Can The United States Learn From New Zealand’s Tragedy?

A few hours.

A few hours were all Harrison Tarrant needed to take at least fifty lives. After breaking into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Muslim holy day, Tarrant live-streamed himself on social media shooting worshippers. Additionally, the manifesto that the twenty-eight year old suspect wrote and published to social media just minutes before the attack disparages Muslims and immigrants. An Australian-born former personal trainer, Tarrant was exposed to radical, white nationalistic ways of thinking during his excursions abroad. He met with right-wing extremists while vacationing in Europe in 2017 and also traveled to Pakistan and North Korea before tarnishing his previously clean record with the blood of the innocent.

Six days.

Six days after the attack, New Zealand announced an immediate plan to change their existing gun policies. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a national ban on all military-style semi automatic weapons and all ammunition magazines that permit weapons to be modified into the kinds of gun used by Tarrant just one day after the first victims were laid to rest.

1.45 Million.

1.45 million Americans have died from gun crimes since 1970. That’s more deaths by bullet than by all the wars in American history. Every ten weeks, more Americans are murdered with assault weapons than died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.

According the the New York Times, New Zealand is not the only country to take immediate action after a gun-related tragedy.

After a massacre left 35 people dead in Australia in 1996, the Australian government immediately tightened their gun policy.

After 16 people were killed in Hungerford, Britain in 1987, British laws changed to require shotgun owners to register their weapons. Semi-automatic weapons were prohibited. By the end of 1997, Parliament had banned private ownership of almost all handguns.

After a 19-year-old expelled student returned to his high school in Germany and murdered 16 people in 2002, the German government raised the legal age for carrying sport weapons from 18 to 21, requiring gun buyers under 25 to present certifications that they are medically and psychologically fit to have the type of power that could allow them to take lives in an instant. Another shooting seven years later caused Germany to call for random checks on weapons owners.

Gun-related crimes are now far more unusual in these countries than they are in the United States. And when they do occur, immediate action is almost always taken.

Where is our action? Because statistics show, gun laws do make a difference.

When Connecticut made licensing laws stricter in 1995, firearm homicide rates plummeted by 40 percent.

When Missouri relaxed gun laws in 2017, gun homicide rates increased by 25 percent.

About 22 percent of guns in the United States are still obtained without a background check. In some areas of America, a more complete background check is required to adopt a dog than to purchase a semi automatic AR-15 weapon.

However, polls show that over 90 percent of gun owners are in favor of universal background checks to make certain that people are lawfully permitted to own a gun before they buy one.

The House passed a bill last month that would require universal background checks if passed, bit it is not likely to get beyond the Senate.

What else, besides trying to legalize background checks, can our administration do to save our lives?

We can implement red flag laws. Fourteen states in America have these laws, which allow police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person who seems to be a danger to themselves or to others. Similar legislation has been brought to Congress to take this to a national level. Additionally,  an estimated 200,000 guns are stolen each year, making it too easy for a firearm to end up in the wrong hands. Most phones require passwords or fingerprints to unlock. Why shouldn’t guns?

The United States has had global leadership throughout history. We have aided other countries in becoming more democratic, we have fought for other unions, and we are the reigning capitalist nation. All countries strive to achieve the American Dream. But it’s time for America to learn to follow. New Zealand, Australia, England, and Germany have set great examples for what taking action should look like. They are doing their jobs: protecting their people. It shouldn’t be so difficult for our own government to protect us.

To learn more about the New Zealand shooting, click here.

By Rose Sanders