killed. The other three attended Cincinnati public schools. One of the injured victims remains hospitalized in stable condition, while the others have been discharged. Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, who called the shooting "sickening and unimaginable," said the kids were playing outside when the shots rang out on the city’s West End. The scene is just a short walk from a day care, a girls' dance studio, and a playground.    "Twenty-two rounds were fired," Pureval said. "Twenty-two rounds in a moment – into a crowd of kids. No time to respond. No time to react."

I looked to Wikipedia for a list of mass shootings in the US and my mind went numb. In many of these shootings, children have been targeted in their classrooms. In December 2012, at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, 20 children between the ages of six and seven, and six teachers were killed by a lone 20-year-old gunman, who began his day by shooting his mother before proceeding to the school. Finally, he killed himself. A decade later, in May 2022, Salvador Ramos, an 18-year old, went to the Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, of which he was an alumnus and shot and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Why can’t the US, a mature democracy with a thriving economy, ensure that such incidents don’t take place? The answer to my question lies in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution which gives its citizens’ the right to keep arms for self-defence. The exact language of the Second Amendment runs as follows:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This amendment has been interpreted by US courts to give its citizens the right to carry weapons in public spaces with reasonable exceptions. The reasonable exception covers mentally unstable individuals and felons. This has meant that almost anyone in the US, who is not in jail, can buy himself or herself a firearm, including semi-automatic guns of the sort that is usually available in most countries only to military forces. Any amendment to the Second Amendment that would abridge this right is unacceptable to a large percentage of Americans.

The Second Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791, a time when the guns available to individuals were either shotguns or pistols or flintlock rifles.  Breech-loading firearms came into vogue only in the 19^th century. During the US Civil War, which took place in 1861-1865, around 70 years after the Second Amendment was ratified, the muzzleloader percussion cap rifled musket was the most numerous weapon, being standard issue for the Union and Confederate armies. Hundreds of thousands of the single-shot breech-loading Sharps and Burnside rifles to the Spencer and the Henry rifles - two of the world's first repeating rifles – were also issued, mostly by the Union. The individuals who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment definitely did not have semi-automatic self-loading guns in mind. However, many intelligent human beings in the present day United States feel that the Second Amendment gives an almost unfettered right to its residents to buy advanced firearms and carry them around in public! More massacres will definitely take place and many in the US just don’t seem to care.