One part of the country thinks the answer is fewer guns, while another part wants to see more guns everywhere to take down deranged gunmen.
Journalists like me don’t even write new stories about the little things that can happen to solve the problem. They regurgitate old writings after previous shoots because nothing has changed.
We know gun violence can happen anywhere because it has happened everywhere. Schools, churches, supermarkets, ball fields, Walmarts. Gun violence targets young children, blacks, Asian Americans, random citizens and bipartisan politicians.
More American children 17 and under died from gun violence in 2021 than from Covid-19 during the pandemic:
- 1,560 Gun violence deaths among people aged 0-17 in 2021, according to Gun Violence Archive.
- 1,070 Deaths from Covid-19 in people aged 0 to 17 during the pandemic, starting Wednesday, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Powerless President
Senate paralyzed
After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, a majority of senators accepted a bipartisan bill to expand background checks to all gun purchases except those between members of the family. It failed because a bipartisan minority opposed the bill.
Notably, the three Democrats who opposed that 2013 bill were all replaced by Republicans in the Senate. Another Democrat opposed the bill on procedural grounds.
Three Republicans backed the bill and two of the seats they represented are up for grabs in hotly contested elections this fall.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had no answers on how to move gun laws forward, other than encouraging people to vote in November’s midterm elections. But no likely election result will give either party the 60 votes needed to pass meaningful legislation.
Partisanship grows
Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate today, headed for a vote on a background check bill, but it’s doomed without those 60 votes.
Any compromise seems far from becoming a reality. And it’s not clear these bills would have kept the guns of most people who commit these horrific crimes.
Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he’s worried red flag laws could also take guns away from people who don’t need them.
“Virtually everyone I’ve seen here has pushed law-abiding gun owners into what I consider overreach,” Tillis told CNN on Tuesday.
Many states continue to relax the laws. Other states’ laws don’t work
Courts strike down laws
Most gun restrictions are enforced at the state level, and there is a patchwork of laws across the country. Even in states where strong majorities support gun control measures, federal courts have stood in the way.
The country is clearly divided on the issue of guns and how to restrict them. There is an apocryphal belief among many Americans that the Constitution views gun ownership the same way it views life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. An increasingly conservative Supreme Court has turned that belief into precedent.
You’ve no doubt read that large majorities across the country support certain restrictions on guns – and that’s true.
Support for gun restrictions rises and falls
But it’s not the vast majority of the country that wants a complete rewrite of national gun laws.
CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta notes that “support for tougher gun laws tends to increase after high-profile mass shootings, such as the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which took place in Florida. comes a few weeks before Gallup measures its recent high of 67% support for tougher laws in March 2018.”
All of that could change after this horrific new round of shootings.
- 87% supported preventing people with mental illness from buying guns.
- 81% supported that private gun sales and sales at gun shows be subject to background checks.
People support specific things
Smaller but still substantial majorities supported more controversial ideas, according to Pew’s analysis:
- 66% supported the creation of a federal database to track gun sales.
- 64% approved of “banning large capacity ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds”.
- 63% approved of the “ban on assault weapons”.
Despite the Supreme Court’s skepticism of New York’s licensing law, only 20% of Pew polls, including just 35% of gun owners nationwide, favored a license law. law “allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit”.
