On September 19th, three days after the mass shooting that claimed twelve American lives, the US Navy Yard, headquarters of Naval District Washington, reopened.
As a nation on the possible brink of war, shaken from the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, and the Boston Bombing, a new mass shooting is the latest in a seemingly continuous wave of national trials.
While family members of the victims remain in mourning, lawmakers and civilians are beginning to formulate new security measures to help prevent future mass shootings.
The day of the Navy Yard shooting, outraged Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) issued a statement calling for gun control laws, “When will enough be enough? Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country.”
While lawmakers in Washington feel a need to take action, many Americans feel like introducing gun control laws would be an emotional decision that would take away Americans’ 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
“The people who are causing the problems and causing the violence are already breaking the laws, and gun control laws will leave those without guns defenseless,” argues senior Cassidy Elliot.
However, some citizens agree that implementing tighter restrictions on purchasing and owning guns is the only practical way to protect civilians from mass shootings.
“It’s impossible to completely eliminate this violence from our society, but expanding background checks to ensure only responsible law-abiding Americans could obtain these weapons would help reduce mass-shootings,” Alabama High School Democrats’ member, Jordan Cozby claims.
While gun control is still a touchy subject for many Americans, many law makers are looking further into what causes shooters to make extreme decisions: mental health problems.
Last week in an interview on Boston’s local NPR station Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) discussed her support of the Excellence in Mental Health Act, a bill that would fund emergency psychiatric services across the country. ‘“What we need is a willingness to act,” Stabenow said. “This is an unfortunate crisis that is occurring over and over and over again.”’
In President Obama’s address on the Navy Yard shooting, he expressed his sympathies to the affected families and critiqued America’s unwillingness to accept gun control laws. “But we Americans are not inherently a more violent people than folks are in other countries. We’re not inherently prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart, what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don’t do enough, we don’t take the basic common sense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.”
As the president mentioned in his speech, America is not uniquely alone in mass shootings and violence.
According to the Washington Post, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Al-Shabaab terrorist group bombed and sent in armed shooters to a shopping mall, killing over 60 people and causing a four-day standoff with the Kenyan army that ended this Tuesday.
These events, though on separate continents, question the security of the everyday citizen. Will these events finally lead the US into imposing stricter gun control laws?
Do you think that U.S. needs gun control laws?
- No (53%, 8 Votes)
- Yes (40%, 6 Votes)
- I don't care. (7%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 15
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