Could the Florida School Shootings Bring About Change to American Gun Laws?

Since the 1992 Columbine High School shoot­ing, 122 inno­cent peo­ple have been killed in numer­ous school shoot­ings in the United States of America. The biggest loss of life was at Virginia Tech, where 33 peo­ple were killed. However, the most heinous, was at Sandy Hook Elementary, when 27 young kids had their lives grue­some­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. That inci­dent shocked the con­science of mil­lions of Americans, and non-Americans alike.

An angry then President Obama, called on Congress to pass leg­is­la­tion to make it hard­er for any­one to buy a gun. His appeal was also sup­port­ed by mil­lions of Americans who were unre­served in denounc­ing this bru­tal act, but Congress did noth­ing. The motive behind Congress’ inac­tion is the pow­er­ful National Rifle Association (NRA). This is a wealthy orga­ni­za­tion with a lot of influ­en­tial peo­ple. The NRA gives mil­lions in cam­paign fund­ing to politi­cians from both the Democratic and Republican Parties, but main­ly to Republicans. In Obama’s sec­ond year in office, the Republicans became the major­i­ty in both the House and the Senate and so they did not con­sid­er the wish­es of the Americans peo­ple includ­ing the president.

However, last week’s mas­sacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High school, in Parkland, Florida, which result­ed in the death of 14 stu­dents and 3 teach­ers, could be the cat­a­lyst for a long over­due change to gun laws, in a coun­try where the sec­ond amend­ment is revered. The sec­ond amend­ment is the law that gives all law-abid­ing Americans the right to bear arms. Students, some from the same Florida school where the most recent shoot­ing occurred, and oth­ers from across the coun­try have become activists. Many open­ly blast­ed President Donald Trump, for blam­ing the shoot­ings on men­tal ill­ness, rather than blam­ing it on how easy it is to buys guns. Guns that are get­ting into the hands of the wrong peo­ple who have no regard for human life. Some stu­dents even staged a “die in” out­side the Whitehouse’s com­pound to protest their anger and displeasure.

This move­ment is gain­ing trac­tion and could be a game chang­er. Consequently, Trump has announced that the so-called Bump Stock — a kind of con­trap­tion that con­verts a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon to ful­ly auto­mat­ic be banned. This was the same device used by the deranged gun­man in Las Vegas to kill 58 peo­ple attend­ing a con­cert. After the Las Vegas car­nage, many peo­ple includ­ing this writer heard of Bump Stock for the first time, and although so many lives were lost, Trump and the Congress of the United States did noth­ing to ban the device.

But now, he has decid­ed to act. It shows that the stu­dents’ voic­es are been heard, that an obsti­nate, self-cen­tered pro­tag­o­nist like Trump, may final­ly capit­u­late to the demand of the stu­dents and oth­er pro­po­nents, who favor changes to the cur­rent gun laws. This osten­si­bly caus­es the Whitehouse to pay atten­tion, per­haps much to the cha­grin of the NRA, who gave an esti­mat­ed 300 hun­dred mil­lion dol­lar to Trump’s suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial campaign.

I am not naïve, how­ev­er, to believe that there will be any sig­nif­i­cant changes to guns laws in the US. Lawmakers in Florida recent­ly vot­ed down a motion to dis­cuss ban­ning the AR-15 rifle, the same Semi-Automatic weapon used to mur­der the afore­men­tioned 17 peo­ple in that state.

You have to ask where are their con­science? Is the NRA that pow­er­ful or some American politi­cians don’t have the con­vic­tion to stand up for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, or, are they down­right stupid?

As long as the NRA con­tin­ues to exist, you can bet your bot­tom dol­lar that no sig­nif­i­cant change will be made to gun laws in that coun­try, although I would be the first to wel­come it. They will lob­by the politi­cians in Washington and state hous­es through­out the U.S., which will influ­ence them not to even vague­ly con­sid­er any change. Some Americans are obsessed with guns, and they are aware that it is their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to bear arms, and will not con­cede an inch to ensure that guns don’t get into the hands of the wrong people.

I don’t know what it will take before the Americans real­ize that guns kill peo­ple. Let’s wait and see if there will be any tan­gi­ble change after this protest ends.

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