A tragedy too horrible to behold has taken place in a Connecticut school near New York City — a gunman with a personality disorder shot dead his mother, who is a teacher, and 20 schoolchildren between the ages of five and 10, besides the principal and other teachers. Whether the US will wake up at least now and consider gun control laws is the question that arises in the wake of that country’s worst ever school mass shooting.
It’s been eight years since a 10-year ban on assault weapons expired but since then no party has had the courage to raise the issue of tightening gun ownership laws. The gun lobby is powerful and reform is the last thing on legislators’ minds even as the Second Amendment to the US Constitution enshrines the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.
There have been arguments over how to prevent guns being carried on to campuses every time a crazed mind has shot people at random, particularly on campuses, as at Virginia Tech in 2007, or in shopping malls, as on the day the Dark Knight Rises film premiered in Colorado last July.
The argument that people, and not weapons, kill, holds little water. Allowing arms to be bought as freely as supermarket products is only likely to encourage minds scarred by the pressures of living in a so-called evolved society. A President who no longer has re-election fears should act now lest it be too late for his society. Considering the Supreme Court striking down attempts to ban handguns in his first term, Barack Obama has a huge challenge ahead. This time the dead are innocent children. Maybe that will prick the world’s conscience.