Following a series of mass shootings, including those in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, last year, I wrote a piece titled Why the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court can’t – or won’t – stop mass shootings.
In the ensuing months, there have been several significant changes in national gun policy:
Congress did, in fact, come together last June to pass the first major national gun legislation in decades, encouraging states to pass red flag laws, which can temporarily prevent individuals in crisis from accessing firearms through court orders, as well as other measures related to mental health and firearms.
That same month, the Supreme Court struck down a decades-old New York statute governing gun licences, pulling the rug out from under state-enacted gun restrictions and sparking a rush to challenge these state laws.
Following the midterm elections, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, assuring that no new national gun regulations are likely to be considered.
Despite that action by the previous Congress, and because of the Supreme Court’s action, the basic thrust of that story from last year remains as the United States deals with the aftermath of Monday’s elementary school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, in which three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed.
There is little the president can do to prevent mass shootings. The incoming Republican-controlled House is unlikely to do anything to prevent mass shootings. And there are reasons to believe that state gun control measures may be jeopardised.
This means that the cycle of gun violence will continue to be terrible, predictable, and irreversible.
In the first months of 2023, there have already been 16 school shootings in the United States, and 405 children have been killed by guns in the country. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the total number of child gun deaths in 2022 will be 1,680.
According to a database kept by the activist group Everytown for Gun Safety, most states, including Tennessee, still lack a red flag (also known as extreme risk) statute.
Even if Tennessee had a red flag statute, it appears improbable that the Nashville shooter would have been apprehended.
Audrey Hale, the shooter in Nashville, lawfully purchased seven firearms from five separate gun dealers in the city in recent years. According to Metropolitan Nashville Police Commissioner John Drake, Hale was being treated by a psychiatrist for an emotional illness. Hale’s parents believed the one pistol they knew the gunman purchased had been sold.
“Had it been reported to us that she was suicidal or that she was planning to kill someone, we would have tried to obtain those weapons.” Nevertheless, as things stand, we have no idea who this individual was,” Drake told reporters.
Laws will not catch every shooter.
The shooter who targeted Black People in a Buffalo grocery store last May was not identified by red flag regulations. In 2021, an Indiana red flag law failed to identify the attacker who killed eight people at a FedEx facility. The legislation has since been modified.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, despite past warning indications, mass shooters frequently find their way around ownership prohibitions.
Many states are expanding gun ownership.
Part of the country believes that fewer guns are the answer, while another believes that more guns are needed to take down insane killers.
Many states, including Tennessee, are continuing to liberalise their laws.
Tennessee’s existing laws receive a “F” from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The legislature is now discussing measures to broaden the types of firearms that can be legally carried without a permission.
New national laws are unlikely to be enacted.
Following the Nashville shooting, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill disregarded early calls to reexamine an assault weapons ban in order to reduce the number of AR-15 rifles – one of the weapons used by the suspect in Monday’s attack.
“The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” said Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees gun legislation. “I believe in the Second Amendment and feel that we should not penalise law-abiding Americans.”
Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Nashville, believes guns aren’t the major issue.
“Why not talk about the real issue confronting the country,” Ogles remarked, according to AWN’s Capitol Hill crew.
The president is powerless.
Both parties’ presidents have struggled to nominate permanent directors to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
From 2015, under Barack Obama’s presidency, until President Joe Biden’s second choice, Steve Dettelbach, was confirmed last July, there was no Senate-confirmed director.
Biden has vowed administrative efforts to combat home-assembly ghost weapons, but he lacks the authority to do much about the guns used in mass murders.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration attempted to reinterpret an existing statute prohibiting civilian ownership of machine weapons in order to prohibit so-called “bump stocks” like the one used in the Las Vegas massacre in 2017. The bump stock restriction was overturned by a federal appeals court earlier this year, but it was reinstated while the matter was remanded to a lower court.
A country torn apart by guns
Many Americans have the erroneous idea that the Constitution sees gun ownership in the same way that it views life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That notion has now become precedent, thanks to an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. In overturning the long-standing New York gun licencing requirement, Justice Clarence Thomas stated that gun restrictions must be “compatible with our Nation’s historical heritage.”
Note: A federal appeals court upheld a 2018 Florida law that raised the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 earlier this month, saying it was consistent with historical precedent. Nevertheless, that judgement may not be appealed to the Supreme Court; Republican leaders in Florida, now many years removed from the Parkland shooting that prompted the amendment, are seeking to lower the age back to 18.
However, semi-automatic weapons did not exist at the time of the country’s inception or the crafting of the Bill of Rights.
Here’s what the Second Amendment actually states
People believe that the government can do something.
You’ve probably heard that big majorities of Americans support some gun limits, and you’re right.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of Americans do not support a fundamental overhaul of the nation’s firearms regulations.
Jennifer Agiesta, AWN’s director of polling, noted that “support for stricter gun laws tends to spike after high-profile mass shootings, such as the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which occurred just a few weeks before Gallup measured its recent high of 67% support for stricter laws in March 2018.”
According to an AWN study conducted by SSRS last year following the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, 69% of Americans believe that the government and society can take effective action to avoid killings like the one in Uvalde. Thirty percent believe that shootings like the one in Uvalde will continue regardless of what action the government and society take.
According to a 58% majority of Americans, stronger gun control regulations would lower the number of gun-related deaths in the country. This is up from 49% in 2019 and comparable to 56% after Parkland.
