US Congress won’t change nation’s gun laws: Analyst
Even the deadliest mass shooting in US history is not likely to convince Congress to change the nation’s gun laws, says a peace activist and humanitarian aid worker in Cleveland, Ohio.
“I would love to see this give us more gun control, however, the Congress has to vote on it and the Congress we have now votes down everything,” said Alice Bach, who is also a biblical scholar and professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University.
She noted that if lawmakers weren’t motivated to tighten gun laws after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, they certainly won't change their minds now.
The Sandy Hook shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot dead 20 students aged between 6 and 7 years old, as well as six adult staff members.
The US Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms. Gun-rights groups, including the NRA, argue that restrictions on gun purchases would not improve public safety.
Bach said when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, people didn’t have assault rifles, and it was adopted to provide arms to citizen militias to fight against colonial Britain.
On Sunday, a gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 49 people and injured 53 others at a crowded nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police. It was the worst mass shooting in US history.
The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was an American-born US citizen born to parents of Afghan background. He was allegedly a Daesh sympathizer.
The top United Nations human rights official warned US authorities on Tuesday about the country’s “insufficient gun control” following the shooting in Orlando.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein called on US authorities to adopt “robust gun control measures,” urging American leaders “to live up to their obligations to protect the country’s citizens.”
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in the United States every year, a number that includes accidental discharge, murder and suicides, which are on the increase.
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